Thursday, January 29, 2009

Two weeks in...



He is being extremely diplomatic with the Arabs and exteremly cold with his political opposition. I don't see how this helps the country. 

Also he said he wouldn't pass a stimulous package full of pork. Which has now been approved in Congress and I hope he would veto. 

** Update: The first piece of legislation President Barack Obama's signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act which nullifies an anti-labor 2007 Supreme Court decision by giving workers more time to file pay discrimination lawsuits.

** Update: Obama did ditch the contraception stimulus. Credit to him.  

Can one of the Obama supporters back him up? I'm at a loss here. 

8 comments:

  1. So where's the pork? I see a whole lot of projects that will invest in American infrastructure, safety, and research that will be implemented by American workers. Isn't that the point? To create jobs and invest in America?

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  2. Where's the pork. hahaha, jackass. That doesn't even deserve a response.

    BTW Mahmoud is almost as R-tarded as Obama.

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  3. Yeah, Koj, seriously, every journalist, every news outlet, every newspaper and website, both liberal and conservative are under the full understanding that this package contains a lot of pork. Sure, you can probably talk about it in different extremes, but it has a lot of crap in it.

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  4. Since you asked:

    - Only $26 billion will be spent this fiscal year.
    - Only 38% will be spent in 2 years
    - $30billion for highways (i'm totally fine with that)
    - $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
    - $200 million for AmericaCorps
    - $800 million for Amtrack
    - $150 for the Simthsonian
    - $400 million for NASA climate change research
    - $10 million for Acorn
    - $1 billion for fuel subsidies
    - $15 billion for Pell Grants
    • $ 87 billion Medicaid aid to states
    • $ 79 billion school districts/public colleges to prevent cutbacks
    • $ 54 billion to encourage energy production from renewable sources
    • $ 41 billion for additional school funding ($14 billion for school modernizations and repairs, $13 billion for Title I, $13 billion for IDEA special education funding, $1 billion for education technology)
    • $ 24 billion for "health information technology to prevent medical mistakes, provide better care to patients and introduce cost-saving efficiencies" and "to provide for preventative care and to evaluate the most effective healthcare treatments."
    • $ 16 billion for science/technology ($10 billion for science facilities, research, and instrumentation; $6 billion to expand broadband to rural areas)
    • $ 6 billion for the ambiguous "higher education modernization."
    $32 billion: Funding for "smart electricity grid" to reduce waste
    $16 billion: Renewable energy tax cuts and a tax credit for research and development on energy-related work, and a multiyear extension of renewable energy production tax credit
    $6 billion: Funding to weatherize modest-income homes
    $6 billion: High-speed Internet access for rural and underserved areas
    $39 billion: Subsidies to health insurance for unemployed; providing coverage through Medicaid
    $87 billion: Help to states with Medicaid
    $20 billion: Modernization of health-information technology systems
    $4.1 billion: Preventative care
    $20 billion to increase the food stamp benefit by over 13% in order to help defray rising food costs.

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  5. mmmmm... Pork chops taste good. Bacon tastes good.

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  6. So a few of those are obviously handouts, but a vast majority will create jobs. Just because it's not all going to roads doesn't make it pork. Not everyone can be a construction worker.

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  7. Most of those inflate existing government sponsored programs.

    And a lot of them are poorly defined.

    And a lot of them aren't going to be implemented for many years.

    The worst thing about it is that it seems very sporadic... there is no vision to this. Its very hodgepodge and it didn't have bi-partisan support. Barack dissing Republicans and Rush leading up to a vote probably didn't help his case. Saying "I won" therefor I get what I want, is not the way to build alliances.

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  8. I'm glad Republicans resisted this. Obama tried to get them on board even though he didn't need them, because he wanted to be able to share the blame when this porkulus doesn't do jack shit for us.

    This will stimulate something in a few years: Inflation

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