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Read Stimulus Bill (to Obama Dems) in a year

By: Mike gamecock DeVine (Diary)  |  February 18th, 2009 at 01:09 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Yesterday in Denver, President Barack Obama signed the much ballyhooed 1079-page government-growth-ulus bill that neither he nor Congress had time to read before enacting it into law.

As one of their We the People bosses, Gamecock suggests a group reading on the order of the “reading the Bible through in a year” programs or public library book clubs. For instance, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library is in the middle of a community read of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” just now.

Would that all that needed to be killed in this alleged economic “stimulus” bill were a single bird.

The bill more resembles a pig giving the American people the finger. Most of the negative publicity for portions of the bill that Republican opposers revealed has been pork, but this War and Peace length tome contains many more significant plot twists and turns than mere Bar-be-que fodder.

In order to read the bill through before New Year’s Day 2010, beginning on Monday, February 23, 2009 we would have to read only 24 pages per week. I would suggest that one read five pages per day on weekdays and spare yourselves the torture of possible ruined weekends.

To compare the burden to Bible readings, my KJV version of Holy Scripture is 1291 pages long, requiring the reading of a mere six pages per weekday beginning next week.

But while you will encounter no six-day creations nor parting of Red Seas, you will discover the respective resurrections of the Great Depression-causing Smoot-Hawley II (Buy America provision requirement on all federal contracts) and Welfare as we used to loathe it.

You will marvel at the miracle-like 30% growth in the welfare state, the saving of state and federal government jobs that your taxes will have to pay for and the creation of greenie extremist lawyer and bureaucrat jobs to kill private sector jobs via environmental impact studies and lawsuits for small animals.

There will be no building of Towers of Babel, Tennessee Valley Authorities nor Hoover Dams, but you will see the exponential growth of babbling government meddlers in your business to the tune of 300,000. That is 295,000 more than Christ fed with his loaves and fishes.

President Obama and his bosses Pelosi and Reid are busy people with busy “work” trips to, respectively, rescue mortgage scofflaws in Phoenix, compare notes on socialism in Paris and study Las Vegas-Hollywood high-speed rail lines for idle rich boondoggles. But what happens in D.C. and Denver must not stay in D.C. and Denver.

We the People rule here. Let’s read the handiwork of our employees together. But let us write the final chapter:

Fire the lot of them that saddled us and our progeny with this burden and elect new yea/nay voters that will repeal the monstrosity.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report</a

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COMMENTS

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  • mailloux

    This is a brilliant piece . . . well done!

    Take Care, mailloux

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    It all depends on how far one wants to go to become “we the people” again. I’m not sure there is the fortitude for it… or at least enough of us with the fortitude.

    This bill along with others are the means by which the federal government is pulling all power to it and away from we the people. At the rate they’re pulling now, I’m not so sure voting them out of office will work.

    Yesterday someone criticized me for admitting that I’ve been considering dropping my Republican registration on the voter rolls. One instance of doing the right thing doesn’t wipe away all the past actions that have brought us to this point. The Republican party is as much to blame as the Democrat party for this.

    While I replied to that person, I stewed on it most of the rest of the day and last night. This morning on my own blog I declared that I’m officially a rebel now. The political parties have decided that they don’t represent us anymore and that our only function is to insure their power. If we want to be represented then we have to reassert our citizenchip and civil rights under the Constitution.

    So, we read the monstrosity over the next year and whip ourselves into a high state of outrage. Give me a couple of months and I can pick the thing apart but…

    Then what?

  • Mike gamecock DeVine

    The next year and two must be a time of re-education in the failures of liberalism, much as were the 70s. By keeping the details of this bill fresh in people’s minds, we stand a better chance that Reagan dems see the connection between dems and bad policies during a recession.

  • izoneguy

    AMEN – Preach it brother!!

    Let the brothers & sisters hear loud and hear it clear!!!

    Fire the lot of them that saddled us and our progeny….

    Fire the lot

    Fire the lot

    Fire the lot

    that saddled us and our progeny

    Fire the lot of them that saddled us and our progeny….

    with this burden

    with this burden

    with this burden

    and elect new yea/nay voters that will repeal the monstrosity

    repeal the monstrosity!!

    repeal the monstrosity!!

    repeal the monstrosity!!

