Pork Package

For the next 1,000 years, historians will look back and wonder what happened to this country that its people would turn over the government to greedy socialist pigs like Obama, Reid, and Pelosi, whose farcical "stimulus package" may literally bankrupt our entire society. This gargantuan pile of pork, which only a drooling mental defective could believe would stimulate the economy, represents a 40-year wish list for the ultra-left, which now has control of how our money is spent. The Wall Street Journal is aghast at this demented spending spree:
There's $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There's even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.
How is any of this foolishness going to help end the recession? It's not, obviously. The intention is to prolong and deepen the recession, to justify still more wasteful spending and government expansion. To quote The Anointed One's slimy Chicago sidekick Rahm Emanuel:
Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before.
Infrastructure projects won't help us out of the recession, but at least they are constructive. However, these constitute only a tiny portion of the "stimulus" extravaganza, as do business tax cuts. The WSJ observes that only
about 12 cents of every $1 … is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus.
Billions will be spent on projects that have a negative return on investment, such as politically correct but economically insane alternative energy and mass transit boondoggles. While we're left with the light rail, $600 million will be spent on new cars for bureaucrats. But that's nothing compared to the $7 billion earmarked for "modernizing federal buildings and facilities."
Then there's the $252 billion in "income-transfer payments" — i.e., free money for the essential Democrat constituency, parasites who expect to be paid to do nothing.
"Accountability" is a word Dems have learned to parrot without having a clue what it means. How's this for accountability:
$54 billion will go to federal programs that the Office of Management and Budget or the Government Accountability Office have already criticized as "ineffective" or unable to pass basic financial audits.
Creeping socialism works like a ratchet. Government spending can be raised, but it is almost impossible to lower. Thus this grotesque orgy of unaffordable pork will serve as a baseline budget for all time — or rather, until the entire system collapses into insolvency à la the Soviet Union.