27 thoughts on “ACORN Pigs At The Trough”

  3. Chris again demonstrates the lack of perception of the left… but is it a lack of perception or willful intent to deceive?

    Chris, would you care to tell us… are you evil or just stupid?

  4. ken anthony – are you evil or just stupid? ACORN doesn’t exist, and we have all kinds of infrastructure problems from decades of deferred maintenance. With interest rates on T-bills at record lows, why wouldn’t we borrow money to fix these problems?

  5. ACORN doesn’t exist

    The name has been changed (mutiple times) but it certainly does still exist.

    why wouldn’t we borrow money to fix these problems?

    Are they shovel ready?

  6. Are they shovel-ready – the first one listed is. But who cares? The work needs to be done. Do you wait until the construction guy pulls into your house to get financing for the remodeling job?

  8. Chris: if the bridge is “shovel ready” and such a problem, why hasn’t it been fixed already with the first $800 billion that was appropriated for “shovel ready” projects?

  9. Do you wait until the construction guy pulls into your house to get financing for the remodeling job?

    Of course not. I get the loan when my wife starts bitching at me that I’m playing too much golf, and I feel the need to appear as if I’m doing something.

  10. Do you wait until the construction guy pulls into your house to get financing for the remodeling job?

    Apparently in the Obama administration, you first* piss away half a billion on a failing solar panel company in a blue state before you look for failing bridges in a red state. And why do we need an automobile bridge repaired, when we can have (say it with me now): HIGH SPEED RAIL!

    *Kevin does make a good point about the first stimulus

  11. The problem with stimulus packages is that they’re temporary, and are thus incapable of encouraging long-term growth. This assumes that the funds go primarily to non-entrepreneurs. The stimulus feeds the new project, and once the new project is done economic activity goes back to pre-stimulus levels.

    Long-term growth will be encouraged by reductions in long-term business operating expenses, starting with the new ones imposed by Obama.

  12. The stimulus feeds the new project, and once the new project is done economic activity goes back to pre-stimulus levels.

    Going back to pre-stimulus levels would now be a better scenario.

  13. Chris, the crumbling bridge connects Ohio (and thus Michigan, etc) to Kentucky (and thus Florida). It’s only importance is allowing the Ohio Navy to get to Kentucky lakes and to make it easier for folks to flee blue states (which they’ve been doing in droves).

    The bridge in Louisville only connects to Indiana, which isn’t even a state according to Wikipedia’s current classification of states as red, blue, or purple. It did vote for Obama in 2008, making it a blue state, but somehow even that couldn’t preserve its status. So essentially we have another bridge to nowhere and Obama wants to blow federal money on it.

  15. ken anthony – are you evil or just stupid? ACORN doesn’t exist, and we have all kinds of infrastructure problems from decades of deferred maintenance. With interest rates on T-bills at record lows, why wouldn’t we borrow money to fix these problems?

    Wow, Chris maybe you should let up on the keyboard until you can think clearly again.

    For me, the answer is obvious. The US government should borrow that money and cut me a check for $200 billion. It’ll cover my modest needs and we’ll still have enough left over for whatever stuff it’s supposed to stimulate.

  18. Hal, the people of Indiana owe you a debt that can never be repaid. You should get a major building named after you, or at least a statue in their capitol rotunda.

    Apparently statehood can either be restored by an act of Congress after twenty years of backroom deals, millions in campaign contributions, and a political bloodbath, or by a private sector guy on the Internet in about an hour.

    So while Chris enters his fourth year of waiting for Obama to get a single freakin’ bridge fixed even with the power of the US federal government behind him, you’ve restored an entire state to its rightful place in the Union while surfing the web in your off hours.

    It’s yet more proof that the private sector is vastly more efficient.

  19. Chris, I have another insulting question for you. One of the purported reasons for these numerous stimulus packages is to create or even save jobs. So how many dollars should be spent per job created or saved?

  20. Stimulus I and Stimulus X never really put that much money to infrastructure repair. Even if they did, it is hard to think that the vast majority of the unemployed have the skills to build bridges. Why does Obama think that the unemployed or the poor can only work construction? And why does he think that construction work takes no skill?

    ***

    TARP has been spent and paid back. The Stimulus I was spent years ago, so why is the deficit still over $1t a year? What exactly is all that money being spent on? Afghanistan and Iraq come no where near $1t a year.

  21. Karl: Unemployment is highest in the construction sector – all those real estate projects getting cancelled. Also, construction needs raw materials, which come from other companies. The bottom line is that leaving 1 in 10 Americans out of work is a bad idea, regardless of the cost.

    Wodun: We’re in deficit because GDP is down and we cut taxes too much. Here’s another dirty little secret – we spent vast sums of money from the 1930s to the 1960s building infrastucture. Much of what we built is worn out or functionally obsolete. We could easily absorb several more stimulus bills just fixing those issues.

  23. The bottom line is that leaving 1 in 10 Americans out of work is a bad idea, regardless of the cost.

    That’s your answer? “It doesn’t matter”? One million dollars per job created would be OK? 10 mil?

    You have clearly said bye-bye to reality.

  24. Chris, building a road or bridge doesn’t overlap much with building houses. Carpenters, electricians, plumbers, roofers, drywallers, and the like have little to do with making or repairing reinforced concrete bridge sections or pouring pavement. Fuzzy thinking like that is one reason Soviet style command economies produced such pathetic results from bizarre initiatives dictated in the 5-year plan.

    As I’ve argued before, roads and bridges are also a woefully obsolete way of boosting our economy, one that won’t have much of an impact. When we built the first railroads the boost to trade and business was dramatic, as a slow slog on a horse-drawn cart was replaced with rapid, long-range, high-volume transport. Then came cars and the first paved roads, spreading the branches of rapid commercial traffic, the ability to get to and from work over greater distances, the creation of suburbs, tourism, and the like.

    So js there some city or town that isn’t connected up yet, some cluster of people who can’t fully interact with the rest of us? Unlike the early infrastructure spending, this new round will have little or no secondary and tertiary boost to our economy.

    What we built early on was vital, like getting a waterline and electric line run to your house, transforming your life for the better by freeing up several hours of your day, with secondary appliance purchases boosting the rest of the economy. What Obama’s doing now is like adding a third waterline, another electric feed, and trying to convince us that we need a second driveway, thinking it will boost our economy just like the first waterline we installed. It won’t.

    He would do just as well having this money aimed at building giant statues of himself, which would employ just as many people, use just as much concrete and steel, and more directly reflect the true goal of the spending.

  25. Unlike the early infrastructure spending, this new round will have little or no secondary and tertiary boost to our economy.

    Well stated.

  26. “Wodun: We’re in deficit because GDP is down and we cut taxes too much. Here’s another dirty little secret – we spent vast sums of money from the 1930s to the 1960s building infrastucture. Much of what we built is worn out or functionally obsolete. We could easily absorb several more stimulus bills just fixing those issues.”

    We are in a deficit because spending keeps going up.

    How much of the last stimulus went to infrastructure? Not much.

    How much of the new stimulus will go toward infrastructure? Who knows because the bill hasn’t been written yet but pass the bill now now now.

  27. We’re in deficit because…

    We spend more than we take in. That’s it. The one place where static thinking actually applies and you don’t use it.

    regardless of the cost

    Yeah, that’s the liberal school of economics in a nutshell. This is pegging the idiot meter.

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