Baddog, one of GFY's "elder statesmen", speaks truth. See: The Fierce Urgency of Pork. Ironic, ain't it.

It's been up where? Bits and pieces of it have been floating around the last few days, but you make it sound like the whole bill was done and online for people to read while they fixed some typos. Not true!

The truth is they said they would post the FINAL BILL online 48 hours before they voted to give everyone (including us) a chance to read it. That did not happen. The bill was circulated around Congress at sometime between 11pm and midnight. Less than 12 hours before they voted.

Yeah, exactly.

At this point I am starting to think that it's best if our government spends us into oblivion, crashes the dollar and further destroys the economy. Then maybe the apathetic masses will get pissed off enough to do something about it. Maybe then we will see some real "change".

If I'd get paid enough like them, I would have done the same.

Bingo!

What he said.

Here's the actual article:

The Fierce Urgency of Pork

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 6, 2009; A17

"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."

-- President Obama, Feb. 4.

Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.

The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn't what's illegal, but what's legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years.

He'd been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he's not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don't get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence.

At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal's private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he'd come to Washington to upend.

And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.

It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress's own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.

Not just to abolish but to create something new -- a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the "fierce urgency of now" includes $150 million for livestock (and honeybee and farm-raised fish) insurance.

The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports the Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting "planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a new "bonus depreciation" incentive.

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...502766_pf.html

Okay... so what are you doing about it?

I wonder how many stacks of paper he held up with Bush's bills that nobody read and pushed through..


It's funny that nobody read it, yet they seem to know that it's full of earmarks & pork..


Nothin' but a show..

AlienQ, You don't really give a damn about anything unless it involves you pushing your party line....

This is the largest amount of federal government growth in the history of the country and you don't care that even your own party members didn't have time to read it?

You don't care about anything but political parties, do you?


That's a shame.



:2 cents:

I couldn't agree with you more. The GOP can suck it!

Same thing as this EULA agreements with a "I agree" button sitting right there...

I can tell this country is fucked because most of you idiots are still all caught up in the pointless pissing contest that is the two party Republican/Democrat paradigm.

Nothing but a fucking distraction, and unfortunately it works like a charm.

Look at AlienQ, going on and on about the Republicans did this, or the Democrats said this, the Republicans this... the Democrats that. Jesus Christ... Americans divided up against each other on 2 "teams" what a fucking joke. All logic and clear thinking goes out the window because everyone is so busy defending their "team" at all costs.

Pretty sure you know I respect you, but you are completely missing the point. As far as how did they know about the pork, let's talk about the process in terms you can't help but get.

2257. How many revisions did it go through before the final? So, while we did not know how everything would be laid out, there was plenty that we knew would be staying in, no matter what. Same deal.

Top that with the fact that the "change" that was promised included 48 hours for us to see the final before voting.


:thumbsup

:2 cents:

StickyGreen, I just searched through some of your posts. The fact that you reference Obama supporters as "Obamazombies" and make statements like "fuck Pelosi" etc. etc. - I do not think you can be the spokesperson for unity. I was an Independent until I saw what 8 years of insanity could produce. Now I am an "Obamazombie" as you affectionately refer to people like me, because a change of course is clearly required.

Will Obama's presidency fix the country? I don't know - but to think more tax cuts will, after 8 years of proving they won't, is truly crazy. And to be upset that Obama wants to fix roads and bridges, so levys won't break and bridges won't crumble is nutty too. Also, to NOT want to add money to upgrade schools and education, so we can compete in the future, is additionally moronic.

George Bush and his hapless asshats increased the US national debt by nearly $5 Trillion dollars, while degrading our way of life and status as a country worldwide. For Republicans to act all pissed off now, like their plans were so much better, is a fucking joke!

How do you know that is in this bill?