Money, Money, Money

You an ABBA fan? Oh well.

I tried to watch the Presidential address last night; I really did. I couldn’t finish for two reasons: 1. Cub was sick to his stomach several times, whether from a virus, hairball, or bad Kitty Chow, I don’t know. (He's fine now, thanks.) 2. When Obama said “only government has the resources to fix this,” I damn near threw up myself.

First of all, only government can create a fuck-up of this magnitude. It's their fault to begin with.

Secondly, government has no resources, folks! Government gets all of its money from us. He very easily could have said “The American people have the resources to fix this.” Instead of the wealth redistribution plan, how about declare the entire country a disaster area and ramp up the no- or low-interest loans for small businesses, or cut the stimulus bill in half and offer to match state-raised funds for projects. Let the people decide what’s important to them, then have the states sell bonds to pay for priorities.

One resource I’ve found interesting/maddening is Stimulus Watch (http://www.stimuluswatch.org/), which identifies individual projects, the number of potential jobs it would create, the cost, and where it’s being spent.

One of their tabs sorts the projects by cost. Of the 50 most expensive projects, three of them (including the most expensive one) are located in Puerto Rico.

What the fuck?

I know Puerto Rico enjoys many of the rights and benefits of being a state without actually being a state, so technically should be included in the Big Prize Giveaway, but come on. $17,500,000,000 for “Energy Efficient Industrial Zones”? $500,000,000 for solar-powered water heaters? In that light, $350,000,000 for a rail system seems kind of reasonable. (Wait. You’re spending more on water heaters than a rail system?) Why are we spending more than $18 billion in tax-confiscated money in an area with less than 4 million people, most of whom don’t pay Federal income taxes? Similarly, these three projects are only estimated to create 2,142 jobs. Can I apply for one of these $8,600,000 jobs?

Just for comparative purposes, there’s a project in Alaska to expand the Anchorage port. It is ready to go immediately, will create 1500 jobs, and will only cost $75,000,000. That just seems a little more reasonable to me; almost the same number of jobs for 1/244th of the cost.

Here’s the other thing that worries me about the “only government” statement: there’s a project for Arizona under the “Most Expensive” tab which has no description and will create zero jobs, yet has $290,000,000 allocated to it. Yeah…that sounds like typical government oversight.
How does one get in on this? Is there an application online I can fill out?

I guarantee you, give me $290 million dollars, I won’t work, either.