This link to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 from GovTrack gives you warning the size may freeze your computer…. So you may want to use their link to the Thomas text version instead. Or download the PDF for leisurely reading over the next year or two…
You may as well plow thru it. You’ll certainly be way ahead of your Congressional elected officials, who have not. And that, IMHO, should be a crime.
But then, that would require an act of Congress, wouldn’t it?
BTW, Fox’s Greta is all over this “not reading the bill” bit… at least someone’s incensed.
Rumor has it that Harry Reid’s pet pork, the rail line between Disneyland and Las Vegas, managed to stay alive to the tune of $8-10bil. That will be very convenient to whisk your kids from Pirates of the Caribbean directly to the show girls at the strip casinos in about two hours.
Okay….
Bush waited and debated to invade Iraq for 17-18 months
Obama/Reid/Pelosi/lobbyists/Unions pushed through a bill that costs twice as much as six years of Iraq War in about 17-18 HOURS.
Let’s see…DRAFT of the bill went online after public humiliation of Pelosi around 11-12 last night. Vote was clinched at 5-6pm today
Interesting:
Almost no one in Congress read the pre-war intel on Iraq before authorizing the war (which Congressional Research Service says cost $444bn from 3/03-7/08)
Absolutely no one in Congress read the bill that cost twice as much as the six years of war
RUSH TO SPEND?
obama should be impeached, can we impeach congress? the teleprompter messiah demanded this, its theirs. we are fast becoming a joke on the international level and there is no way out. is there a single person who ahs read the bill in entirety? you would think that after cbo explained why this was such a bad idea that more dems would have gotten on board, but i read somewhere today that maybe pelosi demanded that all dems sign a loyalty pledge thing. so much for the balance of power in this nation, the checks and balance system.
O/T Gatewaypundit is reporting that Obama is going to LIFT SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAN!
This may be the Obama Administration’s Hillarycare and GaysinMilitary moment. The time when the perfect storm crippled his Administration and led to the Repub resurgence for the next fourteen years. While Obama may take Iran off state sponsor list, there are still a host of laws that Peelousy and Reid will have to repeal to make such sanctions disappear.
If you are a couple making between $150,000 and $250,000 or a single making between $75,000 and $125,000, and voted for Obama hoping for a little “quid pro quo”, you must be feeling like an idiot about now.
>If you are a couple making between $150,000 and $250,000 or a single making between >$75,000 and $125,000, and voted for Obama hoping for a little “quid pro quo”, you must be >feeling like an idiot about now.
The folks that voted Obama that make over 150K (or 75K) must feel very patriotic at this point (to quote our VP).
If you walked into a car dealer and he insisted you had to buy the car today but you were not allowed to look at the car, read the manual, the warranty or the sales contract you would walk away.
Here are links to the pdf version of the bill’s two parts. Get in on the ground floor, be first to read the bill that we all needed fast.
http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/Recovery_Bill_Div_A.pdf and http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/Recovery_Bill_Div_B.pdf}
Thanks not-so-plain-jane. LOL All alternative links are good as servers may be in overload from the curious public.
Too bad our Congress types aren’t as curious…
Securing your Congressman’s financial security.
Here’s how it’s done:
1. Withdraw money from a pension or tax-protected savings account to justify charging yourself an interest rate that would make most credit-card companies blush.
2. Pay only the interest as long as possible on the loan.
3. Hold fundraisers specifically to retire the debt you owe to yourself, and make sure donors understand exactly where that money goes.
4. Give yourself all the donations from those fundraisers.
Once you have that system established, it allows contributors to stuff money into your pockets as long as the loan remains outstanding. At 18% interest, that could go on for decades
Minor point of clarification: it’s not 8 – 10 billion for Las Vegas/Orange County; that’s the total for all high speed rail, which was one of Obama’s campaign promises.
Many of us might not like it, but Obama’s economic platform during his Presidential campaign is widely reflected in the bill which was passed. He is giving his voters what he said he’d give them, and I doubt seriously that very many of his supporters (majority of the electorate) are going to be very upset with the bill that he’s going to sign into law.
Those would be the same sanctions that have gotten Iran very close to having a nuclear weapon? Yes, those sanctions worked very well, didn’t they (?); as opposed to the sanctions on Iraq, which actually did prevent Saddam from acquiring centrifuges and “yellowcake.”
Obama has a different Iranian strategy, which is not based on ineffective sanctions and toothless implied threats. He’s communicating not with the current rulers, but with the large number of moderates. He’s giving Iran’s moderate populace the choice between hard line mullahs and engagement with a country which respects their own country.
We’ll all get to see how it plays out, as well as what happens to the economy.
