Posted on 12/06/2008 3:11:56 PM PST by EagleUSA
CHICAGO – President-elect Barack Obama said Saturday he wants to revive the economy through a job-creating public works plan on a scale unseen since the building program of the interstate highway system in the 1950s.
He offered no price estimate for the grand plan, how the money might be divided or the effect on the country's financial health at a time of burgeoning deficits.
The ideas were outlined in the weekly radio address the day after the government reported that employers cut 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years. They are part of a vision for a massive economy recovery plan Obama wants Congress to pass and have waiting on his desk when he takes office Jan. 20.
The president-elect's address never once used the word "spend," relying instead on "invest" or "investments," and pledging wise stewardship of taxpayer money in upgrading roads and schools, and making public buildings more energy-efficient.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The burning question in all of this is how will the Congress structure this “plan”?? If Virginia has $1 Billion worth of supposedly “shovel ready” projects set to go, how will they repay this money if it is in the form of loans??
I do not see the Congress agreeing to just hand out cash to States under any circumstances, and especially not in the amounts that are being suggested. In addition, how do the taxpayers know if these projects are truly viable or not?? Normally these projects seek some sort of voter approval, sometimes at several steps along the way. In some cases you have other elected bodies such as City Councils, who meet, discuss and plan these projects long before any finding is approved.
I fear we are about to circumvent the many necessary project controls that have been developed and put into place over the years to help prevent public money from going to the wrong places. If this goes through, I’m convinced we’ll see fraud on a scale like never before. I can see officials rushing to spend this money as fast as they can so it doesn’t get taken away, and there will be little or no cost control or quality control along the way.
We could easily be looking at billions more in bailouts someday of all these new Federal Projects that DelanObama is proposing to fund...
Wondered about those electronic medical records too. You probably can’t see them to make sure there are no mistakes
Reasons why we would not be able to see them:
1. It is above our pay-grade.
2. Those records are sealed.
3. We lack standing.
4. (add your own)
I fear we are about to circumvent the many necessary project controls that have been developed and put into place over the years to help prevent public money from going to the wrong places. If this goes through, I’m convinced we’ll see fraud on a scale like never before. I can see officials rushing to spend this money as fast as they can so it doesn’t get taken away, and there will be little or no cost control or quality control along the way.
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Without any doubt. The crooks of the Congress, the Pelosi/Ried mob, do not give a damn about what you or I think about anything. It is all about power and control, and be damned with America, its citizens, the MONEY OF THE CITIZENS, or anything else that might resemble responsibility and oversight. Welcome of a Congress of radical liberalism that does not care one iota about the consequences of their actions....they have already proven that, as sure as they will dump billions into the BIG 3 to pay the unions back for their votes. Bank on it.
I strongly suggest everybody go get a copy of Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson” (it can be found online) and read the chapter on public works. It will give you good intellectual ammo to explain to people for the next four years on why this is such an awful idea.
As I see it, there are only a small handful of beneficial things the government does. Building infrastructure is one of them. Now this money probably could be used more effectively by the people who actually earned it, but given the government we soon will have, this would be by far one of the best uses for the money. Otherwise, they might decide to just hand it out like in the last “stimulus”, dole it out as welfare to their presumed constituents or worse yet selectively give it out to hard core leftists like ACORN or LaRaza.
In the short term, a WPA II may be unavoidable, but not for significant wages, but just in exchange for housing and food for them and their families. And much like the original WPA (nickname “We Piddle Around”), the practical application will be for them to repair and rebuild a lot of decaying infrastructure projects around the US (many of whom were originally built by the WPA.)
But because international trade is going to be pretty defunct for some years, the US is going to have to rebuild its heavy industry to provide us with what we need. And this will take a lot of pressure off unemployment.
The biggest employer in any modern economy is not big business, however, it is small business. And getting that back on track is going to be hard.
The fastest industry to get back in operation will be agribusiness, because it has been tightly controlled and managed since the Great Depression. This is a good quick source of national income, and because it is sustainable, expenses will be relatively normal.
A major project that Obama can thank George W. Bush for is easing the requirements for federal eminent domain for railroad right of way and highway improvement. If Obama was just to use his unemployed labor corps for just one thing, this should be it, because US railroads need major redevelopment.
While he’s at it, the US air hubs about need to be doubled, with the essential split being between passengers, and cargo—which should have their own hub connected to the railroads and highways.
When are the morons in Washington going to bail out the flippin' taxpayers? We're the ones stuck paying for all this BS. And it is BS - payola for the connected at the expense of the productive Americans trying to EARN their way through life.
A soup kitchen cook has a marketable skill - the "President-elect" does not...
Yep, for all our money they gave them, they should have given it to us to pay off our mortgages and the money would still have gone to the banks.
.....and the guy said “after we hire every unemployed union member in the country, you might to be able to reapply.”
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And a few words says it all — organized extortion. And the Big 3 want us to bail them out of the gross incompetence and union-induced complacency. If the government had any guts and was not running on total politics, they would tell the Big 3 to file for bankruptcy, reorganize and clean out the union extortion and control, and become competitive, profitable businesses. If Obama, et al, just bails them out, nothing will change — except the socialists will be happy that they were able to steal taxpayer dollars for their election vote payback.
This is a spread the wealth proposal and will do nothing to grow the economy. Obama’s going to take our tax money and give it to someone who will stand around leaning against a shovel. Let us keep our money and spend it the way WE want. Let small businesses keep their money and reinvest it to hire more people and grow the economy.
This will be a dismal failure and will just insure that your children and grandchildren are destined to be even more enslaved to the government than they are at present. They care nothing about your children and grandchildren. They look no further than the next election.
“They look no further than the next election.”
Why is something so obvious so hard to understand by some people?
“Bank on it.”
yah...right....
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