ya...some of that stuff doesnt belong in there....which is why im against omnibus bills

however....

urban canal inpection is infrastructure...it belongs in the bill

summer activities for youth....creates jobs

injury prevention programs....save jobs

the census....creates jobs

the monies returned to pell grants and financial aide....CREATES AN EDUCATED WORK FORCE

i think i have covered enough

had you said that these are all good programs, but shouldve been in another bill...that would be fine

BUT THESE ARE PROGRAMS THAT INVEST IN THE PEOPLE

-- "$100 million for the Lead-Based Paint Hazard Control Grant Program" Creates a job. this program won't run itself. so jobs are created here

-- $200 million to the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund Program Creates a job. this program won't run itself. so jobs are created here

-- $300 million for "Violence Against Women Prevention and Prosecution Programs" Creates a job. this program won't run itself. so jobs are created here

-- $900 million for the IRS for the "Limitation on Administrative Expenses" Creates a job. this program won't run itself. so jobs are created here

-- $1 million for the Railroad Retirement Board for administrative costs Lets people keep their job

-- $2 billion for the Drinking Water State Revolving Act Creates a job. this program won't run itself. so jobs are created here

-- $50 million for Health and Human Services to carry out injury prevention programs Creates a job. this program won't run itself. so jobs are created here

-- $1.1 billion for studies on the effectiveness of different medical treatments Creates a job. this program won't run itself. so jobs are created here. Not only that it promises to make the medical department efficient

-- $200 million to upgrade labs and facilities for the Department of Agriculture "to improve workplace safety and mission-area efficiencies" Creates a job. this program won't run itself. so jobs are created here. improves efficiency and cuts down lost wages due to work related injury

-- $10 million for urban canal inspection Creates a job. this program won't run itself. so jobs are created here

-- $16 billion to pay for student financial aid Uneducated time bombs are a poor investment for a workforce, for society AND employer. this keeps the populace a viable competors for jobs

-- $1 billion to pay for the U.S. Census already been covered

-- $600 million to pay for a fuel-efficient federal auto fleet Investments usually pay dividends in the future especially when it upgrades an archaic mode of fuel

-- $650 million for the Digital Converter Box Program to help the constantly delayed transition from analog television I agree worthless ALthough probably keeps workers on an assembly line

-- $485 million to the Forest Service for "hazardous fuels reduction and hazard mitigation activities in areas at high risk of catastrophic wildfire" Creates a job. this program won't run itself. so jobs are created here

-- Up to $1 billion for "summer activities" for youths as old as 24 Creates a job. this program won't run itself. so jobs are created here

-- $40 million for the occupational research agenda Creates a job. this program won't run itself. so jobs are created here

-- $3 billion for the Centers for Disease Control wellness programs and vaccinations Creates a job. this program won't run itself. so jobs are created here. Plus you personally stand to gain from this if you ever run into a F0cked up illness that some one gave you because they couldn't get access to health care

-- $410 million for Indian health facilities Creates a job. this program won't run itself. so jobs are created here

-- $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstrations Creates a job. this program won't run itself. so jobs are created here

A nearly $800 billion stimulus package and you are freaking out over almost $30 billion in pork?!?!

What the hell ???

How about getting pissed at the $800 billion! Or at least the $770 billion!!?!?

Both parties are drunk with stimulus and NEITHER have a clue where the money is going to come from! NOT $800, NOT $770, NOT even $30 billion. You think China? Yeah OK good luck with that. Both Republicans and Democrats wield ZERO fiduciary responsibility and ZERO understanding of economics. By the time they do it will be too late. Anyone who thinks stimulating a debt ridden country with more debt needs their head checked.

It's not that hard to understand. If your credit cards are maxed and you are having trouble paying them down do you...
A) Tighten the belt, cut the cards up, and pay down the balance?
B) Go get another credit card and max it out on things to stimulate your personal economy?

If you answered B), please schedule to have a lobotomy at your earliest convenience.

God it's like no one ever learned what fiscal responsibility was, a bunch party parrots you are repeating everything you don't understand.

This is the FED's Base Money (1919 - November, 2008), we have NEVER printed this much currency in our history and not one of you can explain why this is going to help. Think people, this chart spans the Great Depression, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam, Gulf War, and 9/11 and look what we have done since just September of last year. HELLO!?!?!?!?!?!?!

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/fredgraph?s[1][id]=AMBNS

It's real easy to explain how it will screw us all though, hello $100 milk and bread, it's only a matter of a few years, 10 years tops before all hell breaks loose.

The statement is made that "the bigger it (government) gets, the less freedom we have..."

I'm really curious about how this is the case. When I lived in The Netherlands, I saw all sorts of freedom, including some we do not have here. I'm not advocating legalized prostitution or legalized marijuana (not saying otherwise, either), but I'm just saying.....