  • izoneguy

    You mean like in Kalifornia????

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    Well, some of my ancestors were part of that revolution. Sometimes, when I’m feeling especially depressed about the current state of affairs, I wish I could go back in time and tell them they needn’t bother because a mere 200 years from that time, it will be as if it never happened.

    Anyhoo… I’m game and have a suggestion. Instead of reading so many pages per day, pick it apart by sections and put together a new document that highlights subsections with the section where it was first referenced, then the subsections that are referenced in the other subsections. Otherwise the thing will give you a headache.

    There has been deliberate obfuscation of what the bill really is all about and you can bet it isn’t about fixing the economy. This obfuscation is one reason why the opposition fixated on the pork. They’re the only sensical things they could grab in the short amount of time they were given to consider any of it.

  • Mike gamecock DeVine
  • Rod_Patrick

    Well, MSM has a different angle now with respect to the position of the Republicans on the Stimulus. They are give to give the Dems an honorable excuse if their trillion of government spending doesn’t work in the end.

    Let me cite an example. Here:

    The title:
    GOP votes against, then embraces, stimulus

    The poison:
    “Even though their party almost completely opposed the massive economic stimulus package, some Republicans are racing to embrace funding in the measure even as the national party sticks to their strategy of slamming Democrats who voted for the bill.” [lead of the article]

    The source:
    http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/gop-votes-against-then-embraces-stimulus-2009-02-18.html

    This is just a taste of the twisting that the MSM are ready to push against the Republicans against the Obama Regime.

  • Mike gamecock DeVine

    That those that voted for it didn’t read it and the substance anathema to American values and sound policy.

    The underlying concept is quite simple: saddle the dems and obama with what they actually enacted into law by not forgetting it as we suffe the consequences.

    By all means, yes, highlight particularly egregous portions as well.

  • Mike gamecock DeVine

    smile

    Of course, I am quite familiar with MSM cover for libs. I watched it in the 80s when Reagan won anyway; in the 90s when Newt won anyway and from 2000-2004 when Bush and the GOP won three elections anyway.

    We can overcome, esp as Americans see and feel the effects of bad policies.

  • Mike gamecock DeVine
  • Rod_Patrick

    I fear that this generation (I included) is really a “slow learner”.

  • Mike gamecock DeVine

    and not encouraging others to do so with defeatist rhetoric.

    Can’t never could do nothin’!

  • Rod_Patrick

    “Can?t never could do nothin?!”

    I give up. I trust you on this issue, GC.

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    We know the Dems stick together in their vote and the only reason they call for bipartisanship is when they might need a patsy. The fact that they passed it without Republican votes is what scares me most.

    Reading it by pages a day doesn’t tell the story of what’s in it. The only thing that method will do is give one a headache. That’s what I’m saying. When I first started reading the thing, I would hit a section that referred to a subsection in another section 100 pages away which then referred to yet another subsection another 150 pages away and so on.

  • Rod_Patrick

    This explains why the Republican lawmakers had a hard time in reviewing the bill in such short notice.

    Or: Maybe that was the main intention of the writing style.

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    Pork is pork is pork. The people are so habituated to pork it’s hard to even find an ounce of rage to surpass the apathy that has set in. These other things, however. are very rage inducing once you get a sense of them.

  • Rod_Patrick
  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    But I am in rebellion. ;-)

  • Rod_Patrick

    “Not rage but in rebellion.”

    I am beginning to believe that you’re really a hillybilly. he he.

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    with no electricity. Even after we got electricity, there was no indoor plumbing until a couple of years after I was married and out on my own. I call the Appalachians home still today. Most of my immediate family still lives there.
    One part of my family came to Virginia on from England on a land grant and pushed from there into N.C., TN, and KY. My grandmother was born in VA but ended in W.V. during the war between the states… and not because her family moved. Another side of my family came from Ireland and spread out from PA into WV, VA, and KY. My great-great grandmother was abducted by Indians, one of whom was a Cherokee, who is my great-great grandfather although he was never claimed as such. Life in those days…

    I know how to cook on a wood stove or outside and make as good as I make now on my handy dandy kitchen range with all it’s little gadgets… and I can grow the food to cook on it in a little patch of land that a midwest farmer would laugh about.