It is entirely too soon to go uncorking champagne.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Larry W…
Thank you for the clarification. That is a figure built in for all high speed rail. However is that money for “studies” for each project, the building of each project, or can all that money be funneled into one project?
Ah… the devil in the details. Point is, we don’t know, do we? That could be merely the tip on the ice berg. But having a rail system from Anaheim/Disneyland to Las Vegas is hardly what I would consider priority in any way.
But technically you are correct, and I was wrong. It’s not $8-10 bil for Harry’s project. Then again, you are not necessarily correct because we don’t know if that money is for actual projects (like Harry’s idiocy), or just for “studies”. Nor do we know if all those funds could be allocated solely towards Harry’s idiocy. That possibility also exists.
Then again, since Congress didn’t read the bill, they don’t know either, eh?
I’m not going to debate Iran on this thread with you. But you might want to pocket this thought for any future debates on this with me. If you don’t like military action to control Iranian despots (not to be confused with the population….), then what would you suggest other than sanctions? So perhaps you may want to ponder what you think *would* work with an anti-semite despot bent on supporting jihad groups.
I *do* love these rare moments of consensus… And since I know you also aren’t a proponent of the majority of BS in this stimulus bill (we differ on specifics), perhaps you may like to relay that to Obama and family, plus their media faithful making the rounds on the talking head circuit, busy “celebrating” their “success” at the expense of Joe America this weekend?
Mata: I only brought up Iran in response to a different comment. I think that we’ll have adequate opportunity to debate Iran in the near future. I’ll look forward to addressing your queries to me on this.
Nice riposte on the “champagne” comment. Touche’
- LW/HB
One thing for sure with any “rail line/train” there will have to be environmental studies etc. Maybe the environmental lawyers are the winners when it comes to this portion of the spendulous bill. Between Disneyland and Las Vegas there are surely protected species that will have to be fought over. My personal prediction is the TRAIN WILL NEVER BE BUILT with funds from this bill.
Does anyone know of any organized effort to review the bill and produce a comprehensive bullet-point summary?
@Elisa:
Here’s one.
Here’s another.
One more, more detailed.
Hope those help.
UPDATED to add this one which is the best I have found so far.
thanks chihuahua!
Elisa, I believe that is “aye chi-WOW-ya” to the rest of us…. :0)
One of my IL blogs links to this handy-dandy source so we can check to see what bennies our local communities will recieve from IL’s portion of the Stimulus. I didn’t check, but it probably links to the other states as well.
http://www.stimuluswatch.org/project/by_state/IL
Two of the hardest hit cities, even worse off than Peoria, are Rockford(12% unemployment) and Belvidere(14%), neither made the list. This stimulus is for jobs, isn’t it?
Maybe they should do a quiz before politicians vote on stuff – to ensure they have actually read it. If they haven’t then they lose their right to vote;) Although executives/politicians/anyone don’t have the time or inclinations to read reams of paper. Can’t they condense it down to a under 20 slides powerpoint;)
Sounds like when the Patriot Act was pushed through – did many US politicians bother to read it? I guess having so much bulk enables those who create it to be able to sneak stuff through in the small print. Or am I being too cynical?
@GaffaUK:
No your not being cynical, you are correct. They don’t read the bills but not allowing them to vote would be like denying our citizens voting priviledges, not Constitutional so they can sneak and vote to their hearts content.
On the heels of the stimulus comes our 2009 budget that should have passed last October. Since it wasn’t passed in the normal fashion, everything will be rolled into what is called an Omnibus bill, tons of earmarks will be added at the last minute, that bill won’t be read either.
http://www.usbudgetwatch.org/budgetblog/2009/u-s-house-let-s-finish-09-approps-460
Very soon will be more of the banking “crisis” bailout by the Treasury dept. that could reach as high as $1.1 trillion. We still don’t know how the first half was spent or where the billions that was overpaid to the banks went.
Obama is now going to go “fix Detroit.” GM took their cut of the last auto bailout to Brazil to shore up their facilities down there, sweet.
then healthcare, climate, etc. on and on we go, all will be padded and rammed through. But, Defense gets a 10% cut. Defense budgets actually creates jobs and is an area that needs restoration.
But of course the devil is always in the “fine print”, Gaffa. That is why a 20 slide PPS will not do. They have people that summarize for them, of course. Most focus on their pet causes and arenas. But that’s not what they are elected to do.
I suggest that this is their primary, and most important job…. to suggest, *read* and vote on legislation. Any side gigs they do as Congressional members should fit into their time outside these first tasks. For what is their job BUT to read what they are creating? Why are they subcontracting out their moral and duly elected responsibilities to people that were not elected?
If they don’t “have the time”, the vote should be postponed until they can read the bill in full…. themselves. They were elected and sent to Washington DC to do just that.