Here's an irony for you:
The story today on the stimulus bill is about how such Senate moderates as Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Republican Susan Collins of Maine are reshaping the legislation. And yet who's getting his picture in the papers? Jim DeMint, who is nobody's notion of a moderate.
He appeared, looming large, on Page 3 of The Wall Street Journal with a story headlined "GOP Wields More Influence Over the Stimulus Bill." That's the picture above. Which sort of makes you think Jim DeMint is one of those "wielding more influence." In fact, his image is being used on the promo for "top stories" on the paper's Web site. But… he's not mentioned in the story. So the picture, apparently, gives a false impression.
I haven't looked at the print version of The New York Times today, but I saw this story on the Web, headlined "Centrists in Senate Push to Cut Billions From Stimulus." Guess whose picture adorns it (along with others; it's a group shot)? Yep — non-centrist Jim DeMint. Then guess who is NOT mentioned in the story? You got it.
Hey, fellas — you want to try coordinating with the guys in photo next time, so that your art actually GOES WITH the story?
In case you wondered how this happened: Well, it's a story with a lot of moving parts, and different media folk are following different parts of it. Those photos are from The Associated Press. The running AP story on the stimulus DOES mention DeMint — as having played a leading role in an unsuccessful effort…
Despite bipartisan concerns about the cost, Republicans failed in a series of attempts on Wednesday to cut back the bill's size.
The most sweeping proposal, advanced by Sen. Jim DeMint, a Republican, would have eliminated all the spending and replaced it with a series of tax cuts. It was defeated 61-36.
… which means he's no longer a part of the story of the developing bill. But the picture remains.
This marks one of those rare occasions when our junior senator steals a march on our senior one, mediawise. Our senior senator was at the same press conference as DeMint (see below). But he wasn't in either of the pictures chosen by the two aforementioned papers. Nor was he mentioned in either of their stories, or the AP story.
So much for Lindsey Graham, media hog extraordinaire.
Just an interesting little irony that I noticed in all my reading on the subject, and thought I'd share…
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Jim DeMint, Richard Shelby and others are leading the effort to bring some daylight and honesty to the spending, because they took the initiative to lead, while Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham sat on the sidelines and waited.
DeMint is being a moderate on this issue. He supports federal fiscal efforts to slow the recession. He just is not going to let Democrats and Republicans pass it by letting a majority of legislators load it up with special interest projects which have already been rejected on their own.
Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the radicals pushing an ever-bloating appropriations. Pelosi has told Democrats she will not remove any spending, because she wants the bill to pass. Reid said he doesn’t care how large it is. Obama uses more hysterical rhetoric every day to frighten the public and press into stampeding.
It isn’t working. The longer this process takes, and it should take a very long time, the more the American people see the waste and demand trimming the fat.
By the way, for the latest from our own Senator No, check this release that just came in, headlined, “DeMint Sponsors Bill to Block Funding for Guantanamo Bay Closure.”
Folks, I never thought we needed to close Guantanamo. I see the need for the facility, and it’s always seemed as good a place to put it as anywhere else, and better than many. But I also understand the reasons why Obama wants to close it (and why McCain would have, too, had he been elected). And I’m confident that the president isn’t going to randomly let these people run loose, especially when he counts our other senator among his advisers on such subjects. He can read the papers as well as you and I.
As I said in a comment back on this post, there is a great deal more continuity between administrations here than most partisans care to acknowledge. And some partisans are going to fight against the formation of consensus with all of their might, laying down any roadblocks that they can. That’s their role in our ongoing national conversation, and lately Jim DeMint has been playing that role with considerable relish. And even though he is sufficiently outside the mainstream that he has little effect on eventual outcomes, at least he gets his picture in the papers.
Lee brings up Pelosi and Reid. Well, I put them in the same category as Sen. DeMint — unreconstructed partisans who make it their business to keep sensible folks such as Obama and Nelson and Collins from salvaging any solutions from the ungodly partisan mess.
