Never let a crisis go to waste!

That is something of a mantra for the Obama administration. In an incredibly bold admission, Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both stated publicly that a good crisis shouldn’t be wasted. In other words, use the economic crisis and ensuing panic to push through your agenda that perhaps would be unpalatable during normal times. Rest assured that in these early days, President Obama and his puppet-masters in the Congress and liberal special interest groups will waste no time cramming as much socialism into place as possible. His poll numbers are waning fast, in spite of the rosy reports from the complicit media. Time is not on his side, so we find ourselves watching the spectacle of a two month overhaul of the relationship between the public and private sector that we have not seen in generations, perhaps ever.

The first two waves have been passed, the pork and social engineering filled “stimulus package” and the massive deficit expanding Federal budget. Next up for Obama is socialized medicine, accomplished through a vastly expanded Federal health insurance mandate along with the whispering of “The Return of Porkulus”. Already, before a nickel of the first “stimulus” bill has been spent, some loyal Democrats in safe seats (i.e. David Obey of Wisconsin) are hinting around at the need for a second stimulus package, likely as large if not larger, than the first one. This is a clever bit of old school politics as usual (weren’t we promised “change”?). Rather than the President coming right out and saying he wants another stimulus bill, he has his loyalist troops raise the issue, sort of easing you into it. Once the initial outrage starts to settle down, Obama can roll out his panic mode speeches, assuring us of calamities unimaginable if we don’t pass yet another stimulus bill. The threat of calamity worked well once, why not a second time?

One major piece of legislation that is a crown jewel in the Obama crown is the so-called card check legislation. It also is getting very little attention because the details would strike most Americans as being, for lack of a better word, un-American. In a nutshell, this legislation will change the way unions organize by allowing a workplace to be collectively bargained if they get more than 50% of employees to sign a card. This is not a secret ballot. It is Joe the local union organizer walking up to you and asking you to sign a card. If you don’t, that amounts to a vote against the union and you can be assured that your public vote of “no” will be remembered. Certainly there has never been even a whiff of intimidation tactics being employed by labor unions toward recalcitrant workers who didn’t sign on to the union agenda! Ask anyone trying to cross a picket line. The reason we have a secret ballot in this country for virtually ever election, including voting for class president and dog catcher, is to allow people to vote their conscience without fear of intimidation or reprisal. Now in a bold effort to take that basic American protection away from American workers, we see what amounts to a green light for intimidation of workers by union organizers. Funny, I thought the Democrats were supposed to be the party watching out for the working man? I guess that only applies if you are a union working man.

Ominously, the economy is showing early signs of recovery as the credit markets start to stabilize. That has nothing to do with anything done by the Obama administration (which has done nothing to address the credit crisis even though virtually every expert agrees that the credit market collapse was the impetus of the general economic malaise), but be sure that as the economy naturally rebounds as it always does and does so in spite of Obama’s policies, Obama and his media cronies will spin the recovery as a vindication of his big government policies, and give him the cover he needs to further march us down the road of European style socialism and economic ruin.

So just how big is the “stimulus” package?

Here is an interesting analogy I heard at church yesterday. I went back and did the numbers because I couldn’t believe it was accurate, but it was.

If you spent a million dollars a day, that is $1,000,000 every day, from the Resurrection to today (approximately 1,976 years assuming a Resurrection date of around 33 A.D.), you would have spent $721,734,000,000. That is 65 billion less, $65,000,000,000 LESS, than the government is going to spend in one bill to “stimulate” the economy.

That would have bought a lot of sandals back in the day.

So what do you get for $787,000,000,000?

Not much. The Wall Street Journal put together a nice chart of the spending allocations for the Porkulus Bill. The Journal is about the only national paper that you can get news from that doesn’t have reporters screaming and fainting like teen girls at a Jonas Brothers concert over Obama. This chart does not drill down to the 9000 earmarked pet projects, this is just the “big picture”. The picture it paints is hardly what a rational person would expect to find in a bill that was foisted on us as being our only hope to stave off catastrophe. Here is a sample…

Salaries for staff to modernize IT system at Farm Service Agency: $50,000,000

Adult and child day care meals and snacks: $100,000,000

Extra money for Census: $1,000,000,000

National Cemetery renovations and repairs: $50,000,000

The internet is a big winner in the Porkulus Bill (which is only right since Al Gore invented it and he should have been President anyway because he should have won Florida even though none of the counts showed him getting more actual votes than George Bush) . In a time of economic crisis, nothing is more important than people being able to get high speed internet. How can we have a functioning economy without YouTube clips and illegally downloaded music!

Salaries and expenses for program to create broadband inventory map of the country: $350,000,000 (that is an expensive map!)

Grants to provide wireless and broadband infrastructure to communities, including public computer centers and sustainable adoption of broadband service: $4,350,000,000

Broadband grants to rural communities (farmers need YouTube too!): $2,500,000,000

Absolutely vital , each and ever line item. Think how catastrophic it would be if the Farm Service Agency didn’t get updated computers. Oh the humanity! Snacks for elderly daycare, yummy! Renovations to the National Cemetery. On and on and on. No wonder they crammed this thing through before people got a good look at it. How can we live without $85,000,000 for “Indian Health Services IT development and deployment” or $50,000,000 for “Grants to fund arts projects in non-profit sector”?

The best part is the money going back to states. So on our behalf, the Federal government is going to take almost $800,000,000,000 from us in taxes and debt. Then they are going to filter that through Washington, D.C. Then they are going to send a huge chunk of it to Governor Jennifer Granholm, paragon of fiscal responsibility and sound government (who else can brag that even though the whole nation is in a recession, Michigan has been in a deeper and worse recession than any other state. We’re number 1!). Once Jenny gets done tinkering around with our money, she and the state legislature are then going to dole it out to pet projects all around the state. Meanwhile, the average Michigander still won’t be able to sell their house, find a new job or send their kids to a decent school.

Remember that when this was passed, it was designed to head of economic collapse and food riots in the streets. Some of this spending is useful, some of it may be vital. But don’t sell us a bill that is designed to head of imminent collapse and then hide a bunch of random spending in it and still tell us it is a “stimulus” bill. It is nothing but a massive expansion of the Federal government and did nothing to fix the major issues that are crippling the economy, i.e. a train wreck in the consumer and business credit markets.

This is pork barrel spending on an unprecedented level, and it was sold to America by scare-mongering in D.C. with the willing participation and encouragement of the mainstream media. All that is left now is for the American people to pay back the $800,000,000,000 bill.