    Reckon I’m qualified? :-)

  • izoneguy

    Obama?s Stimulus Will Cause ‘Lower Wages’ for American Workers, Says Congressional Budget Office

    http://cnsnews.com/public/Content/Article.aspx?rsrcid=43704

    (CNSNews.com) ? The huge economic stimulus package that President Obama signed into law Tuesday will result in ?lower wages? for American workers, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

    The CBO analysis, dated Feb. 11 and sent to Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), says the $787-billion plan will increase employment in the short-term, but will run up deficit spending which will ?crowd out? private investment in the economy in the long-term.

    ?It?s very clear that the kind of deficits this will produce will make it next to impossible for Congress to keep tax rates low,? Ryan said. ?It?s very clear that this Congress is going to use the size of the stimulus and its resulting deficit to justify higher taxes in 2011, which will reduce private sector expansion and take money out of the private sector.?

  • Mike gamecock DeVine
  • Mike gamecock DeVine
  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    Somebody else was in charge of the juggin’.

  • Rod_Patrick

    Wow, your are really a descendant of a hillbilly. And make no mistake. My family and I love folks like you.

    The outdoors, the fun, the freedom of basking on an afternoon sun…..

    and … in the Age of Obama….IMMUNITY FROM “GETTING FIRED”.

    WOW! JUST WOW! Living like a hillbilly is A LUXURY indeed!

    Damn those bigots who always make racial slur against hillbillies.

  • Praying

    I’m not sure I have the stomach to read through the dang thing, though. Bottom line, I think, is that the dems didn’t care what was in it – it was never designed to “stimulate” the economy or “create or save” (whatever the heck that means) jobs. It was a means to the end – which was to ram through the most radical, leftist, extreme, socialist collection of social agenda this country has ever seen. They got a few doubters to sign on in the usual way – “pork” goodies for their districts, to help with re-election (not if I can help it). This perverse math and reasoning is like what I read earlier about the newest auto bailout – a mere $30 billion, while GM said it would cost $100 billion for them to go bankrupt, so look, they’re saving us $70 billion. That must be the “new math” they were teaching back in the 1970s. We have to fight – it’s hard, we’ve fought so hard already, but I think the momentum will build. I think the dems will over-reach, get confident, get cocky. I just hope the momentum shifts BEFORE over 59% of the country is on welfare. Or before the 2010 census!

  • Mike gamecock DeVine
  • Mike gamecock DeVine
  • Mike gamecock DeVine
  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    Dad can make a banjo cry or sing. I’m not that good but then they told me I was unteachable, lol. They blamed it on me being left handed but I think I’m probably really just tone-deaf. I’m the odd one of the family… can’t sing, either. I can paint and other stuff like that but the musical… ?

    IIRC, the Darlin’s also had a base player in that family. That would be my son. First time he was given one, he climbed up on a milk crate and started playing “Bad to the Bone”… not exactly hillbilly but it worked for him. The base was twice as tall as he was at the time. Now he’s 6’2″ so he doesn’t have that problem anymore.

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    It’s a hard life. Seasons are shorter in the mountains than they are elsewhere even in the temperate climates of VA, TN, KY, and so on. Lot of work to be done “laying up” for winter time. I know it’s a lot better there now than when I was growing (if not by much) but there were weeks at time without electricity even once you got it in your home back then.

    And I don’t begrudge a moment of that life in spite of the fact that I’ve grown fond of my creature comforts. But… on the other hand it’s real hard to “gin up” any sympathy for some of these people who whine about not having the newest car or can’t afford a million dollar home on middle class income, etc. etc. I always start wondering what they’d do if they were forced to live in the way I grew up because it may come to that if the government has its way.

    But then, there are other hillbillies who play on those same type sympathy garnering tirades, so again, I guess it’s all in how you’re raised, not where.

  • Rod_Patrick

    I have an idea of how hard it has been for many hillbillies. That’s why I really admire them..

    Some say they are backward people. For me it’s a big no. When all the material benefits in the cities dry up, the people will be needing the technologies of these people in trying to survive naturally with the environment again.