Y’all might enjoy this…
I was just in Robert’s office checking on his cartoon for tomorrow, and he had Keven Cohen’s show on the radio, and Lindsey Graham was on it, and he was talking like a Senator No himself, going on about how this stimulus bill was a mess and the Dems were trying to railroad it, and were trying to peel off a couple of Republicans so they could pass it, and how HE sure wasn’t going to be one of them, etc.
Maybe he saw how well that stance worked for DeMint, exposure-wise.
Or maybe it means that the tide’s turning enough that the bill CAN’T pass tonight, in which case I probably should have pushed ahead and made that editorial happen. Too late now; I’m too deep into other stuff. And any time I can find at this point needs to be devoted to coming up with a Sunday column, which is not yet in sight. Dang…
Maybe my column should be about the stimulus…
Y’all might enjoy this…
I was just in Robert’s office checking on his cartoon for tomorrow, and he had Keven Cohen’s show on the radio, and Lindsey Graham was on it, and he was talking like a Senator No himself, going on about how this stimulus bill was a mess and the Dems were trying to railroad it, and were trying to peel off a couple of Republicans so they could pass it, and how HE sure wasn’t going to be one of them, etc.
Maybe he saw how well that stance worked for DeMint, exposure-wise.
Or maybe it means that the tide’s turning enough that the bill CAN’T pass tonight, in which case I probably should have pushed ahead and made that editorial happen. Too late now; I’m too deep into other stuff. And any time I can find at this point needs to be devoted to coming up with a Sunday column, which is not yet in sight. Dang…
Maybe my column should be about the stimulus…
DeMented’s press release on the bill Brad mentions contains the following whopper:
“Only the most dangerous terrorists are detained at Guantanamo Bay.” Already proven to have been factually incorrect.
Then to buttress his argument, he cites the following two experts/war-criminals (take your pick): Dick Cheney and John Yoo! Two paragons of cool, dispassionate reasoning there, eh?
The thing about partisans on the far wings, Brad, is that they hope by staking out extreme positions, to influence the placement of what comes to be seen as a “moderate” outcome.
BW, Can’t tell if you’re for or against Jim DeMint. Personally, I think he’s doing some real damage with his cockamamie idea of tax cuts and nothing else.
Personally, I think this is more of a gender issue than anything.
Let the chicks from Maine and the African American President work it out and leave the old white dudes out of it entirely.
I need to buy a program so I can keep the players straight. When Phillip said “John Yoo,” I thought he was talking about the director of such questionable cinematic masterpieces as “Face/Off,” “Windtalkers” and “Mission Impossible II.”
But that’s John Woo.
What I saw on the floor of the Senate today was Senator Graham having a religious experience. He was lamblasting Senator Boxer for not being a nonpartisan. Duh! It seems like Senator Graham is old enough to know the Communists don’t keep their promises.
I love John Woo movies, esp. Face Off. But unlike the last administration, I can tell the difference between a movie thriller with lots of bad guys gettin’ blowed up, vs. real life.
Following the up-to-the-minute soap opera with the stimulus package, I’m starting to think that the danger to the nation of having a partisan tone set via passage on mostly-party-line-vote, is far less than the danger the nation faces if strong action is not taken or if this bill gets hacked into ineffectualness (is that a word?).
So I’m totally with jessup here. Let’s see what Nelson, Snowe, Collins, Spector, Voinovich want, give most of it to ’em, and pass this sucker with 62 votes.
Obama is more radical than Pelosi and Reid.
He is not as partisan a Democrat as they are, because he only recently joined the Democratic Party. He spent more of his life as a member of several socialist parties, and even ran as a socialist candidate, then ran as a Democrat but nominated by the Socialist Party, as their dual candidate.
Obama is a socialist first, and a Democrat second.
Lee brings up Pelosi and Reid. Well, I put them in the same category as Sen. DeMint — unreconstructed partisans who make it their business to keep sensible folks such as Obama and Nelson and Collins from salvaging any solutions from the ungodly partisan mess.
Brad, I feel like if the Democrats came out tomorrow and said “we need to kick all old ladies in the shins,” while the Republicans came out and said “no, we need to pull their hair,” you would lament over the lack of the Democrat-Republican cooperation and ignore the fact that we’re beating old ladies.
