First of all...
Yes. The One is coming to Denver to sign the The Generational Theft Act of 2009.
Best I can figure, it's a thrift-based decision - as it will save money on shipping those Roman columns somewhere else.
I grabbed that TownHall story ... mostly because my brother (Monopticus-Shout-Out) sent it to me and I was just too lazy to go looking for one I liked any better, but then I started going down through it and a couple of things caught my attention.
First, I was once again struck by the complete lack of acknowledgement of the cognitive disconnect necessary for someone to use/speak the phrase "Tax breaks for those who do not pay taxes" - without closing his eyes and shaking his head.
Can we all - Please - at least agree that a "tax-break" is when either some of your tax-money is returned to you or is not demanded of you in the first place,...
... while someone who doesn't pay taxes getting a check @ refund-time, means that someone else's tax money has been "Given" to that person, and that this is not a "break" from those taxes that he did-not/was-not-going-to pay in the first place?
(I know, I'm probably just picking-nits here)
Second, I learned that the Obama administration has launched a Website that will "will allow people to track where the money is being spent."
Being a part of the much-lauded "Greater Transparency & Accountability", I was curious to see if it would ennumerate the various levels of Pork that I've been reading about from the Bill itself.
....the answer so far (there are many levels to this site) is... well,... No.
But I did find this, under the title "Where is Your Money Going?":
(and I do love graphs)
Now, let's leave-off that this doesn't look quite like the other graphs that had been previously created on the Bill... that's a subject for another post.
This is still a very nice attempt at transparency-through-visuals and it certainly looks like the largest-part of this is going to "Tax Reli... oh wait - that's an asterisk, isn't it?
Okay, let's play "Chase the Transparency Asterisk".
* Tax Relief - includes
$15 B for Infrastructure and Science,
$61 B for Protecting the Vulnerable,
$25 B for Education and Training and
$22 B for Energy
Okay, so now those totals adjust to:
$78 B for Education and Training, --------not $53 B
$65 B for Energy-------------------------not $43 B
$142 B for Protecting the Vulnerable, --- not $81 B
$126 B for Infrastructure and Science, --not $111 B
- and
$165 B for "Tax Relief", rather than the charted $288 B
Also - it turns out that there's nothing on the site that might clue you in on what is actually meant by the warm-n-fuzzy title of, say, "Protecting the Vulnerable"
(does sound like something you'd have to be pretty heartless to argue over though, doesn't it?)
Looking around for such pesky details that the chattering masses shouldn't really care about - I find a Q&A section... okay...
Q: Where can I find the full text of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009?
A: The text of the law can be found in Text or PDF format here.
Ah! That's more like.... Ah. Okay.
Link takes you here:
Bill's done - being signed here in Denver, probably at this moment...
...no text.
Hmm... Transparency.... Accountability.
- MuscleDaddy
PS - Just a small but somewhat amusing bit - That graphic with all the misleading numbers?
... when you grab it from the site, the name of the image is "Investment Bubble"
Yeah... like "Housing" or "Dot-Com".....
Coincidence? I think not.
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