    My own notion of hillbillies is different. Generally, they are self-sufficient except for a few that fits the description in your last paragraph.

    All in all, I am proud of my few hillbilly pals.

  • Common_Cents

    We need a law requiring our lawmakers to write bills in a standard simple manner for disclosure. Kind of like nutrition facts labeling. Oh yeah, I forgot, they want us to be able to read nutrition labels but not their bills.

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    I and others like me will be around to help ‘em learn.

    To outsiders, yeah, we do seem backwards, but then, they seem not just backwards but pretzel-twisted at times.

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    And everybody else for that matter.

    The king RAT for the Congresscritters

    This is what I was talking about. They hid things… lots of things… in places where they weren’t likely to be found easily or soon.

  • Rod_Patrick
  • David123

    1. Our government is supposed to be set up with a system of checks and ballances – Dem president + Dem Congress + limited media investigation/critism + judicial activists = no checks and ballances

    2. As a representative Democracy our representatives are supposed to represent us and vote in favor of bills that benefit us – by not reading this bill before they voted on it how do our representatives know whether or not it benefits us?

    Note: Per Susannah’s diary, Governor Huckabee labeled this the C.R.A.P. bill – it seems like a very good name for it.

  • David123

    and more problems with separation of powers in this bill.

    Oh, and like Byron York said, What does the RAT provision have to do with stimulating the economy?

  • Mike gamecock DeVine

    and highlight same for future voters

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    A daily reading and following “the breadcrumbs” besides. The daily readings will help find the first breadcrumb which will then help find the next and so on.

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    I heard he thinks hillbillies are not very good people (my synopsis, not his words).

    I have something to say to the O’Reillys of the world. I know how to live in O’Reilly’s world but would O’Reilly survive in mine?

  • Rod_Patrick

    If that’s what you’re referring to, HuffPo and the libs blew it out of proportion to get the Appalachian votes for the Democrats.

    IMHO, almost 2/3 of what O’Reilly have said and done were true or sensible.

    But there are hard-hitting clips of O’Reilly that tell what kind of a person he really is. Such videos show that, off-camera, O’Reilly is an angry, egocentric, and foul-mouthed person, especially to his staff. But it seems to me that this kind of personality that made him click on TV. But it’s getting antiquated already for him. He needs to find a new image he wants to continue his relevance. In fact, he has many enemies on both sides.

    In my view, it’s time for us to disassociate ourselves from O’Reilly. He’s a self-confessed moderate anyway.

    In short, Hillbillies shouldn’t mind the likes of O’Reilly.

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    The person who told me about it thought perhaps it was in Monday’s show. He was interviewing somebody or other about something and said something about hillbillies that didn’t sit well with her. Doesn’t sit well with me either if she was telling it right but I really don’t mind the likes of O’Reilly.

    I’ve actually stopped watching him since he started whining about Freddie and Fannie as if it was a personal thing and he was the only one who mattered. He’s not the only one who got snookered.

  • http://impudent.blognation.us/blog kyle8

    there are certainly no lack of similar persons in media.

    I still watch O’Reilly for the following reasons:

    1) I don’t expect news people to be saints
    2) I get more information from his show than most others
    3) He is the ONLY person doing the kind of muckraking reporting that holds corrupt or incompetent judges and officials to account for doing things like turning loose criminals.

    No one else is dong that type of reporting.

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    but since, it’s been all “pithy” stuff to coin one of his own don’ts. He’s just a blowhard these days. I can find out anything I need to know on the internet, :-)

  • AKSteveB

    I have a completely opposite take on this. I’ve been a registered “non partisan” forever and I’m now going to go full fledged Republican. There is nothing like seeing the Left actually in power to concentrate ones mind, and make one realize that whatever differences they may have with some Repub politicians or issues, they pale in comparison compared to the Left. Whatever resistance/rebellion there may be will have to come from the Republicans. There is no third party with an actual chance. The Republican Party now IS the Big Tent, whether everyone likes that or not. Democratic party discipline has made it clear that any “moderate” over there can do no more than be an ashtray. For those of us who are young enough to have politically come of age in the early 80s or later, this is the first true exposure to Leftist power on a national scale. It is scarier than I could have possibly imagined.

  • Mike gamecock DeVine