I like everything you just listed. Money well spent. Every penny. The problem with you GOPers is that you don't give a happy damn about people. Only money and the power and privileges it buys at other people's expense. People and their problems are just meaningless abstractions to you.

Well...that's your problem.

Sure, Pelosi should be impeached. She is irredeemably corrupt and up to her ears in complicity with the criminals and monsters of the Bush regime and their toadying accomplices in Congress. Far as most of us can tell, she's really a Republican.

I might point out that the Samoams aren't Indians, and they are American citizens, too. The hard times that afflict us, touch their part of America, too.

Thanks for trying to "educate" us, but you'll probably find that most people here have taken on the duty to educate themselves as a personal responsibility, instead of passively allowing people of such noble-minded intentions like yourself do it for them.

Have a nice day...good luck with your fishing expedition.

Oh...BTW. McCain lost the election and his campaign closed down shop; you aren't going to score any McCain bonus points for trolling liberal/progressive blogs. That generous offer ended with McCain's campaign.

John,
I think a lot of people here were aware of the spending in this bill. It's a pretty simple concept to grasp if you allow yourself... To stimulate the economy you will need to spend quite a bit of money. Under Bush, the money went straight into the corporations that helped cause the mess. Obama's administration has decided that the needed spending should actually go to good use and help us cut spending in the future.

Some of the things you listed make me wonder if you even gave it a double thought or if you just cut and pasted. Let's review a few real quick and then you might be able to get the hang of it yourself:
-600 million to pay for fuel efficient federal auto fleet

So the auto industry is in shambles. The environment has deteriorated rapidly. We are in a war in the middle east. We JUST had record fuel prices. And you really wonder what good it would do to buy 600 million dollars in new fuel efficient cars to replace the outdated guzzlers? Seems to me it's going to have quite a stimulative effect.

-Up to $1 billion for "summer activities" for youths as old as 24

At first glance you might think this is pretty trivial, but if you think about it, this is rather directly creating jobs. Most of the money spent here would seemingly go to hiring the people who put together, supervise and participate in the activities. Then you have youths doing something constructive, which isn't a bad thing. Bottom line, it's money that will be spent very quickly and what they're buying is not a bad thing by a long shot

-$10 million for urban canal inspection

Have you missed the crumbling infrastructure or something? Not only does this help protect people, it's money that will be spent quickly too.

- $1 billion to pay for the U.S. Census

Seriously? You don't want the census?

What's the alternative John? Tax Cuts? The tax cuts that will give me an extra 20 bucks a week. And do you get a tax break if you don't have a job? Is that really going to save people? It's been tried and it failed miserably. And if you're complaining about the price tag and you're a republican, were you aware the tax cuts they proposed would end up costing 3 times as much as Obama's plan? So really, their only argument is that they think that if they do the same thing they've been doing, the same thing that's caused massive national debt, that it will work this time unlike the others. That's a pretty hard notion to buy into John.

me just say that any of these things that you listed stimulate our economy much more than if we were to take the money and dump it in some foreign war like say IRAQ. Funny how you people on the right never complain though about the spending being to high when we are kicking the shit out of some poor country so that our elites can have a crack at their resources and markets.

And, if you are against education spending then you are just a total douche anyway. Education is the one area where we cannot afford to not spend in this day and age.

We don't have a problem with different viewpoints, but when you seemingly cut and paste segments from transcripts of shows hosted by people like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, we see right through it. If this site doesn't jive with your political philosophy then I'm sure that there are plenty of them out there that do.

John, I agree with you to the extent that too much of anything is bad; however, so is not enough. I would hope that you would agree with the premise that civilization as we know it could not exist without government. And our government is one of many in the global community, which as a result of our Constitution and its’ public support enjoys a distinguished status among all nations. It is not by accident that this is so. One of the prominent reasons for this is the protections and benefits our citizens receive from their government. Of course, as citizens, we must always be on guard against attempts, even made with the best of intentions, to destroy the equilibrium between unneeded government intervention and onerous destruction of individual freedoms.
Your posting contains several examples of earmarks. Unfortunately, the word “earmark” has developed a bad connotation as result of past widespread abuses of the process by many members of Congress. But, in reality, earmarks are nothing more than a method of directing funds to be spent for specific purposes. Obviously you classify these spending priorities as either an intrusion upon your individual freedoms or a waste of money. They are neither. They represent an effort by our government to protect the health and welfare of its citizens and develop systems and regulations to meet the challenges that most informed individuals believe we face in the future. The last eight years of Republican governance with its widespread abuses of power and lack of oversight with regard to the environment, the health and welfare of its citizens, and misplaced priorities regarding the economy and global challenges should at least raise your concerns that they had the wrong approach. Of course, any enterprise can develop a well-designed initiative and spend the money poorly or otherwise screw up the implementation. However, that is yet to be seen, and given the Bush Administration’s talent for wasting taxpayers’ money on useless endeavors, this Administration could hardly do worse. The Bush admonition to take individual responsibility was nothing more than a mantra to allow them to abrogate their duties and responsibilities to safeguard our citizens.

