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Stimuli

Kong76 Feb 06 2009 05:52 PM

Reports are that they've a reached tentative agreement just below the 800 billion mark. Everyone go out and buy something this weekend!

John Cougar Lunchbucket Feb 06 2009 05:53 PM

That's just what they want you to do. Don't!

Kong76 Feb 06 2009 06:12 PM

But. But.

DocTee Feb 06 2009 07:36 PM

My wife and I put a bid on a house today. That should float the rest of you deadbeats for a while.

Kong76 Feb 06 2009 07:49 PM

That's exciting, good luck.

DocTee Feb 06 2009 07:56 PM

I'm half-hoping it gets rejected. Nervous times at the DocTee pad.

themetfairy Feb 06 2009 08:03 PM

Best of luck Doc!

Frayed Knot Feb 07 2009 05:06 AM

One 'Bridge to Nowhere' is a disgusting waste of taxpayer money. A thousand bridges to nowhere is a stimulus package.

Edgy DC Feb 07 2009 07:18 AM

You're sexy when you're a wet blanket.

cooby Feb 07 2009 08:50 AM

I bought a pair of jeans the other night. I couldn't wait.

Kong76 Feb 07 2009 11:13 AM

Put your name in them.

metsmarathon Feb 07 2009 12:35 PM

reading through the list of items cut from the stimulus package, there's a few that i don't particularly agree with. basically all those that say 'construction' in the title. school construction, higher education construction, and green federal building construction. construction is the type of thing that needs to be a part of the stimulus. i mean, how do you stimulate an economy - by creating jobs that have ripple effects throughout the economy. and thats what construction jobs do, right? i mean, it looks like a lot of actual crap was stripped out, and i'm certain there's a lot of construction jobs still in there. but that just struck me as odd. maybe there were wonky stipulations on those school construction provisions. who knows. but the fucking thing better damned well work!

Nymr83 Feb 07 2009 02:17 PM

]and thats what construction jobs do, right? not if said construction doesn't even start until 2011-2012 as they had predicted some of these projects would as they aren't even in the later planning stages yet and some probably need environmental studies and other such bureaucratic nonsense that delays and overcosts projects

Kong76 Feb 07 2009 02:39 PM

It's not just environmental and bureaucratic nonsense, gosh you sound like a brainwashed 70 year old frustrated man sometimes. Say you want to build a new Interstate bridge loop exchange with exit changes and stuff. Everything needs to be surveyed, plans drawn up, contracts put out for bid, holes drilled to check what your going to build it on, materials acquired and shipped, decisions made whether it will impact commutation to the point of needing night work, etc. It ain't getting started by June '09. As for the environmental stab you ultra-conservative hose heads like to al- ways bring up ... if the change on the lay of the land adversely affected the new house you just bought by causing your land to erode away from run off of some kind, or your soil not able to grow green grass, or any of a couple of other dozen things that could go wrong you'd be the first in court (or the first in court representing someone if you ever passed the bar) saying that the potential impact should have been examined. Feh.

Willets Point Feb 07 2009 07:28 PM

I have to go on record about how impressed I am that the GOP dug in their heels and refused to go "bipartisan" on the stimulus act, especially the House Republicans who all voted no. I admire politicians who can stick by their values and desires of their constituents, even though I disagree with those values. Kind of makes me think back to ca. 2001-2005 when the Democratic minority (w/ a few exceptions) pretty much rubberstamped everything the Bush Admin/GOP wanted. I wonder what it would have been like if the House Dems had stood up and said that the Patriot Act and Iraq War resolutions are wrong and they wouldn't vote for them. Maybe things wouldn't change much and the legislation would've passed anyway but maybe they may have forced a compromise or least sent a message to other Americans that opposed these things that they weren't alone. Perhaps the country would not be in such bad shape today if they'd only tried to look out for the nation's best interests instead of succumbing to chickenshit pragmatism.

metirish Feb 07 2009 07:32 PM

To have not gone along would have been unpatriotic and "against the troops"......not making excuses for any of them but that period in time was bizarre , not wearing an American lapel Mr Willets? , you must hate this country.

Willets Point Feb 07 2009 07:56 PM

Of course, but these times are crazy times too with the worst economic crisis in 70 years coming down on our head.