No, Lee. He is a secular humanist/leaning toward closeted Muslim-ist first. A socialist second. A Democrat, only maybe.
so·cial·ism
Pronunciation: \ˈsō-shə-ˌli-zəm\
Function: noun
Date: 1837
Source: Merriam-Webster
Miriam’s Dictionary, 2009 Edition:
Socialism:
The crap being proposed by BHO — while he is covertly attempting to legislate Christianity off the list of acceptable American behavior.
~You’re welcome.
Birch,
Brad doesn’t care about the results. It’s about the process. As long as they sing Kumbaya, it’s all good at the end of the day.
Unless it’s one of his own personal ideologies like the lottery, abortion, school vouchers. Then there is no middle ground.
The Senate voted yesterday to postpone the switch from analog to digital TV broadcasting until June 12.
Apparently, too many poorbuckers with analog TVs haven’t picked up their converter coupons yet.
Someone called it a real victory for Obama and the Democrats, so maybe Brad’s column should be about the Democrats and Obama delaying progress.
One Republican said the only people who didn’t know they would need converters Feb. 17 are people who don’t have TVs, so it wouldn’t make any difference when the switch occurs.
Personally, I think it means the space aliens waiting on the dark side of the moon have postponed their invasion. They obviously want the confusion of the TV changeover to facilitate their attack, once the analog signals that would kill them are finally gone.
“When I’m calling you-oo-oo-oo…”
Doug and bud both like to characterize my wish to be governed from the center as caring about “the process” rather than the results. What they fail to understand is that time and time again, when I look at the SUBSTANCE of what people who work across the aisle support — people like Graham and McCain and Lieberman and Ben Nelson and Susan Collins — time and time again, I AGREE with that substance. And when I look at the crazy, ugly stuff that we get in legislation that is supported only by one party or the other, I HATE the substance of it. And why does that keep happening? Because good ideas can get support — on their MERITS, on their SUBSTANCE — that transcends such meaningless considerations as party association. And bad ideas cannot.
Do we sometimes have a good idea that can’t get bipartisan support? It can happen, but it is very, very rare. The best example I can think of from recent history was way back in 1993, when the Republicans just bullheadedly drove off a policy cliff by voting unanimously against Clinton’s sensible, well-crafted (and successful) deficit reduction passage. And then they spent the next year lying about the package and used it to win in the off-year election. But they sowed the seeds of their own destruction with their extremism. But whether it worked as a political issue or not, they were WRONG.
But I can’t think of a major issue since then when a GOOD idea was only supported by members of one party. Maybe y’all can help me think of one.
Generally speaking, if it’s a good idea, it will get support across party lines. And if it can’t get such support, that’s usually because it’s a bad idea.
I hope this helps, guys.
I think one reason bud and Doug have trouble with this concept is that each of them is so very alienated by some major policy initiative that had bipartisan support, killing their faith in consensus.
With bud, you can point to the Iraq Invasion, which was supported across the political spectrum in the corridors of power. (Barack Obama opposed it? Well, guess what? He wasn’t in the Senate then. Go see what Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton did.)
With Doug, you can point to Comprehensive Immigration reform, which had the support of Bush and Ted Kennedy and lots of folks in the middle like McCain and Graham. Doug can comfort himself that the angry folks on both the left and right managed to kill that, but the fact that there was bipartisan agreement across the center, with some involvement from both right and left, is a big argument against political consensus for him.
Or perhaps I misunderstand.
Yes, you do misunderstand. The motivation of politicians to support amnesty for people who have committed a crime to enter the United States isn’t an issue that should be addressed by bipartisanship.
Here’s how you can put it in perspective:
The way you feel about abortion is the way I feel about taxes. Zero would be best and the fewest possible would be fine with me.
The way you feel about the lottery is how I feel about Social Security. I’d like to see people not gamble their life savings on risky endeavors.
The way you feel about vouchers is the way I feel about illegal immigrants. Allowing even one is unacceptable.
The way you feel about Mark Sanford is how I feel about Lindsey Graham. Your disgust for Sanford’s unwavering support for his principles is similar to my disgust for Graham’s pandering and phoniness.
