Jeffery Feldman comments on the status of the town hall meetings being held across the country and the Teabaggers that are arriving to shout them down:
FRAMESHOP: Anodyne Town Halls are the Problem, Not Teabaggers.
Feldman’s solution sounds to me like a fairly typical overreaction, not sage advice of any kind. It’s classic Sean Connery, The Untouchables type of stuff, “What are you prepared to do?”
I actually think that, inside of a week, the Teabaggers will have overplayed their hand, badly. We’ve seen this kind of unhinged behavior before from their ilk: from the shouts of “kill him” at McCain/Palin rallies to the insane ramblings of Orly Taitz to the Hitler/Obama signs at Teabagger rallies. At this point, I very much doubt if anyone paying cursory attention to any of this can possibly tell one nut apart from the other, where indeed the difference is quantifiable.
Just because people are worried about what health care reform might mean for them is no reason to believe that Middle America – in whose hands, to repeat the obvious, the fate of our nation lies – is suddenly in support of the same nuts that they voted against in the 2008 election. Teabaggers are not offering a solution and in fact are actively hurting the cause of whatever “reform” Republicans want.
Once it becomes obvious that the same type of “outrage” present in Texas is present in Iowa, people will figure this out. And they’ve got all month – with no other distracting news – to do it. I actually see the Teabagger/THM Nexus as manna from heaven, if only because it so dilutes the Republican message.
I debated a Conservative friend of mine for a few hours via Twitter about this. Once again, Democrats need to step back on this one and let the Republicans hang themselves.
Because of course, giving the American people their money back and letting them stimulate the economy is precisely what Republicans have always advocated. And in this one case at least, that policy seems to be a rollicking success. Yet the Republicans on the hill and on TV are actively against this program as “wasteful.”
This kind of thing doesn’t just write itself. Kick back and enjoy the show.
OK, so I’m not much on grammar when it comes to the Renn Square Project. But now Duffy’s on-again, off-again support for Renn Square appears to be on-again. And isn’t that lovely? Goodness knows we wouldn’t want to waste an opportunity to throw good money after bad on this misbegotten troglodyte of a project.
Can someone at least tell me what “Renaissance” means in this context? I mean, without any of the theaters?
If the problem with the Stimulus package is that the money’s not going out the door fast enough, perhaps the solution is to give the money to KBR and Bechtel? Anyone even know where that 18 billion went to in Iraq?
I wonder whether the media referring to rightfully pissed off citizens of this country as pitchfork-wielding local hick goons helps or hurts the situation? What’s the upside?
Massa’s got a plan for NY-29’s part of the stimulus package and so far, the construction side of things looks pretty good. He sent out a press release this morning outlining some of the plans, which include repairing the bridge in Perinton on Rt 31 along with a number of others in the various counties of NY-29.
I’d post the actual numbers, but I don’t feel like dealing with tables and anyway, I’m sure Rotten at the 29th will be happy to oblige us all. Hint, hint, there, Rotten. . .
But by county, Monroe County will be receiving $6.26m, Ontario County will be receiving $5.6m and Steuben County will be getting $7.6m. I think the story here is not so much the by-county breakdown, though, as the sheer cost of some of the projects in Steuben County.
There are actually only two projects that make up the entire $7.6m. One of those projects alone, labeled “I86/415 Painted Post,” costs a total of $6.6m including Stimulus money and other moneys combined. I’d be interested in hearing more about this project and what is entailed. 6 million dollars is not an outrageous amount of money for an infrastructure project by any means, but I wonder what is involved.
Late Update: Well, there you go. Rotten’s got all the press releases on his site in one convenient location. The release in question for this post is available for your perusal here.
This is kind of interesting: Eric Massa’s office just announced that he has appointed a member of his staff to be the point man for ensuring transparent spending of the stimulus package in the 26th (erm. That’s the 29th) district. I’m not entirely sure how much impact a junior representative can really have in how the money gets spent, but if he has people monitoring what does get spent in the district, that’s probably a helpful thing in terms of building trust in a district where trust of President Obama is likely relatively low.
