The buzz this week has been about the failings of our gigundus stimulus package. By now new jobs were supposed to be plopping onto our laps like ripe fruit.
Yes, our President promised “a new wave of innovation, activity and construction will be unleashed all across America.” Yes, our Vice-President assured us the package would “drop-kick” our economy out of recession. Unemployment was supposed to peak at 8 percent.
Well, the fruit ain’t ploppin’. The economic football ain’t flyin’ toward the goal posts. And unemployment is at 9.5 percent and climbing.
First, let us dismiss the fantasies of our top guys. Nobody can predict this stuff accurately. Yet we demand they do. We want numbers and dates from them. Backed into a corner, they will say anything to quiet the mob. You would do the same.
Next, let us dismiss the silly messages they have trotted out from the Excuse Locker. Joe Biden said on tv that “we and everyone else misread the economy.” And that the economy he and his boss inherited was weaker than they had been led to believe. This is worse than Johnny’s the-dog-ate-it excuse for not producing his homework.
Our economy is more stethoscoped than a buxon hypocondriac’s chest, more probed than a Spitzer hooker. Rip Van Biden, if you were misled about the economy you must have slept through half of last year.
There are a few small reasons why the stimulus package has not yet worked like Miracle-Gro on the economy. One is that only a few billion of the hundreds of billions of so-called stimulus dollars have reached the economy. Most of the dollars are not scheduled to arrive for many months and years. The fertilizer is still in the pickup truck and not on the garden. That is why the tomato plants have not perked up, maw.
Another subtle reason why the stimulus package has yet to deliver stimulus:  It ain’t a stimulus package. Psssst, it is a package of pork sausage.
The President did not fashion this package. He passed the job on to Nancy and her crew in the House. In turn, they did not fashion a stimulus package either. (They did not even read what they had created before they voted on it.)
Instead, they rounded up all the porky projects that had been on the wish lists of fellow politicians. Many of these would never have made it into law. Many would have been years more on the waiting list. Many were not much more than window dressing. (“I have proposed to the House fifty million for a Museum of Lead Paint for our district...”)
It was as if you walked into a bar and offered to hire experienced piano movers for a thousand bucks for the afternoon. Every guy in the joint would have followed you out to your moving van. Nancy called for projects that she could add to the stimulus package. Overnight, the old Proposal for New Toilets in the Podunk Regional Airport got relabeled Porcelain Renewal Stimulus Project and packed in with the rest of the lard.
This was not a stimulus package. It was not designed to drop-kick, jump-start, hot-wire or light a rocket under a sick economy. It was not created so as to unleash new waves of innovation. It was a bunch of pork projects, large and small, cobbed together to give bragging rights to lots of congressguys on their next trip home.
Last week some outfit revealed that, surprise, more of the stimulus money was going to districts that had supported Barrack Obama in the election. And, surprise, more of the stimulus money was going to districts that were well off than to districts that really needed the stimulus.
That is what you get when you create an old fashioned pork pie. Instead of a genuine thought-out stimulus package. And, surprise, some lawmakers now suggest we need another stimulus package!
Paw, like the economy, is sick. He could use some good drugs. A quack has dropped off a fearsome load of Jimmy Dean sausages. We’re fryin’ up a few now and freezin’ the rest for future family picnics. We are wonderin’ why the patient ain’t hoppin’ out of bed. Mebbe we should be cookin’ up a few more?
From Tom ... as in Morgan.                  

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