Do you get it yet? You have just as many no-middle-ground issues as any of the rest of us do. Except you think it’s bi-partisanship when you expect people to compromise their fundamental beliefs while I admire people who hold true to what they believe.
I’ll ask you again – when will you support a trial school voucher program for poor students in the worst performing schools? If the answer is “never” then I rest my case.
My supposed anger and alienation over the illegal immigration issue is no different than your anger and alienation you present every time you talk about nationalizing the healthcare of the country.
Every time I hear the word “amnesty” I suppose it’s the same feeling you get when you hear the words “copay”.
Brad says, “And even though he [DeMint] is sufficiently outside the mainstream that he has little effect on eventual outcomes, at least he gets his picture in the papers.”
I say, “Wake up Brad. DeMint’s (and his allies in the Senate) opposition to this bill and exposure of the absolute piece of crap it is, is what opened the door for the Collins and Nelsons of the world to negotiate a better bill. DeMint’s tax cut got 36 votes. Not a majority, but nothing to sneeze at. I think you ought to give the man a little more credit.”
Wake up, folks! FDR’s New Deal was working until 1937, by which time unemployment had been reduced from over 25% nationally to 10%. Then FDR began to cave in to Republicans by cutting taxes, cutting social spending, de-regulating the economy, balancing the budget. In other words, he veered sharply away from Keynesian economics under duress during his second term. It took WWII to get the economy back on track with, of course, more spending–this time for the military.
Hey, I noticed that Republicans want to cut taxes, but they don’t seem to want to cut the 500+ billion dollars we spend annually on the military, let alone the VA, the CIA, and other operations we have directed abroad.
How do you cut taxes without reducing military spending?? Except for social security, which is paid for by FICA tax, what social spending do you propose to cut to redress the balance?
The fact is, we have already had tax cuts, and they did not work. Why do that again? Why not pass a bill that spends money and primes the pump??
I think the Republicans are about to get a well-deserved drubbing in the Senate. If they won’t climb aboard the Obama express, they will be shunted aside as a crackpot party representing states like ours where evolution is still an issue!
The Republicans lost the election! Government is the answer! The Democracy now rules! And it’s about time!
The simple question to ask yourself, Brad, is: “What percentage of wasteful spending (however he or she defines it) should a Senator simply accept as part of the bipartisanship you desire?”
10% of 900 billion? 5%?
Anyone who votes for the bill is saying “I approve of ALL the spending in this bill.”
A bi-partisan approach would be to allow voting on a line-by-line basis. Let’s see which politicians think something is a good way to stimulate the economy and which think it is pork.
We’ve got these great new machines called computers where a Senator could actually go in and check off “yes” or “no” to each line item. Everything over 50% could be approved.
It’s not so easy to say “well, I didn’t really want to spend $430 million on preventing STDs but had to go along with the whole thing for the good of the country” when you have to vote up or down on each item.
Bipartisanship = screw everybody
Do we sometimes have a good idea that can’t get bipartisan support? It can happen, but it is very, very rare. The best example I can think of from recent history was way back in 1993, when the Republicans just bullheadedly drove off a policy cliff by voting unanimously against Clinton’s sensible, well-crafted (and successful) deficit reduction passage.
Holy crap!
Clinton’s Deficit Reduction Plan = Good Idea
Obama’s Deficit Explosion Plan = Good Idea
What gives?
Also, maybe this isn’t getting bipartisan support because it is a bad idea.
Call it partisanship, but I’ve heard some good questions raised over this bill and have yet to hear a good rebuttal:
– Deficit issues
– The fact that a lot of the bill’s spending is not actually stimulus
– The fact that many of the actual stimulus will not actually come into effect until years down the road
And I have heard only partisan responses so far from Democratic leadership.
Tired arguments. BS. The deficit is not a tired argument. Looking at the actual contents of the bill is not making tired arguments.
And what the hell is this quote: “If we do not move swiftly to sign the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, an economy that is already in crisis will be faced with catastrophe,” Obama said.
