Whining About the Next Bailout Plan

Dear Readers,

Maybe you’ve heard, but there’s a new stimulus plan making its way through the U.S. Congress. The House of Representatives already passed it yesterday, and the Senate is supposed to pass it soon, and according to this article: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D960EGQ81&show_article=1 the next stimulus plan will be most likely signed into law in mid-February by our President, Barack Obama.

And this one is bigger than the last bailout plan. The last bailout plan was $700 billion, and this one is over $800 billion. Maybe they are two different things, though. The last one was focused on rescuing lenders so American consumers could keep borrowing money to buy shiny, hip stuff, (I’m sounding crotchety. Ha ha ha.) and this next one is aimed at job creation and such, so the money will go to different people.

But I sort of feel like they are both doing what Robin Hood did- taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Except that Robin Hood stole from a corrupt king, who taxed people to death and hoarded riches (at least according to the Disney version of Robin Hood I remember seeing a long time ago) whereas Obama and the Democrats in Congress are stealing from Americans who are good at generating wealth and giving to the poor. And in some cases I think that Obama and the Democrats in Congress are stealing from some rich people and giving to different rich people. Anyway...

(This next few paragraphs will relate to the new stimulus plan, I promise.)

The other day in the English 105 class I teach at NAU, I was talking to the class about the difference between abstract words and concrete words. Abstract words are words like “love” and “joy” and “biology.” You can’t see or smell or taste or hear or feel “love” and other abstract words literally. Concrete words, though, like “dog” and “spoon” you can see and smell and taste and hear and feel. Anyway, as an example of an abstract word/ phrase, I wrote, “the law” on the chalkboard. Someone raised their hand and said, “Wait a minute, why did you put “the law” under the abstract category?”

And I said, something like, “Hmm… I guess your right, the law could be a concrete thing because you can pick up law-books and 'the law' could be the ink on the paper in the books that are stored in Washington D. C. and in law offices all over the country.” But then I said to the class, “How many of you have actually seen the laws written down? Like, is it legal to ride your bicycle without a helmet in Arizona? I think so- I’ve never been bothered by a cop about it- but have you ever seen the law about wearing a helmet while you ride a bike?” And now that I think about it more, I would say that most people develop their understandings of the law from stuff they hear in conversations and stuff they see on TV and the way they were raised. Like, I know that murder is illegal, but I’ve never actually seen the law written down in an official document anywhere.

But do you know why not too many people have actually seen the laws written down somewhere? Well, there are several reasons. First, laws are written in a specialized way, by law experts, so they are hard for ordinary people to understand when they read them. Second, laws are boring to read. Third, the laws are incredibly incredibly incredibly looooooooooooong.

Which brings us back to the new bailout plan. (Oh, and look, here’s the whole bill: .pdf file of bill Thank you, Drudge Report, for the link.) The title of the bill is “A BILL Making supplemental appropriations for job preservation and creation, infrastructure investment, energy efficiency and science, assistance to the unemployed, and State and local fiscal stabilization, for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2009, and for other purposes.”

See, even the title is long. But if you think the title is long, just wait ‘til you see the rest of the bill. Guess how long the bill is. Go on, guess. Just guess a page number. Did you guess?

Wrong!

It's six hundred and forty-seven pages! Yikes! 647 pages of boring, boring, legal language, some of which is fuzzy-sounding, so it could be interpreted in a lot of different ways. Different liberal ways. Ha ha ha.

All those liberals…

By the way, my favorite part of that title of the bill is that last part, “and for other purposes.” Who knows what kind of crazy “other purposes” are included in that mammoth of a bill. And do all the people that vote on that bill really read it all and study it all? I doubt it.

Maybe Representatives and Senators get their assistants or whatever to read it for them, or maybe those politicians just look up the plot synopsis of bills on Wikipedia rather than read the whole thing, but still, I bet a lot of politicians are swayed by things other than their own private, lengthy study of the document, and a desire to accurately represent the will of the people. I bet many politicians are swayed by lobbyists who represent organizations that would really like some of that $800,000,000,000. And maybe politicians are bribed to vote a certain way.

As for me, I don’t have to read all 647 pages. I already know that I’m against it.

I want to say though, that I’m thankful for all the U.S. Representatives who voted no on it. A virtuous fight that is lost is still a virtuous fight.

