On Fri, February 6, 2009 11:46 am, Patrick Coskren wrote: > 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."
Not knowing the details in Milwaukee, I would point out that when school districts mothball schools because of shrinking enrollment (or, often, growing class sizes due to budget constraints) they tend to retire the shoddiest schools first. Just because there are 15 vacant schools doesn't mean any of them are in condition to be used without major work - nor does it suggest that the schools currently occupied don't need work themselves. > "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. Yes, it seems he's confusing the urgency of stimulus itself (which can be debated, of course) with the urgency of some of the projects that may get work (which has never been the point). Not everything that's going to be done under the stimulus is, itself, critically urgent (or, I would hope, it would have been underway already) - but that doesn't mean it won't help spark the economy, prop up the job market, or pay dividends as an investment in fixing/building things that have actual purpose and value. > 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. The very notion of the stimulus does *not* require the work being done to be urgently needed - it's enough that it creates jobs, provides useful services/infrastructure investments. The two things that seem logical to debate are 1. Whether the notion of stimulus itself is necessary/useful - this is largely a matter of faith for those of us not expert in macroeconomics 2. Whether the projects covered in the stimulus will achieve what they are intended to cost-effectively - create or maintain jobs, build/repair/support something useful. It's like when McCain went after pork barrel spending in the campaign, highlighting a million dollar study into the sex lives of bears (or something) or a projector for a children's exhibit at observatory - no context whatsoever, but they picked on the projects because he could make them sound wasteful or silly. -R _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
