The Obama administration and members of congress of both parties are still sparring over the stimulus package as I 
write these words. Now, I’ve mostly heard from Republicans on the topic this week (because I listen to NPR), and they seem determined to characterize everything in the bill that is not a tax cut as “wasteful spending,” as “pork,” etc. Not sure they quite grasp the concept of Keynesian stimulus in this context at least. That’s the general impression I’m getting. They are philosophically welded to tax cuts – specifically, capital gains tax cuts and those that benefit the wealthy disproportionately. That’s all they ever talk about, practically. And though more than a third (now, 42%) of the stim package is just that, they’re still squawking. Their idea of “compromise” is having the other side sign on to their program. Once would hope that’s not going to happen, but with the Democrats, anything is possible (though Obama does seem to be showing a little spine on this issue lately).
Still, it’s a little frustrating to hear almost exclusively from the Republicans on this question… especially when it was their ideas that brought us to this crisis in the first place. I guess it’s back to Clinton rules again, where the opposition sets the agenda and the news media just rolls along with the current. The press is like this enormous beast with a thousand mouths and one eye. It peers through a microscope at one item – like Tom Daschle dropping out – and the mouths all start flapping away. So even though Obama goes on every major news program to talk about the financial crisis, the portion you hear is his response to the Daschle thing. They’re still obsessing about it days later (Jim Lehrer probed David Axelrod about it just Friday night), pausing only to comment on how Obama seems unable to get his message across on the stimulus package. Meanwhile, another 600,000 have lost their jobs.
Of course, this feigned outrage over Keynesian stimulus is just plain absurd. The Republicans practice it all the time, enthusiastically. They brag about it. It’s called the 
military budget. That baby is packed full of all kinds of high ticket items that are utterly useless, but that are nonetheless produced in Congressional districts all across the country. Essential stuff like Virginia-class submarines (about $2 billion a piece), F-22 raptors ($300 million plus a piece), and, of course, everyone’s favorite endless boondoggle, “missile defense”, which really should be named “defense contractor defense”, because it’s the gift that keeps on giving. These great Republican defenders of the public purse vote for these projects time and time again, sluicing billions of dollars into the sink hole that is military procurement, while all other human needs are neglected… including those of our military personnel!
So the next time you see one of these sorry-looking Senators stride up to the rostrum and wave the draft stimulus package around in the air, just think about all those Virginia class submarines we’ll be sending into the Hindu Kush next spring. Your tax dollars hard at work.
luv u,
jp
you… it was HARD. We more or less followed the re-entry instructions Urich found tucked under the navigation console (it was buried in coffee grounds and cigarette butts, but still readable). His angle of descent was a bit too steep, perhaps, and the second-hand Soyuz capsule heated to the traditional 450 degrees Kelvin. That was the first piece of difficulty. The second? No water landings with Russian spacecraft. We were forced to find open ground somewhere within walking distance of our long-term squat at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. (Why walking distance? No cab fare. And it’s not like we’ve got the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln out there trawling for us…. even though we have not one but two Lincolns on board.) 
pinheads, protozoa, large molecules, smaller ones…. then, CRACK! We came to a kind of sudden stop. I think we all lost several inches in height – particularly Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who may have compacted one of his hip-gimbals. (He’ll need to consult with Dr. Macaphee on that, no doubt.) My teeth seem to move around a lot more than they did last week. Oh, and the man-sized tuber has a greater specific gravity than he did before. (Mother… now I know why they call it CRACK.) 
I have to come back there again!) In fact, it took us so bloody long that the local constables beat us to the door. So how, you may ask, were we able to run afoul of the law in such a short time on Earth? Well… our Soyuz capsule is apparently considered hazardous waste… not surprising, since it is chock full of noxious chemical substances and was found lying squashed like a cigarette butt in the middle of a beet field. We should have taken Mitch’s advice and set the freaking thing on fire before we limped off into the sunset. Live and learn.
conservative columnists. He courted, compromised, and curried favor, but never seriously called them out on their incessant whining about insufficient (in their view) tax relief contained within the president’s stimulus plan. Birth control provisions were dropped, tax cuts added. In the end, the stimulus package was far more modest on infrastructure related items than most economists think is demanded by a crisis of this magnitude. (100,000 jobs cut this week alone – good grief!) And yet, when it came to a vote in the House, not one Republican supported it. My first reaction to this news was, well… okay, then can we have the original package back – the one Democrats could have passed two weeks ago? What the hell – the G.O.P. acts like a dog that can’t eat all his food, so he pisses on it. So much for bipartisan good will.
Virginia-class submarines, joint-strike fighters, and missile defense, into useful projects. We should do all this and more, whether Republicans sit on their hands or not.