Edgy DC Feb 07 2009 08:45 PM

Now that they have even bigger majorities and the White House to boot, they can still gut the Patriot Act. But the new president has supported all the domestic surveillance legislation as a senator and looks to continue to as president. It looks like it'll take the courts to dial that back.

cooby Feb 07 2009 09:03 PM

="Kong76":2bh6cpk7]Put your name in them.[/quote:2bh6cpk7] Nah, I plan to keep track of this pair of pants Nymr83 Feb 08 2009 01:52 AM ="Kong76"]It's not ... sorry if i was unclear, it is not environmental studies per se that bother me, it is the amount of time and money that environmental studies, community meetings, zoning board meetings, and all the other stuff tend to consume that bothers me. part of this is personal experience of very close friends that i've had to watch experience the endless crap before they can actually build ]Kind of makes me think back to ca. 2001-2005 when the Democratic minority (w/ a few exceptions) pretty much rubberstamped everything the Bush Admin/GOP wanted. I wonder what it would have been like if the House Dems had stood up and said that the Patriot Act and Iraq War resolutions are wrong and they wouldn't vote for them the patriot act is "cut and dry" in the sense that support (or not) for it's provisions should depends solely on your values, but i don't think you can say the same about the iraq war, you can hardly blame the senators who voted for it given the "intelligence" that was shared with them that they had no way to know would turn out wrong. Frayed Knot Feb 08 2009 05:04 AM ="Kong76":3om5jhyv]Say you want to build a new Interstate bridge loop exchange with exit changes and stuff. Everything needs to be surveyed, plans drawn up, contracts put out for bid, holes drilled to check what your going to build it on, materials acquired and shipped, decisions made whether it will impact commutation to the point of needing night work, etc. It ain't getting started by June '09.[/quote:3om5jhyv] Which is what makes long-term projects like those not a very good match for a plan whose entire purpose is to stimulate the economy NOW!!!! It's not (speaking for myself anyway) environmental studies that I'm against or even the idea of a stimulus package itself. It's that the project quickly came to represent gov't-as-usual activities where (at least part of) what winds up being funded is either pet projects for in-the-loop pols (hence my snide remark about brides to nowhere) or social engineering schemes (stop-smoking, birth control) which, even if they're good ideas, have little or nothing to do with jump-starting an economy. One argument for better use of the money would be to simply dole it out to states and localities who have 'shovel-ready' projects which need only to begin. Yeah there'll still be waste, fraud, and abuse, but at least the local govts are more accountable to their constituents and the money will get injected in shorter order. Of course that would then mean that the folks in DC would no longer be the ones wielding all the power and we can't have that now can we? After all, who knows best what your community needs; your community or the federal government? Frayed Knot Feb 08 2009 05:12 AM ="Willets Point":5445d7x1] Kind of makes me think back to ca. 2001-2005 when the Democratic minority (w/ a few exceptions) pretty much rubberstamped everything the Bush Admin/GOP wanted. I wonder what it would have been like if the House Dems had stood up and said that the Patriot Act and Iraq War resolutions are wrong and they wouldn't vote for them.[/quote:5445d7x1] One could argue that the reason the current President is president is that he voted against the Iraq war while the Lady-in-Waiting from his party did not, something that gave him the early momentum that her early lead in money, name-recognition, and insider-support couldn't overcome. And maybe that'll even serve as a lesson that standing up and bucking the trend has its rewards. Kong76 Feb 08 2009 05:32 AM these times are crazy times too with the worst economic crisis in 70 years coming down on our head <<< That head looks like it an withstand a lot, Mr. Met will save us! Nymr83 Feb 08 2009 02:19 PM ]One could argue that the reason the current President is president is that he voted against the Iraq war I love the attempt at revisonist history. Obama took office in January 2005, two years after the war in Iraq started. Benjamin Grimm Feb 13 2009 07:29 AM I keep reading about how the economy is "struggling." I think if, instead, we'd start saying that it's "scuffling" then it wouldn't sound so bad and consumer confidence will increase. After all, baseball players stopped "struggling" a few years ago. Why not the economy as well? seawolf17 Feb 13 2009 08:28 AM Hey, let's do what John Hodgman suggested last night on the Daily Show... Emergency Christmas! Edgy DC Feb 13 2009 01:57 PM Passes the House at $787 bills.