Change?

While campaigning our first African American president promised change, particularly change in the way Washington does business, however, aside from a media event meeting with the Republican leadership things haven't changed all that much from Bush's reign. Osama bin Obama is using the same fear mongering tactic George used to get us into Iraq and push TARP through in order to rush through that big steaming helping of pork called an stimulus package.

The stimulus package, for those of you in foreign lands or glued to NASCAR on TV, is allegedly designed to jump start the economy, provide immediate job relief, and save the working class. It is a 647 page document (so far) that will, with interest because all of this money will have to be borrowed, cost US citizens and their progeny close to 1Trillion dollars. The package was crafted by the Democrats with little or no Republican input, though some tax cuts were added in hoes of luring Republicans across party lines, there has been no analysis of its impact on the economy, and in fact the vote in Congress came so rapidly there is some doubt as to whether any of our erstwhile representatives have had time to even read through the phone book sized package.

Some of the projects due to receive the money are repair of the NASA shuttle buildings, re-sodding the Capitol Mall (which was dropped as of last night), and 450M to study climate change. While studying climate change is a worthy endeavor it is hard to see how it will provide more jobs or trigger consumer spending. Another item was bringing broadband to rural areas - nothing wrong with that, but it will be some time before they'll need ditch diggers to cut the trenches for the cabling, maybe 2012 or so.

While I can understand something needs to be done about our economy quickly, rushing this pork roast through the legislature without thorough analysis isn't the best route. It isn't going to help anyone, except those on the receiving end of the funding from the stimulus package, to pass a piece of crap just so it can be made to appear as though Osama bin Obama has taken steps to alleviate the economic depression we now face.

Repealing NAFTA, withdrawal from the World Trade Organization, and establishment of reciprocal trading agreements in their place would be a good first step. Meanwhile, we have a lot of very bright economists in the US, bring them in to help craft a bi-partisan package (yeah, like that could happen) that will provide jobs now, relief for the working class, and help keep people in their homes. TARP is an abysmal failure with the beneficiaries such as Citibank actually contemplating buying a $41M jet (they finally came out and rejected the idea after the deal came to light). This is a mockery and nothing more.

As I have said before the only thing this election has accomplished is to change which party's hand is in the till.