Gee, that sounds an awful lot like the bailout where everyone told us how it had to be passed immediately or else really bad things would happen. Now that I think of it, that’s how they got this other “bi-partisan” wonder passed too.
And Doug, Zero taxes? You have to admit that’s a bit overboard (to say the least).
Birch, damn you catch on quick. Right to the point, no BS, just honest questions, observations, and answers.
Keep it up!!!
Birch,
Zero taxes would be great, wouldn’t it? It’s not achievable though just as the concept of zero abortions is unachievable.
But achieving the minimum of each would be ideal. We should all pay the least amount of taxes to do what is necessary for the government to do. Roads, defense, schools, law enforcement, food for the hungry… I’d be fine with 10% if everybody paid 10%. I’m not fine with paying 20% while others pay 0%.
The Senate bill contains more than $800,000 to build a single Frisbee golf course.
Apparently, the children are in charge.
And Rich, you’re not doing anything to convince me otherwise.
Furthermore, Brad, Graham did a great job tonight explaining exactly what’s wrong with the bill and the process of constructing it. He’s not making nice to Obama any more. It was good to see him swing with both fists.
so·cial·ism
1. any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods:
* Government funding of industries like ethanol and wind power, while punishing other industries.
2. a system of society or group living in which there is no private property
b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
* Government ownership of all wages – letting the workers keep a small portion after payroll taxes.
* Government schools
* Government healthcare
* Government ownership of stock in banks
* Government ownership of automobile manufacturers
3. a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
* In an economy with manufacturing and distribution of goods, communism and socialism are merely forms of capitalism.
Obama’s books and speeches say he is a socialist. His policies so far are socialist.
Doug’s “zero taxes” idea — particularly when offered as analogy with something of life-and-death importance (that was the one you compared to abortion, right? I can’t scroll back to your comment while I’m typing this because it’s on the previous take) — reminds me of another false comparison: Food and tobacco.
Some folks liken raising the cigarette tax to keep kids from smoking to putting a special tax on fattening food, reasoning (and I use “reasoning” loosely) that they’re both bad for you. Certainly, you can draw certain comparisons that create a patina of likeness: It’s in the interest of society at large to reduce the consumption of both because they both lead to expensive health problems that all of us end up paying for in the end — through lost productivity to Medicaid to higher insurance premiums to higher charges at a hospital, etc.
But here’s the thing: No one EVER needs to smoke a cigarette, and there is NO safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke (first-hand or second-hand). On the other hand, we all need food, and fattening foods provide things that all people need to some extent — just not to the extent that we want to eat them. You can’t live without carbs. A big hunk of cake, if it suddenly appeared on a desert island where you have no other food, could keep you alive for a few more days. In fact, the reason we have the urge to eat such things is that people who had access to carb-loaded, fatty foods were the ones most likely to survive and reproduce over the many millenia that humans have been on this planet.
People DO need some food, and even junk food is better than no food. (And no one EVER needs a cigarette, however much they may believe they do.) A civilization does need some taxes. It’s absurd to pretend otherwise. The questions are what sort of taxes, levied how, at what levels, etc. — not whether to have taxes.
And p.m. — the important thing about Lindsey Graham criticizing the stimulus bill is that it mainstreams the criticism. It makes it more obvious that there are real problems with it. It’s definitely not an inherently good thing for him not to be “making nice” to Obama. On the contrary, the fact that he HAS been trying to give the new administration its due means he has positioned himself to be more credible when he criticizes — far, far more credible than someone like DeMint, whom you know is going to oppose it just because it’s advanced by Democrats, whether it’s a good idea or not.
Graham’s opposition provokes serious thought; DeMint’s just makes you think, “Yeah, well, he always does that, so let’s move on.”
DeMint has had such credibility himself recently on a different issue, as I wrote about back here. For instance, he sincerely tried to work with the Dems on curbing earmarks. When they betrayed that cause, it positioned DeMint as the honest man on the issue and highlighted the Dems’ insincerity and duplicity on the subject. It left HIM as the sensible person with the message that transcended party, and the Democratic leadership as the porkers (like the Republican leaders they replaced). Now if he had never tried to work with them, but just had always fired off partisan missives attacking Democrats whether they reached out to him or not, he would have been credible only to partisan Republicans who think attacking Democrats for being Democrats constitutes an argument.
