As Obama bails out AIG and Citicorp and probably all the automobile companies, we are still not sure where the new jobs will come from… or if they will come at all. We wait to see the massive hirings to fix bridges and highways or the “shovel ready” projects from the states get started.
Yes, It’s been about a month and only a couple of weeks with the legislation in place. However, saving AIG seems to be much more important than employment, and maybe it is.
When the Omnibus Spending Bill (H.R. 1105) passed in the House by 245-178, was anyone upset that it was filled with earmarks? This after Obama’s team went to great lengths to avoid earmarks in the Stimulus Bill.
As Down With Tyranny pointed out this morning:
Pathetically, Democrats are defending earmarks by pointing out Republicans– who American voters already detest for being corrupt– do it too. Yes, they do; and that’s part of why they were kicked out of office. Disgracefully, Hoyer distributed a handout yesterday claiming “You can’t spell ‘earmark’ without an ‘R,'” which stated that 40% of the earmark dollars included in the omnibus spending bill were put there by Republicans.
Geez! Doesn’t that mean that 60% are put there by Democrats?
I know I have low personal feelings for Steny Hoyer who made that statement (and he used to be my Congressman when I lived in Greenbelt! One of the reasons it doesn’t hurt to not live there anymore), but all Democrats should be down on this crap.
When is Feingold’s bill to end earmarks going to go through?
If you take a look at this article in the Daily Mail it will raise some questions which ought to be considered, especially by those of us currently working in education:
Social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users, an eminent scientist has warned.
Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo are said to shorten attention spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centred.
The claims from neuroscientist Susan Greenfield will make disturbing reading for the millions whose social lives depend on logging on to their favourite websites each day.
Noting that there was going to be a “special” Academy Award given to Jerry Lewis tonite for years of humanitarian service Chairning the National Muscular Dystrophy Society (decades of telethons!), I started reading articles and found several that mentioned his “lost film”, “The Day The Clown Cried.” This was his Holocaust movie shot in 1971 in Sweden, primarily, and never finished beyond rough cut.
It has been a year since Ed Markey pushed this:
Now it’s time to see where we are today.
Well, for one thing, Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (My Senator from West Virginia) last week established a subcommittee on Communications & Technology, which would have a transparent, neutral net as its goal. Best of all, he made Sen. John Kerry (D – MA) the Chairman. Kerry has no love for the attempts by Comcast, AT&T and other corporate media giants in taking over the Internet.
This from Broadcasting & Cable:
Kerry is on the record as critical of the demise of the FCC’s fairness doctrine, calling that demise one of the “most profound changes in the balance of the media,” in a 2007 radio interview, adding that conservatives have been able to “squeeze down and squeeze out opinion of opposing views. I think it has been a very important transition in the imbalance of our public dialog.”
He also has been critical of media consolidation and pushed the FCC to allow unlicensed devices in TV white spaces, something broadcasters fought hard against.
Kerry teamed with then-Senator Barack Obama to try and block the FCC’s relaxation of the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership ban.
Kerry is also a fan of codifying network neutrality principles, something cable and phone networks would prefer evolved along with their industry.
We’ll all be watching to see what happens.
So only 3 Republicans voted for the Stimulus in Congress. That doesn’t mean they don’t want money from it sent to their states.
Here is Specter on the passage of the Stimulus Bill:
“When I came back to the cloak room after coming to the agreement a week ago today, one of my colleagues said, ‘Arlen, I’m proud of you.’ My Republican colleague said, ‘Arlen, I’m proud of you.’ I said, ‘Are you going to vote with me?’ And he said, ‘No, I might have a primary.’ And I said, ‘Well, you know very well I’m going to have a primary.’
…
“I think there are a lot of people in the Republican caucus who are glad to see this action taken without their fingerprints, without their participation.
…
(When asked how many of his Republican colleagues really supported the bill:)
“I think a sizable number. I think a good part of the caucus agrees with the person I quoted, but I wouldn’t want to begin to speculate on numbers.”
Hmmmm.
Sooner or later they’ll either get bipartisan or be gone altogether.
I just heard Representative David Dreier, Republican of California and Ranking Member of the House Rules Committee, say that the $50 Million in the Stimulus Bill allotted to the National Endowment for the Arts was “not stimulative.”
I have to take issue here, and, as an example, I will point to my little village of Shepherdstown, West Virginia (at the last census with a population of 800). We’re about an hour and a half from Washington DC or an hour from Baltimore, and our local Shepherd University is the home of a wonderful arts event, The Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) which will enter its nineteenth season this year.
This from Balloon Juice:
I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.
We need to overcome the 60 Vote problem in the Senate, get the rest of the Democrats behind Obama, and let the Republikites go to Hell.
I’ve been watching these debates in the Senate for three days and I’m very disappointed by the way the Stimulus Bill is turning out. As it stands now they have put 42% of the Bill as TAX CUTS…. and tax cuts don’t stimulate a thing!
Because of the 60 vote minimum needed to pass this thing in the Senate, Democrats have let Republicans re-insert the very things that caused the economy to dive into the pits over the last eight years… TAX CUTS!
This is a STIMULUS BILL! That means we have to SPEND MONEY that will go into the economy and be re-spent two or three times. It has to be money spent to make people BUY THINGS!
As I sit watching the Senate (and, unfortunately right now, Holy Joe Lieberman) debate the amendments to the Stimulus Bill on C-Span 2, I spend most of the “quorum calls” toodleing around the net looking at recent events and searching for job openings in any of the fields that I’m capable of (I lose my adjunct teaching position in June and I’ve got to find something, at least part-time, to take its place.) One of the things that stands out in recent events is the issue raised by Michael Phelps photographed smoking pot with a bong.