Hey, I just did some searching on the Internet, and I found the official list of which representatives voted yes on the bill and which ones voted no on the bill. Here’s the link: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll046.xml

Jeff Flake, my favorite Arizona representative, voted no. Bless his heart.

Um, I don’t really know any other of my representatives off hand. Isn’t that a shame? Oh wait, maybe Ann Kirkpatrick is my immediate representative because I live in congressional district one or whatever… Yes! I just found her… Ann Kirkpatrick is my representative and wouldn’t you know it, she didn’t do a very good job of representing Telemoonfa’s voice because Ann voted for the stimulus bill!

Sheesh. Well, I kind of expected that of her. Ann is, after all, a Democrat.

Speaking of party lines, the passage of this bailout/stimulus bill was one of the most partisan things to happen in a long time. Here’s the numbers: 244 Democratic representatives voted yes, 11 Democratic representatives voted no. 177 Republican representatives voted no, and- here’s what’s really interesting- not a single Republican representative voted yes.

It’s times like these when I’m proud to be a Republican.

Of course, with a Democratically controlled Congress and with a Democratic President, things like this are going to happen. Right now is Barack Obama’s “honeymoon,” where Congress is willing to go along with his ideas and see if they work.

Sigh… No matter how much I whine about it, I really bet this thing will be passed in the Senate soon. Plus, I feel like I should be writing to my Senators about this, not to the few people who read this blog. But the people who read Telemoonfa Time seem to be more of a real audience than my Senators. If I write to my Senators, I’ll probably just get a standard, cookie-cutter response, like, “Your comment has been noted. Thanks for participating in democracy, citizen # 37564931.”

Oh, but I do remember reading that the Senator who replaced Hillary Clinton in New York, after Hillary was appointed Secretary of State, is a woman that voted no on the last bailout plan. And, I think that the Senate is divided pretty evenly between Republicans and Democrats, so maybe there is a chance of this ala-quiffert bill being stopped in the Senate. I hope so.

I feel like if this new stimulus bill passes, that will just make the government bigger and bigger and dumber and dumber, like so dumb, like really dumb things.

I mean, that’s what happened in the Great Depression, right? Lots of economists agree that FDR make the Great Depression last a lot longer than it needed to with his New Deal. To sum up the New Deal, the way I understand it, the New Deal was a bunch of laws that Congress and FDR passed in the 1930s in an attempt to ease the pain of the Depression. Basically, the government stepped in and acted as a paternal money-dispenser, and the Great Depression dragged on for a very long time. (I read about the New Deal stuff in a wonderful conservative, truth-telling book, 10 Big Lies About America, by Michael Medved.)

Oh, I’m sure a lot of the New Deal was good… I’m not saying that the government should never help people who are going through a hard time. But I’m just saying we ought to remember who “the government” is, and how the government gets their money. The government can’t magically make money appear; the government gets their money from tax-payers.

Oh, other people are smarter about this sort of stuff than I am, but from what I can understand where I am right now, I think the New Deal was a bad idea, and I think the stimulus plan that’s about to pass is a bad idea too. Maybe they are well-intentioned bad ideas, but they are still bad ideas.

Grrr... I'm grumpy... grrr... Ha ha ha.

Seriously, this economy thing is working on my brain in a bad way and I don’t know why. I get worked up about these gigantic problems with the world that I can’t fully understand or do much about.

Maybe I should stop reading the news.

Like, here’s another economy-related thing I read in the news that’s got me riled up: Did you hear about California and how they’re going to delay returning people’s state tax refunds for at least a month or something like that? What? That’s never happened before in the history of California, if I remember correctly.

I mean, that’s just crazy. The government of the state of California is just broke, basically. They don’t have the money, they’re in debt, so they’re just telling everybody, “uh… sorry, uh… about the whole state tax refund thing, but, you know I’ve been going through a hard time right now and I’ve been trying to get back on my feet and man, you know I’m good for the money, man, you know I’ll pay you back, but, uh… you just gotta give me a few weeks, OK? I just, I just need a little more time to get my nose clean, that’s all.”

Seriously, the Govenator is sounding more like a prodigal derelict than a respectable Governor.

OK, I gotta go.

