Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Stop the Pork Stampede!

Here is a web site that will take you on a tour of the "stimulus" package that is now before the US Senate. Please visit it and look for the "stimulus" projects are requested for your town. See if it is not the most colossal waste of wealth in the history of the planet.

Here in Madison Wisconsin, one of the projects is the repaving of University Avenue, a six lane street that as far as I can see is in perfectly adequate repair already. If the repaving makes any difference at all, it will only mean that people on University Avenue will be driving even faster than before. I think they are already driving too damn fast.

Look at these projects and remind yourself: you will be paying for them, and paying dearly. Given that they are determined not to raise taxes (yet) there are only two ways to enable this stampede of pork. On the one hand, the government may go even further in to debt, a debt that you and your children and grandchildren will pay, and with interest. The only alternative is to inflate the currency, thus taking a bigger and bigger bite out of the value of every dollar you earn. Given that Chinese investors are understandably growing tired of loaning us money, the latter alternative is looking more and more likely.

I urge you to email your senators today, and beg them to reject this disgraceful piece of legislation. The now-discredited TARP was bad enough. It consisted merely in the banking industry using the federal government to rob the rest of us. It made sense, in a criminal sort of way. This plan is a matter of every Tom, Dick, and Harry robbing every Harry, Dick, and Tom -- and themselves. This makes no kind of sense at all.

Oh, and by the way, it won't work.
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On a somewhat lighter note, here is a prediction as to where America will be by Christmas, given the way things are going now. And here are some alternatives to the "stimulus" heist.

And here is Peter Schiff explaining it all:



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Update: For the moment, the stimulus package is stalled in Congress. Let us see what it morphs into next. When I recall that, after TARP stalled momentarily, it turned into the ghastly pork-festooned Christmas Tree from Hell, I am not optimistic.

4 comments:

pappy d said...

Wouldn't the Chinese be upset if we tried to pay off our loans with inflated dollars? They're also holding a lot of dollars right now. Could they dump them if that seemed like a possibility?

Lester Hunt said...

I suppose so. I would suppose that, if these guys, under inflationary pressure, decide to unload their dollars, the results would be another catastrophe. It would also be another catastrophe caused by the government and blamed on some sort of capitalist plot.

pappy d said...

Well, we're both capitalist countries now.

I suspect we'll just keep selling our children into bondage.

Karl Haro von Mogel said...

I got linked over from Chris Hallquist's blog. Actually, if you check out University over where it intersects Whitney Way, you'll see what needs repairing. The innermost lanes have pushed up and buckled during the winter, which will thoroughly shake your martini if you so much as drive 10 mph.

Whether or not it is 'pork' is debatable, considering that it will be putting money into work (and infrastructure is very New Deal). It will keep some construction crews working, and keep the bartenders in business, too!