Understand that this is a Jobs Bill. Even though you may not want your paint to be lead free or your kids to go to school people will be employed in order to do those things.

It sounds bad when you just mention $600 million for fuel-efficient autos! WHAT?! That's crazy!!

But those autos won't be grown on trees. Many people will be employed to make those cars and maintain those cars. With the money they make from that employment they will go out and buy groceries, clothes and maybe even their own fuel efficient cars...and the cycle begins again.

We're not just spending these billions and losing them, they will be circulating in our economy.

...the problem is capitalism. How else to explain the selfish lust for money behind all those "earmarks?"

You need to educate yourself. Among the G8 nations, the United States is at the bottom of the barrel in quality of life--including individual freedom. The reason is the other nations maintain mostly socialist policies while the U.S. maintain a dictatorship by the 1% capitalist ruling class.

You are being used. Take a look at the REAL world for a change.

I'll take a shot at this.

Your premise (that more government equals less freedom) is too simple. First, "freedom" is contrained by any person or organization with more power than you. Government is merely one example. Corporations, unions, associations - all collectives in which organizational concerns set out in rules, policies, laws, etc. limit the free choice of individual members effectively contrain the freedom of individuals.

Second, some form of government is essential to prevent anarchy. Simply stating that bigger government is not a good thing, without specifying the manner in which the government is becoming "bigger", is too simplistic. I assume you have no objection to government managing public works (like infrastructure), or do you believe that roads, electricity, water etc. should be controlled by unaccountable, local, private monopolies able to charge monopoly prices and shut off essential services to those who cannot pay?

If you accept that government has some role, then all we're doing is arguing over whether the government should be involved specific endeavors - in this case, the stimulus package.

Regarding your complaints about the stimulus and the "earmarks", you are just repeating Republican talking points. The only thing that matters is that the money be spent. The earmarks are essentially irrelevant. In order to stimlate demand, it does not matter whether $1 billion is going to pay for a new census (though I note that an accurate census is long overdue and is essential to allocate social assistance and track demographic changes). It only matters that new census takers will be employed and paid. Providing census takers with employment income allows them to spend it, thus stimulating demand.

A similar argument can be made about all of the other earmarks you complain about. The government could stimulate demand simply by giving the money away (so long as it went to the bottom 50% of income earners or so). If the government gives the money away in exchange for a new census or new roads, so much the better.

You get an A+ for current American history.

VegasRage, you've mentioned several times how "both parties" are corrupt, wasteful, and spending our future generation's money. Just wondering, did you express this same kind of rage during the last 8 years when bush was wasting BILLIONS and BILLIONS on an unnecessary war?

Just wondering, cuz I don't remember seeing you around crooksandliars until recently.

Sorry I don't respond to trolls who infest this wonderful site.

Tough shit if you don't like the way the country is going. It was your hero george bush who started the move towards socialism anyway. I like it just fine here, if you don't like progress you should follow glen beck and move out of America.

My bet is that the socialist Europeans with their production based economies will fair better than America with its consumption based economy.

Tell me you're not this stupid. Please-- it's embarrassing just to *read* this crap.

Socialism is an economic system, not a political one. It may surprise you to learn that unrestrained capitalism is not part of the Constitution. The country could be every bit as socialist as France, and still be completely in line with the Constitution.

It's the the American far-right that's tried to transform this country into something else-- a fascist state, to be precise. I believe they're the only ones that ever attempted a military coup. It's you and your ilk that need to take a fucking walk.

like bailing out wall street on my honestly paid tax dollar? while tax cheat timmy egghead in a jeri curl keeps the dog and pony show alive a little while longer?

you are OUT OF YOUR MIND, AMIGO.

'Love it or leave it.'

'Better dead than red.'

like Amerukuh. If you'd spend some time in Italy you'd be singing a different tune but you're stuck in your moms' basement eating cheetos and playing x box while listening to Rushbo. Just tell us one thing that the moron presnit did during his eight year reign of (t)error. One thing, c'mon put down the cheetos we all await your erudite response...........

how can one be 'fear mongering' while simultaneously 'understating' the problem. Could it be more BS from the main stream media? Survey says "Likely"...

So much for Bush preventing another 9/11...

Government run well solves problems; your ilk, though, prefer to run government badly, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.