“On Tuesday night, President Obama spoke extensively about accountability and transparency in government, and that is exactly why I have appointed Michael Heenan to serve as your District Recovery Director,” said Congressman Eric Massa. “The families of New York’s 29th District deserve transparency and accountability in their government, and by dedicating one of your Congressional staff members to work hand in hand with Governor Paterson’s office, we will achieve just that. Mr. Heenan has proven himself to me and he will prove himself to the families of Western New York.”
Now, the question is: will they be developing some method of reporting these stats online in some sort of database? It might seem redundant at first, but knowing the breakdown of monies spent in the district would be a boon to local reportage.
This is kind of interesting: Eric Massa’s office just announced that he has appointed a member of his staff to be the point man for ensuring transparent spending of the stimulus package in the 26th district. I’m not entirely sure how much impact a junior representative can really have in how the money gets spent, but if he has people monitoring what does get spent in the district, that’s probably a helpful thing in terms of building trust in a district where trust of President Obama is likely relatively low.
“On Tuesday night, President Obama spoke extensively about accountability and transparency in government, and that is exactly why I have appointed Michael Heenan to serve as your District Recovery Director,” said Congressman Eric Massa. “The families of New York’s 29th District deserve transparency and accountability in their government, and by dedicating one of your Congressional staff members to work hand in hand with Governor Paterson’s office, we will achieve just that. Mr. Heenan has proven himself to me and he will prove himself to the families of Western New York.”
Now, the question is: will they be developing some method of reporting these stats to the rest of us? It might seem redundant at first, but knowing the breakdown of monies spent in the district would be a boon to local reportage.
Amazing that they don’t even try to have some sort of balance in their reporting. CNN declares the stimulus package “ripe for fraud, waste and corruption.” How do they know this? Are they aware of some corruption the rest of us don’t know about? They should just come right out and say it in that case.
No one’s claiming that fraud is not a risk with this or any other bill. But it’s funny how billions of dollars slip into a black hole in Iraq but CNN suddenly cares about fraud now.
I know I shouldn’t be to surprised when the news nets let people speak crap without challenge, but I still am. The talk I’m seeing on television this morning centers on the idea that there is an ideological difference between the Republicans who oppose the stimulus package and the Democrats that support it. Obviously, there are many ideological differences between Dems and Republicans.
But this isn’t an ideological difference any more that arguing over the boiling temperature of water is. This is economics 101 and less, since I get it and I’ve never taken an economics class. ((Maybe I’ll pick one up when I go back to college, but that’s hardly the point.)) Basic economics says that you have supply on one side of the equation and you have demand on the other. When one goes away, the other side of the equation must balance out. Right now, demand is vapourizing in the face of a 7.6% unemployment rate which still doesn’t accurately reflect the total number of people who will be laid off based on the announcements of last week. People are scared shitless about their jobs and they should be, because the lack of demand necessarily precipitates a lack of supply which precipitates more layoffs.
And basic economics also says that when the people stop spending the money, the only thing that prevents a depression is the government spending money to compensate. It’s that simple. There’s no ideology in that statement, only time-tested economic theory of the most basic order.
It would be nice if someone in the mainstream media would do us all the favour of pointing that out.
I love Harry Reid. And by “love,” I mean, “want to punch in the face.”
We begin in a position of popular electoral strength and end in Gutless Gulch with Senator Harry Reid now proposing that we cut back the tax cut portion of the bill *as a compromise* to cutting the $100 billion dollars “centrist” Republicans want to cut out of the spending side.
Can we get back to reality, here? “Stimulus” is defined by government spending that replaces slacking spending by the American people for the sake of keeping jobs. We can’t keep cutting stuff out of an already inadequate spending package and hope to possibly stem the tide. We’ve lost a trillion dollars in spending on the consumer side alone, but we’ve got no more than half a trillion in new spending.
Let’s be crystal clear about this: there is no such thing as wasteful spending in a mega-recession!
Some spending that offends the sensibilities of Republicans is fine to remove. I think family counciling is good, but if you want to leave that to Jesus, so be it. But don’t make that an economic issue, because it isn’t.
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