So many people are up in arms about the 165 million dollar bonuses promised to AIG execs. In the MSM, I’ve heard such comments as, “It’s not fair!” and, “Why should we reward failure?”

Why indeed?

Maybe politicians should have actually read the policies and contracts in place when they decided to hand over $170,000,000,000 in tax payer funds. That’s money out of our paychecks. Even if you’re part of the 40% or so of working Americans that don’t pay income taxes, it’s money out of your boss’s paycheck, and guess what? That’s less money he has to pay you. Don’t be bitter if you don’t get that raise this year, just be thankful that you still have a job.

Now that the deed is done, pay the AIG people the money that was promised them. Let it be a lesson. Next time, please read the fine print. And the lesson for you, John and Jane America? In 2010, let’s vote some people into office that actual care about us “little people” just trying to make a living, ok?

I know that there are a lot of folks out there who’ve been saying, ‘Oh, this is pork, and this is money that’s going to be wasted,’ and et cetera, et cetera. Understand, this bill does not have a single earmark in it, which is unprecedented for a bill of this size. … There aren’t individual pork projects that members of Congress are putting into this bill. -President Obama, February 10, 2009.

Really, Mr. President? No pork in the stimulus? Well then, how do you define some of the ludicrous expenses tucked in this behemoth of a bill?

Some left-wing pet projects included in spending frenzy
-$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
-$380 million in the Senate bill for the Women, Infants and Children program
-$300 million for grants to combat violence against women
-$2 billion for federal child-care block grants
-$6 billion for university building projects
-$15 billion for boosting Pell Grant college scholarships
-$4 billion for job-training programs, including $1.2 billion for “youths” up to the age of 24
-$1 billion for community-development block grants
-$4.2 billion for “neighborhood stabilization activities”
-$650 million for digital-TV coupons; $90 million to educate “vulnerable populations”

Laudable goals? Maybe. Goals that should, in this citizen’s opinion, be achieved through charity and not government, but either way you look at it, none of these items will do much to stimulate the economy. By the way, ACORN will be eligible to apply for and receive a good portion of this money. If there ever really is any transparency, as the Prez has promised, I’m sure we will see millions, if not billions go to voter fraud. I have a feeling that that transparency is going to be rather opaque.

Some items that will benefit Washington D.C. infrastructure
-$150 million for the Smithsonian
-$34 million to renovate the Department of Commerce headquarters
-$500 million for improvement projects for National Institutes of Health facilities
-$44 million for repairs to Department of Agriculture headquarters
-$350 million for Agriculture Department computers
-$88 million to help move the Public Health Service into a new building
-$448 million for constructing a new Homeland Security Department headquarters
-$600 million to convert the federal auto fleet to hybrids
-$450 million for NASA (carve-out for “climate-research missions”)
-$600 million for NOAA (carve-out for “climate modeling”)
-$1 billion for the Census Bureau

Is our capital falling down? This list sure makes it seems so! New buildings for everyone! Ooh, and new cars too! Let’s get those cute trendy little Priuses! And, after you drive your new car to your new work building, go ahead and sit down at your new computer!

Seriously? How is bankrupting my children so that government employees can have nice things going to stimulate our economy?

Here are few other wealth redistribution goodies
-$89 billion for Medicaid
-$30 billion for COBRA insurance extension
-$36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits
-$20 billion for food stamps

Now I’m really stumped. Anyone want to explain to me how providing extra free stuff (health care, food, and just plain cash) for the unemployed is going to encourage them to get a job?

Even more random spending
-$4.5 billion for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
-$850 million for Amtrak
-$87 million for a polar icebreaking ship
-$1.7 billion for the National Park System
-$55 million for Historic Preservation Fund
-$7.6 billion for “rural community advancement programs”
-$150 million for agricultural-commodity purchases
-$150 million for “producers of livestock, honeybees, and farm-raised fish”

Amtrak is getting a cut of this? Do you know when the last time Amtrak produced a profit was? Decades ago! I wish I could suck at my job and still get paid! Must be nice. Hmmm, maybe the $850,000,000 for money-pit Amtrak was thrown in because Joe Biden’s son Hunter sits on the board? Say it together boys and girls- nepotism!

And speaking of ridiculous expenditures, why exactly are we spending money on a polar icebreaking ship? Haven’t the dems been saying for years that the ice caps are melting?

Speaking of ice, the above bullet points are just the tip of the iceberg on this $838 billion dollar package meant to stimulate our economy by proving jobs to out of work Americans.

