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$2 Billion For Broadband Cut From Stimulus Bill
pdabbadabba points out a CNN report on changes to the planned economic stimulus bill (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 [PDF]) that will remove the $2 billion allocated to broadband development. The changes also eliminated smaller amounts allocated to NASA, the National Institute for Standards and Technology, and the National Science Foundation. $16 billion in school construction funding was removed, as well as another $3.5 billion for higher education construction. A variety of environmental projects were also cut or reduced (half of the $7 billion set aside for energy-efficient federal buildings, half of the $600 million for hybrid federal vehicles), and over $8 billion in health-related provisions are gone. The bill will likely go to vote in the Senate on Tuesday.
The essence of the Democratic plan is first Marx and then later Keynes, both of whom have been tried and failed for the last 100 years, repeatedly. Democrats would have us believe that if we take a bunch a big pile of money and give it to worthless people, then somehow we will have an economic recovery. What a crock! Yeah, like giving money to a bunch of crackheads in the ghetto or old ladies in mobile homes is going to accomplish anything. It's simply not.
The simple fact of the matter is, if Democrats REALLY wanted to stimulate the economy and distribute money evenly, then why not simply write checks to everyone, like George Bush did. That's Keynes in his purist and simplest form. Instead, we got a few hundred billion for welfare - as if that doesn't have enough money already, and a few billion for building some windmills, and then a few billion of a few things that might actually be useful, but you know that the Dems will never finish any of their projects and will wreck them the same way they have managed to wreck all of the major cities in the USA.
The only way there will be economic recovery is when there are enough layoffs for companies to be profitable. That will jack up the stock market, and from there, there will be capital to re-invest in the economy, ultimately creating more jobs where they are needed. This is actually already happening. Layoffs are coming, the stock market is going up, gradually, and some companies are going to be profitable. Unfortunately, we all know that Democrats will bitch about companies being profitable, and will prolong the recession in the interests of accumulating power, just like those traitors did during the Great Depression.
This is my sig.
Taxcuts for the rich aren't the solution to everything. And I've never seen a taxcut build public infrastructure, which is crumbling all over the country. Of course, GOP would rather sell everything to their buddies at companies like Haliburton so they can then charge tolls and fees in perpetuity-- "taxes" are bad though. Morons. Never mind that the GOP-solution-to-everything tax-cuts haven't worked yet and 8 years is plenty of time to demonstrate the GOP's abject fiscal failure...conversely investment by the Feds has worked before. The facts are something fundamentalist neocons aren't ever going to bother with...for a fundie, they are always right no matter what because they are right. Got it? Circular reasoning, the GOP way.
What's sad about this is that all those monies could come from that 72% of corporations which don't pay any federal taxes by utilizing those "money laundering" processes. Just as the TARP appears to be a last-grab by the Busheviks, so to it appears the bad guys have once again won.