MASSIVE GOVERNMENT STIMULUS HAS NOT HELPED CATERPILLAR AS PROMISED

Schock:  While the stimulus bill has not helped workers, it has saddled them and their children with mindboggling additional debt.

Washington D.C. – A little more than a month after passage of the President’s economic stimulus bill, it has become reality that the hype and promises Caterpillar would not proceed with planned layoffs and rehire laid off workers if Congress passed the stimulus bill was inaccurate.

Congress did pass the stimulus bill and the President got everything he wanted from Congress.  Yet, today Caterpillar announced even more layoffs.  These additional layoffs confirm CAT workers were misused by the Administration as justification for the stimulus bill.

“These additional layoffs are a result of the on-going recession,” said Schock.  “Sadly, the false hopes that passage of the stimulus bill would enable them to keep their jobs are now a horrible letdown.  I opposed the stimulus bill because only 6 percent of this massive bill was for infrastructure.  I supported legislation that would have created twice the jobs at half the price, and included more funding for infrastructure that would have increased the demand for Caterpillar machinery.”

“In my speech against passage of the flawed stimulus bill, I said ‘this bill is too big to get it wrong,’ but these layoffs are another sign that they did get this bill wrong,” continued Schock.  “As a result, we have little increased infrastructure construction, more layoffs, dashed hopes, massive wasteful spending and vastly increased debt.”

“I will join the President and colleagues in Congress if they are willing to embark on a sensible agenda that would lead to economic growth,” Schock concluded.  “The challenges we face are too important not to.”

Triangulation is the name given to the act of a political candidate presenting his or her ideology as being “above” and “between” the “left” and “right” sides (or “wings”) of a traditional (e.g. UK or US) democratic “political spectrum”. It involves adopting for oneself some of the ideas of one’s political opponent (or apparent opponent). The logic behind it is that it both takes credit for the opponent’s ideas, and insulates the triangulator from attacks on that particular issue. Opponents of triangulation, who believe in a fundamental “left” and “right”, consider the dynamic a deviation from its “reality” and dismiss those that strive for it as whimsical.

And now consider this paragraph:

Urging strict future restraint even as current spending soars, President Barack Obama pledged on Monday to dramatically slash the skyrocketing annual budget deficit as he started to dole out the record $787 billion economic stimulus package he signed last week.

Emphasis mine.

Here’ an idea, Mr. President: Introduce legislation recinding those part of the stimulus package that do nothing put prop up state and local government programs. Leave only those part that put people to work by funding infrastructure project, like roads and bridges.

And I had SUCH high hopes for Obama.

The Obama administration, siding with former President George W. Bush, is trying to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails.

Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President say that large amounts of White House e-mail documenting Bush’s eight years in office may still be missing, and that the government must undertake an extensive recovery effort. They expressed disappointment that Obama’s Justice Department is continuing the Bush administration’s bid to get the lawsuits dismissed.

Hat tip: Precinct Committeeman.

Chicago has yet to recoup the $1.74 million cost of President Obama’s victory celebration in Grant Park — despite a burgeoning $50.5 million budget shortfall that threatens more layoffs and union concessions.“The Democratic National Committee has not yet paid us,” Peter Scales, a spokesman for the city’s Office of Budget and Management, said Thursday after questions from the Chicago Sun-Times. “We’re reaching out to them this week.”

In late October, Mayor Daley assured that the cash-flush Obama campaign would reimburse the city for every penny spent on the rally. “We have a financial crisis,” he said at the time. “The City of Chicago could not afford $2 million on this because we’re gonna be laying off people, cutting back. That [cost] would really be unfortunate. . . . It’s a huge cost to the City of Chicago. “This is not a presidential visit. . . . This is a political event, and they’ve agreed to pay for all those services — all the expenses of that. … It’s costly, but they raised quite a bit of money. There’s no [shortage] of money in that campaign.”

Maybe there is a good reason the Obama camp hasn’t paid their bills.  Although I’m sure that people that haven’t paid their heat  bills and mortgages for over 90 days might have good reasons too.  The outcome for them, however, will be a foreclosed home with frozen pipes.

In any event, wait until Gary Sandberg gets hold of this. He is going to go ballistic!

‘We have no plans to nationalize the banks …’  Yeah, right.

So the markets took a sickening nose dive on these remarks.

And its no wonder there aren’t more people going insane with fury:

UPDATE: Chris Muir couldn’t let is pass either:

Heh.

Schock Calls for Public House – Senate Stimulus Negotiations

 Calls for Stimulus conference negotiations to be open to public

 Washington, D.C. – Congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL) issued the following statement calling for an open and public forum for House – Senate negotiations on the stimulus bill.  House rules dictate that there must be an open hearing for conference committee negotiations.

