It galls me to admit it, but the vile Repugs have got a point – the ‘stimulus’ bill is overladen with pork. It’s just another bloated omnibus spending bill like the Repugs spewed out over the last 8 years, business as usual.
I don’t buy the complete Foxublican spin, that pork items such fixing State Department computer systems or cleaning up the National Mall won’t create or preserve jobs – of course they will!
But the nation is looking for national stimulus, targeted at Joe Sixpack’s home town, not at the offices, home towns and garages of our overpaid politicos.
Likewise, while I am a firm believer in better healthcare, familiy planning services, and child care for our troops, these items have little or nothing to do with stimulus; our fat & lazy politicos should get off their asses and create and debate legislation specifically for these items.
The stimulus package must stick to core infrastructure investment and development, those things that the venal Repugs of yore were too corrupt and stupid to address, such as improving our transit systems (rail, road & bridge), investing in local, regional and national mass transit, assisting local governments in mixed-use, urban infill development, modernizing our archaic national ‘grid’ and making it distributed, renewable green-energy ready.
This type of spending would cover the U.S. and provide local and regional jobs from unskilled to professional type. It would address the neglect of previous misAdministrations, mitigate future disasters (bridge collapses? train derailments?), and start moving the economy to sustainable jobs (wind & solar energy, local business in mixed-use development).
And it would only be a start.
On the flip side, somebody should tell the vile Repugs to shut-the-fuck-up about more tax cuts. We don’t need to repeal the AMT, we need to adjust the salary limits to account for decades of inflation. We should rescind the Shrubyian tax cuts for the rich. In fact, to my first point, all the tax shit should be stripped out of this bill, and the lazy-ass politicos should deal with these tax change issues in a separate bill. While ramming the changes down the throats of Boner and his cronies.
Now is not the time for timid half-measures, or more groveling to Billo the Clown and Limp Boy. Nor is it time for Congressional pork barrel politics. If Obama doesn’t get in front of this cart, he’ll find himself being dragged behind it in 4 years, watching his squandered mandate transform into Shrubyian approval ratings.