But before I go, let me just tell you where my loyalties lie, in case you think I’m a whiner about America and I wanna go live in some other country.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

OK, I gotta go.

Oh, but before I go, I just thought of something else: Unfortunately, Arizona’s budget isn’t doing so hot either. The state legislature is talking about cutting funding on higher education by a huge amount. NAU will have to reduce their budget by $20,000,000 for the 2009/2010 school year. I’ve been hearing about it a lot lately around campus. A bunch of college students went down to the state capitol to protest it yesterday. In case you’re interested, here’s a link to a website devoted to NAU’s plan to adjust to the budget cuts: http://www4.nau.edu/president/budgetinfo.htm and here’s an article about the latest developments in the NAU budget cuts: http://www4.nau.edu/insidenau/bumps/2009/01_28_09/forum.htm

The bottom line is, Arizona is in the red, you know, and they've got to make some cuts somewhere. What are they going to cut? I don’t know, but they have to cut something. The law-making movers and shakers in Phoenix can’t seem to balance the budget (like Mitt Romney did all four years he was the Governor of Massachusetts, by the way) so they gotta cut something.

I only hope that millions more Arizonans will start playing the lottery so Arizona can pay off its debts and get back on its feet and fund U of A, ASU, and NAU the way they ought to be funded. (I’ll help people start playing today, in fact! Your lucky numbers for today are 12, 14, 23, 26, and 27! In case you can’t tell, I’m being sarcastic. You know what I really have to say about the lottery? “Bah humbug!” and “Phooey!”)

But then again, maybe these budget cuts can be a time for NAU to remind itself of its central mission- its whole philosophical, metaphysical reason for being. Budget cut times can be a time when administrators can focus on what’s really important.

Because there are things that NAU spends money on that I think are non-essential to the core mission of an institution of higher learning. Here are two things that come to mind: the New Health, Wellness, and Recreation Center, and Safe Ride. I’ve whined about the Health, Wellness, and Recreation Center before in Telemoonfa Time, (here’s the link: http://telemoonfa.blogspot.com/2008/01/letter-to-editor.html ooooh… a link to another part of Telemoonfa Time. I’ve never done that before. Now I really am getting self-referential!) but I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of telling you about Safe Ride. Safe Ride is where NAU pays for busses to give rides to college students late at night on the weekends back and forth from campus to downtown Flagstaff. And goodness only knows what those college students are up to out there so late at night. Up to no good, I’ll wager! And my money is paying for that? Grrr…

Oh, and then there’s the Yellow Bike program, too, which I think is a big crock of hippie liberalness! Ha ha ha.

What’s gotten into me tonight? I’m usually not like this. Really I'm a pleasent man in real life, I promise.

Anyway, the Yellow Bike program is a form of on-campus public transportation that’s turned out to be crap-tastic. The University paid for all these bikes and painted them yellow and said, “Anybody can ride them, whenever and wherever they want around campus. They won't be locked up or anything. The Yellow Bike program is another eco-friendly way to help students get around to their classes. Please don’t take them off-campus, though.” And what do you think happened to that vision of utopia filled with yellow bikes? Well, people didn’t treat the bikes very well. They broke them, stole them, took them off campus. These days if you wanna find a yellow bike around campus, you can’t, because they’re all dead and exploded. Ka-boom!

Oh, but you know what? I’m not sure if all those things- the new recreation center, Safe Ride, and the Yellow Bike program- are really funded by Arizona taxpayers or by tuition or what. A lot of those things are paid for, I think, through student fees or maybe grants.

But regardless of where the money is coming from, it’s the principle of the thing that matters. I think that all those programs I mentioned represent money spent unwisely. And all those programs also represent the unwise redistribution of wealth. Think about this:

Maybe with the money students would have saved by not funding Safe Ride, students could have paid for a taxi to drive them safely back to their dorm room after a wild night out.

Maybe with the little bit of money saved by not paying for the yellow bike program, students could have afforded to buy their own bike, with a good bike lock.

And maybe if NAU students were allowed to keep their own money instead of chipping in for the new Health, Wellness, and Recreation Center, students could have afforded to join a gym off campus, or to buy their own work-out equipment, or to spend that money on something else they would rather have.

OK, I could go on forever, but I really gotta go now.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa