Stimulus Package for Mister Mongo

The stimulus package is winding its way through congress. And, like birds returning for spring or the tankers returning to Alaska for oil, I'm getting a lot of conservative spam telling me about the upcoming disaster.

Well.

You can analyze the stimulus bills yourself in this SEA link. Google has the House bill as well here. I find the SEA's more readable and it includes both the House and Senate bills. However, be warned. The SEA spreadsheet in in thousands of dollars and the Google spreadsheet is in dollars.

I noticed a great deal of infrastructure improvements-- but that depends on how you view infrastructure. Some of the conservatives suggest it's only a tiny bit but the rest is "pork barrel". "Pork barrel" includes things like making sure people get the proper A-D converters for their televisions. Note that the converters are only for broadcast television-- something that is used the most by rural communities. Cable penetration in urban and even suburban communities is quite high. If I were living on a farm in Wyoming or Alabama, I might think twice about the GOP keeping me from my reality shows.

Other pork barrel projects include actually repairing buildings in the national parks, roads and bridges and upgrading the national grid.

I live in Massachusetts and from 1991 - 2006 to we had Republican governors who were quite happily using their line item veto superpowers to leave our infrastructure to rot. There's a bridge over route 128 that was struck by a truck. Cracked the bridge. The "temporary" solution was to slap a 8 foot thick, sixty foot long steel girder over the sidewalk on one side and bolt it to the bridge. The accident happened in 1986 under a Democratic governor. But the repairs have been vetoed ever since.

I've decided the girder is a splint. They're waiting for the bridge to heal.

If you delay infrastructure repair you must take the blame when it has to be done.
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Less Science in Senate Package
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