On Feb 6, 2009, at 1:31 PM, Charles Bennett wrote:
Good criticism of the stimulus package
No it's not. It's typical Krauthammer.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/05/AR2009020502766.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns
"...Congress's own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and
beyond"
Source? Knowing Krauthammer, that smells like a distortion, so I'd
like to see what he's basing that on.
His specific examples of waste are:
"$88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools,
which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking
enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new
construction."
"Turns out the "fierce urgency of now" includes $150 million for
livestock (and honeybee and farm-raised fish) insurance."
Let's see... school construction. You need to hire people to build
things. For all I know, enrollment's been shrinking because of the
vacant schools, and the schools may be vacant because they're falling
apart. At any rate, the point isn't the school , it's the
construction jobs at a time when that entire industry is falling apart.
As for livestock insurance... protecting the incomes (and therefore
the jobs) of farmers is also a perfectly reasonable stimulus
activity. Beekeepers have been particularly vulnerable lately due to
massive bee dieoffs that aren't really understood. That's a problem,
because hired beekeepers are essential to the pollination of lots of
crops; almonds, for instance. So this seems pretty reasonable, too.
So, in the half of the article he spent talking about the stimulus, he
mentioned two specific cases, for $236 million of spending, i.e. 0.03%
of the stimulus package, and both of them are patently reasonable
stimulus activities.
Pretty stupid criticism, if you ask me.
-Patrick
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