Brad,
You still miss my point. What I was showing was that you have your own personal causes that you will not waver on — just like the rest of us do. DeMint and Sanford have a view of government that represents the same view many Americans share. Why should they compromise to agree with a position that they believe is fundamentally wrong?
Which of the issues: abortion, school vouchers, national healthcare are YOU willing to compromise on?
Your Lindsey-love is getting pretty out there. DeMint says the bill is junk and he’s a partisan. Lindsey sees the polls, hears the talk radio, and THEN comes out against it. Typical grandstanding, “shine the spotlight on me”, behavior for him. He’s a poseur.
Brad, I’ll never understand how you could even suggest that any of these people have any credibility on anything.
Once you get over trying to decide which ones are full of crap (hint — just about all of them) and which ones aren’t, you can look at the issue at hand and decide for yourself.
Brad, from my point of view, when Graham is all over the map and beyond explication here and there, it’s politics.
When DeMint maintains the same position day after day, it’s principle.
Simple stuff. One sticks his finger in the wind; the other believes government is the problem, not the solution.
Contrast DeMint, Mr. Anti-Earmark, and Obama, who said yesterday of the Senate bill, “When has Congress ever passed this kind of legislation without an earmark in it?”
Just like Obama wasn’t going to put lobbyists in his administration, his stand against earmarks ended with his first piece of legislation as president.
So much for standing on principle. That $800,000 for that Frisbee golf course is just too politically important.
Pelosi told moderate Democrats who tried to trim the spending that she was not going to cut anything out, because giving everyone everything they wanted was the way to pass this bill quickly.
So far, it isn’t working.
The details came out, the American people howled, and moderates and conservatives got s backbone.
How about getting rid of the Federal Reserve, basing our currency on gold, stop spending money on foreign countries, and bringing ALL of our troops home to SAVE trillions instead of SPENDING EVEN MORE trillions of dollars like the trillions that got us into this mess.
THERE IS NO VALUE behind the dollar now. The Fed can print all the dollars they want–it will just cause more trouble. It really looks like inflation will be hitting hard later this year and further screwing over the retirement funds and bank accounts of regular U.S. citizens.
Oh, and how about the Federal Reserve lending treasuries in exchange for debt? Isn’t that like eating your stomach and intestines to prevent starving to death?
Inflation is a tax.
At least the deadbeats who form the Democrat base would be paying for the deficit spending when they buy a lottery ticket, malt liquor and bag of dope.
A colleague called to my attention a statement DeMint put out today that read in part, “Americans are beginning to realize that government control of our economy isn’t working.”
My colleague said, “HUH??? How could we realize that something isn’t working when it isn’t occurring?”
Yeah, I kinda wondered that myself. I get it that he opposes the stimulus. But it hasn’t happened yet. So help me understand — the government is controlling the economy in what way that it was not also doing in boom times of recent years? Can anyone answer that? I mean, aside from bailing out financial institutions, which would seem to be changing the subject, since the senator’s comment came within the context of the latest unemployment figures, and I had the impression (erroneous, perhaps) that most of those lost jobs were not in the financial sector.
Anyway, here’s his whole statement: “Americans are beginning to realize that government control of our economy isn’t working. Every new ad hoc spending adventure, every new bailout, and every new special interest handout only deepens the recession and delays any hope of recovery. Today’s heartbreaking unemployment report is a lesson to all of us that until we free our economy from the uncertainty of government manipulation, we will continue to suffer lost jobs, shuttered businesses, and shattered hopes.
“Some want to continue the big government policies that have failed to create jobs over the past year and throughout history. They believe tax cuts are the problem, but giving Americans the freedom to keep more of their own money and make more of their own decisions is the only thing that has ever worked.”
I think he’s trying on Obama’s “failed policies of the past” line. But I think it would have more traction if he waited until said policies were actually implemented…
A lot of economists are noticing that many indicators have hit bottom and are on a rapid rise. What’s left of the free market is working its way out of this recession.
Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office issued a study saying this stimulus bill…
1. is not needed because the economy is already in recovery,
2. only creates 1,700,000 jobs at best,
3. costs $700,000 per job created
4. will retard the recovery,
5. will stifle growth in the future due to the huge debt and interest costs.
The CBO is staffed with liberal Democrats, not libertarians.
Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham both risk making S.C. look stupid and backward on the national stage. The problem is not the stimulus package, it’s the massive failure of almost everything in the Republican ideological package.
Even if the economy tanks even more in the next few years, I doubt that the public will be fooled this time. It’s just too painful. They will know who got us into this fix in the first place. With a committed Democrat in the White House, the public will get a good look at what the Republicans have been up to since they conspired with the Supreme Court Republicans to steal the election in the year 2000!
I bought stock in Reynolds Aluminum and making good money on returns. Rich and bud keep increasing the value while others are in the tank. No wonder tin foil is scarce on the grocery store shelves. Rich and bud are using it up for hats with little antennaes so they can keep in touch with the mother ship.
The economy is already recovering.
Let’s just hope this massive spending, with its long-term net tax increases, don’t kill the recovery.
If the economic recovery does survive this socialist meddling, the Democrats will claim they saved the economy.
If this meddling kills the recovery, the Democrats will claim it is because they didn’t tax and spend enough.
My colleague said, “HUH??? How could we realize that something isn’t working when it isn’t occurring?”
Of course it’s occurring. What do you think the Bush bailout package was?
Geez, anything to throw a dart at DeMint of the governor, anyone you don’t like. You should be ashamed of yourself.
My colleague said, “HUH??? How could we realize that something isn’t working when it isn’t occurring?”
Of course it’s occurring. What do you think the Bush bailout package was?
Geez, anything to throw a dart at DeMint or the governor, anyone you don’t like. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Hmmmm… looks like some Pravda-esque revisionism has occurred in the comments section.
Interesting. If Fuzzy Zoeller only had the same capability.
Under Section 803 of the Stimulus Bill, it proposes that funds “shall be for the purpose of modernizing, renovating, and repairing institution of higher education facilities that are primarily used for instruction and research…” The measure states that funds may not be used for the “modernization, renovation, or repair of facilities–(i) used for sectarian instruction, religious worship, or a school or department of divinity; or (ii) in which a substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission.”
Jim DeMint’s bill failed, but he nevertheless tried to spin a clause prohibiting the use of funds for renovating buildings where students engage in religious worship as an “attack” on religion.
“This is a direct attack on students of faith, and I’m outraged Democrats are using an economic stimulus bill to promote discrimination,” said Senator DeMint.
Yet by his own standard of criticism for other aspects of the bill, would including that provision have constituted “stimulus”?
Furthermore, there’s nothing in the bill that actually PROHIBITS the religious students from engaging in their activities. So how is it that not giving a handout for the renovation of religious buildings consist of an “attack”?
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/demint-lends-voice-bogus-controversy-over-stimulus-bill
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/aclj-demands-non-existent-threat-be-stripped-stimulus-bill
78% of Americans now oppose this spending bill.
59% want tax cuts alone.
22% want some spending.
– CBS poll 2/5/2009
5% of this bill goes to roads and bridges.
17% would be spent in 2009
37% would be spent in 2010
46% would be spent in 2011 and 2012
– Congressional Budget Office report 2/5/2009
There is no urgency to pass a bill which does not even spend money immediately.
No one has read this entire bill.
The Senate version was not released until 11:00 pm Saturday night.
78% of Americans now oppose this spending bill.
59% want tax cuts alone.
22% want some spending.
– CBS poll 2/5/2009
5% of this bill goes to roads and bridges.
17% would be spent in 2009
37% would be spent in 2010
46% would be spent in 2011 and 2012
– Congressional Budget Office report 2/5/2009
There is no urgency to pass a bill which does not even spend money immediately.
No one has read this entire bill.
The Senate version was not released until 11:00 pm Saturday night.