 “Given the billions of taxpayer dollars at stake in the stimulus, negotiations between the House and Senate must be completely open and transparent.  American taxpayers deserve to know how and where the government plans to spend their money.  I believe it is an open invitation to trouble to keep these negotiations closed.”

 “Allowing this historically enormous spending package to be negotiated between a small handful of people behind closed doors would eliminate accountability to the American taxpayers and wholly undermine all efforts at bipartisanship.”

“I support fast action but not at the expense of getting this wrong.  We need to work in an expeditious and bipartisan manner to proceed under full sunlight so taxpayers can have full faith in this process and the resulting economic stimulus bill.”

Indeed, a close look at the current stimulus plan shows that as little as 5% of the money is going toward making the country more productive in the longer run – toward such things as new roads, bridges, improved rail and significant new electrical generation. These are things, like the New Deal’s many construction projects, that could provide a needed boost to our sagging national morale.

Instead, we are focusing once again on those who have been getting the best deal for doing the least. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports state and local government workers get paid 33% more than their private sector counterparts. If you add in the pensions and other benefits, the difference is over 40%. In New York alone, public-sector wages and benefits since 2000 have grown twice as fast as those of the average private-sector worker.

Egregious stories of overpaid public workers are legion. In suburban Chicago, for example, some school administrators are making over $400,000 with benefits and incentives. Recent reports out of Boston suggest hundreds of firefighters and police officers make well in excess of $100,000 a year. And of course, there are the California prison guards who can make upwards of $300,000 a year with overtime.

If states and municipalities wanted to raise state and local taxes to guarantee the continued employment of these people, they could easily do so. But then people’s local taxes would have gone up, causing pain and misery to the people who could conceivably turn them out of office. Instead, the money is coming from Washington, which has the ability to print money. 

It boils down to this: Using state and local taxes to pay for state and local government is much like paying cash, or writing a check that’s going to be cashed in a few days. Using federal money for the same purpose is like using credit cards.

The relatively tiny amount of real infrastructure improvement spending will have a limited immediate effect. The future taxes to pay for the remaining 95 percent of the stimulus package will create a future nightmare that will make this seem like like the good old days.

Via Michael Calderone’s blog on Politico:

Following Leon Panetta’s confirmation hearing Thursday, several reporters approached the CIA director-designate in the hallway outside room G-50 in the Dirksen Building.

There, CongressDaily reporter Chris Strohm — upon asking a question — was physically restrained by a man who accompanied Panetta at hearings both days.

Strohm, when reached by phone Friday, said he was unsure of the man’s role.

“I felt this hand grab my right arm and push me aside,” Strohm said.

By his account, Strohm told the man, “Please don’t touch me” more than once. Eventually, the man let him go.

A veteran reporter who has covered the CIA before says this is aberant behavior. The CIA, he says, is usually much more press friendly. Yeah, seriously. That’s what he said.

Outside of sending black vans out in the middle of the night to round up pesky reporters, I didn’t think it as possible for an administration to be any less friendly to the rights of the press and the right to report than the Bush administration. Manhandling reporters trying to do basic beat reporting is no way to start an administration.

LaHood — who despite other problems I have with him — earned my respect for being willing to fight to keep the state party out of the hands of the right wingers, and for being willing to tell the president things his handlers didn’t want to hear.*

His opposition to the far right hasn’t earned him any slack from the left, however. Consider the following, which first appeared on the site Worldchanging:

… his appointment is a profoundly uninspiring vote for business as usual at a time when we need change, and an strong indication that the administration doesn’t get that energy policy, technological innovation, urban planning, environmental sustainability and transportation are all bound up together, and no solution to our problems can be had without tackling them all together.

LaHood’s appointment is so disappointing to transportation advocates who’ve been waiting eight years for change, that they’re boiling with indignant disbelief, branding him “an unbelievably disastrous pick,” “Status quo we can believe in” and “same.gov” (a dig at the Obama transition site, change.gov). As one insider summed it up: “It’s a real read-it-and-weep moment.”

And the article goes on for many more words describing how we need more public transportation, not new infrastructure. There’s a lot of it I agree with. I’ve love to see a ton of money going into public transportation. But I also know that the infrastructure needs some work, and THAT is a legitimate function of government. And I’m worried that too many of the “shovel ready” projects being discussed are more about spreading the wealth around than essential services.

But methinks the writer isn’t really getting it. Yeah, LaHood has little administrative experience. But cabinet secretaries really aren’t managers. They are politicians. Their are figureheads. Once the appointment has been made, half the work is done.

LaHood’s role probably isn’t going to setting policy so much as it is to get the bills through Congress. And as a former member of the Appropriation’s committee, he knows how to get bills through the system.

No, that’s not exactly “change.” But it is how things get done. Barack Obama knew then when he appointed LaHood.

* I’ll have links up as soon as my other site is back up.