I believe Shakespeare said it best through Juliet;

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.”

Only this stimulus is not even close to Romeo of dear perfection. It is pork. Let’s call it like it is, okey dokey? After all, President Obama, you were the one that called for a new era of responsibility and transparency.

Even though the Stimulus passed the House yesterday, we still have something to celebrate. Every House Republican voted NO to the stimulus, and we got 11 Democrats as well!

Way to grow some, GOP! Let’s keep it up.

We still have time to call our Reps and let them know how we feel about the bogus stimulus package! Click Me

Even if you’re sure your Representative opposes it, call anyway and show your support so that they may stand strong and not be swayed by the Chicken Littles insisting that they *reach across the aisle*. The sky is not falling, and this package is certainly not an umbrella.

Last Fall, Citigroup received $45 billion of the tax-payer funded bailout. Since being bailed out, Citigroup has laid off 75,000 workers, but they have managed to plunk down $50 million for a new FRENCH made luxury private jet. Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen. Keep it from happening again; this stimulus has no more oversight than the last one.

Call right now, it takes less than 3 minutes!

What’s the best way to stimulate the economy? Infuse it with much-needed new cash by providing across-the-board tax cuts for ALL taxpayers, reducing the corporate tax rate of 35 percent, the second highest in the world, to 25 percent or less, and keeping or reducing the capital gains tax rate of 15 percent. After all who do you trust to spend your tax money…politicians and bureaucrats or you? -Libby Wright (http://swineline.org/2009/01/27/melt-the-phones/)

Last June, then Senator Obama gave a moving speech as he accepted the bid for the Democratic Presidential Nominee. In that speech, he gave hope to millions by saying, “Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless…this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal…this was the moment when we ended a war, and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.”

Throughout his campaign, Obama drew massive crowds of people hungering for change, moved Oprah to tears, and sent tingles down Chris Matthew’s leg. He eloquently read the teleprompter, promising a better way of life for America. A life with free health care, low unemployment, clean green energy, an end to the war in Iraq, affordable housing and higher education, and lower taxes for 95% of Americans, just to name a few. No wonder so many people voted for him! I would’ve too, if I had taken him at his word and not questioned his success rate in his career so far, studied how he planned to implement those goals, or looked at history to see if such implementation had been successful in the past. The only thing Obama has been successful in is getting elected. He planned to improve American life by expanding government involvement and spending, and taxing the rich to pay the poor. FDR’s New Deal, which was a tremendous expansion in government, has now been proven to have prolonged the Great Depression by as much as 10 years.

I don’t blame those who fell for Obama’s seductive promises. My great grandmother used to say alluring lies fall sweetly on the ears. Everyone wants to live in an ideal society. I consider myself a pragmatist in knowing that an ideal society is not possible on this Earth; that utopia is reserved for Heaven. During his two year campaign for President, Barack Obama promised that utopia could be here and now.

Today, Senator Obama is now President Obama, elected by American people like Peggy the Moocher, who famously declared, “I never thought this day would ever happen. I won’t have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won’t have to worry about paying my mortgage. You know. If I help [Obama], he’s gonna help me.”

Now is the time for Obama to make good on his promises, to keep his word to America, to restore our image as the “last, best hope on Earth.” To bring our troops home, to end our dependence on foreign oil, to provide jobs with decent wages, free health care and respectable retirements to all Americans…and to get a puppy for his daughters.

Since his monumental election November 4th, Obama has, in almost every public appearance, felt the need to remind his adoring public of the difficult times we are facing as a nation, and of the long, hard journey that lies ahead of us. It is a very different tune from the one he sang when he was courting the public for their votes, when he was full of hopeful and beautiful rhetoric about the change he was going to bring about in the country.

In his inaugural speech this morning, Obama again reminded us that, “we are in the midst of crisis,” and that “our economy is badly weakened.” And then he broke his campaign promise of growing a government that would assume responsibility for the health and welfare of its citizens, and laid that responsibility upon the people. He stated, “For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.”

Interesting. He almost sounds like a conservative with that attitude of encouraging citizens to help one another rather than relying on government assistance. I for one am happy that he seems to be breaking his pie-in-the-sky promises of a government that can do everything short of wiping tushies for Mr. and Mrs. America, but I wonder how his scores of admirers feel about his new song.

Well, at least one promise will be kept. The First Family is now accepting applications for First Dog. Ok, not really. But it would be funny if they were.