The Tree of Liberty...

After I spent so much time ranting about how the new "stimulus" bill had been pushed through Congress in less than 24 hours, it proceeded to loiter on President Obama's desk for two more days doing nothing but collecting dust. For those two days all the major news channels constantly had experts, politicians, economists, and seemingly whoever wanted to talk about the bill on air debating, nitpicking, praising, or complaining about it. This would have been great and informative if we would have gotten all the information BEFORE the bill was passed by our legislative branch, but instead it happened afterwards. Why? Because there was no time to read the bill before it was passed, let alone discuss or debate it, so they had to do it after the fact. Again, after the bill was passed so swiftly, why did it wait so long to be signed into law? I have three reasons, and they are purely opinion, but there are many who share my sentiment on the subject and I implore you to decide for yourself. Reason one, Obama wanted to sign it on a day where he would have good press. He wouldn’t want to sign it on a three day weekend with slow press and people on vacation. No, he wanted to sign it on Tuesday when everyone went back to work (well, those who were still employed) and was actually paying attention to the news. Then the American people would see his vision of, “change.” Reason two, Nancy Pelosi wanted to get to Italy. Yup, right after the bill was signed she took off (on her private jet) for an eleven day trip to Italy, and she couldn’t miss that now could she. On a side note the largest owner of private jets in the world is the US government. Reason three, democrats Congress didn’t actually want anyone to read what the bill actually contained. Since they pushed their message of bipartisanship and working together to fix this, and then they didn’t include any republican ideas in the bill. I believe that even they think this huge spending bill is as pointless as the preceding “stimulus” packages, but they all saw it as a huge opportunity to get money for their pork projects. I think this because they continually say obvious things about this package and the American economy to cover all their bases. First they said this would create millions or jobs, now it will create or save millions of jobs, and probably not until 2010. Things like, “it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” or, “this is not an instant fix, it will take time.” It is the American economy, it won’t fail, and of course it is going to get better with time! It is that way because there are still people out there that believe in hard work. Those people are the small business owners of America, and they employ over three quarters of the American workforce, but somehow they barely got any tax breaks or anything for that matter in this stimulus. Business tax provisions were cut from $67 billion to $4 billion. Who is getting the tax breaks and the bailout? The unemployed and the automakers. The automakers like GM who just keep asking for more, but even after the billions we have given them, their restructure plan they came out with today still calls for them to close five plants and cut 47,000 jobs. About 15,000 of which will be white collar jobs, but those white collar workers aren’t part of the Autoworkers Union and won’t get all the benefits the blue collar workers get under their agreement with GM which is what put them in this huge hole in the first place. Once times got bad the big automakers couldn’t keep up with all their retirement payments and benefits packages. The bailout is so bad, even the American Socialist (two words that should NEVER go together) Party doesn’t support it! California could restructure its budget, or get rid of its teachers unions or build new prisons with their bailout money instead of just letting prisoners go, but instead they will just release convicts, continue to run a deficit, and have a poor education system. All so they can build a train from Disneyland to Las Vegas, save a field mouse species, and keep their borders open so they can waste 5-10 billion dollars a year on illegal immigrants. It is like the lawmakers all played rock paper scissors to decide which projects would go into this bill, and everyone with the good ideas lost. California also sent out IOU’s today instead of tax refunds that everyone was expecting back. You give the government an interest free loan, and they send you back an IOU. If you did this with your taxes they would hit you with late fees or interest, so shouldn’t these people getting IOU’s get interest from the government? That is assuming they get paid at all and in these economic times it is like adding insult to injury. This situation is the same in Kansas and other states will surely follow. This is just foreshadowing of the, “generational theft,” that is occurring right now. That term, so eloquently stated by Sen. John McCain, refers to the borrowed money and interest that my generation and most likely my children’s generation will have to pay, and that is just not acceptable to me. We get $8 more a week now, they get trillions of dollars worth of debt later. The inept government shows itself in many ways, a treasury secretary that can’t pay his taxes, a head of the Department of Education who used to be the chief of education in Chicago (by far the worst education system and schools in the country), and the continual neglect of promises to the American people. After this particularly long rant I will leave you with a few quotes to hopefully provoke your thoughts.

*I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
*The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
*A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
- Thomas Jefferson

*Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them
*Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.
*Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.
- Ronald Reagan

and last but certainly not least.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
- Thomas Jefferson