It's not too late to slam your representatives for voting blind ...
By ladyluna
@ladyluna (7004)
United States
February 13, 2009 1:43pm CST
Hello All,
I just got off the phone with the staff of my state's rep's. I slammed each rep for the lame-brained idea that it's acceptable to vote for a bill as important as the $8 Trillion Obama spending bill without having read the contents.
The bill was released to lobbyists betwen 10:00 and 11:00pm last night. Then it was made available to the rep's after 11:00pm, and as I understand it, it contains over 1000 pages. So, if your rep votes for this bill, he or she will have voted blind. Do you support paying your rep to represent you by casting votes based on heresay? Should they earn a paycheck for doing a half-assssed job?
If our rep's won't, then shouldn't we hold Obama to the fire over his "transparency" campaign promises? Didn't he promise that the public would have access to review his iniatives? Well, how can anyone be expected to read 1000 pages in 12 hours?
Please call your rep's right now, right this very moment and tell them to "Just say NO!"
United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121
4 responses
@KatieDidit (989)
• United States
14 Feb 09
Mine voted against it and they are Democrats.
2 people like this
@ladyluna (7004)
• United States
14 Feb 09
Hello KatieDidit,
Yeah! Are you perhaps from Idaho? I heard an interview with an Idaho Democrat, Walter Minnick. After which, I breathed a huge sigh of relief that there are still some fiscally conservative Democrats left. Minnick wasn't alone -- six other Democrats voted their consciences and said "NO" to this debacle.
Thanks for sharing!
1 person likes this
@KatieDidit (989)
• United States
15 Feb 09
No, I'm from Oregon. We have Peter Defazio (Democrat) that voted against it. Defazio actually switched his vote to no.... this is from our local news:
A spokeswoman says DeFazio was concerned there was not enough infrastructure spending in the compromise crafted by House and Senate leaders.
DeFazio also has said he thinks the measure is too heavily weighted toward tax cuts.
2 people like this
@KrazyKlingon (5005)
• United States
14 Feb 09
With all these people losing jobs, many are going back to school. Not only that. Because of parents losing jobs, many reaching adulthood can no longer afford the colleges/universities of their choice. So where do they go? Community colleges are getting a bombarded with all these enrollments.
Where is the stimulus money coming from? I hear that Washington DC is cutting a lot of state aid & aid to local governments. Community colleges get a bulk of their monies to operate from the state & local municipalities, & that is why tuition for community colleges, as well as state-run colleges & universities, are so low-priced. Uh - huh ... duh ... I wonder what this might mean.
Quite often, just the tuition alone that someone pays for one semester at a private college or university - not including administrative & lab fees, would probably almost pay for the out-of-pocket tuition, lab & administrative fees, & even those high, rip-off priced textbooks at a state-run college or university.
Obama mentioned that he wanted some of that bail-out money to be used to fund Pell Grants, & that is not such a bad idea. However, with all these people trying to get registered at their community colleges, it's going to be a headache for Americans. There is a problem there. With many transferring or deciding to enroll at community colleges, Pell Grants only pay out-of-pocket costs of students, & does not cover those additional expenses that the institutions get from state & local funding need to efficiently operate. Also, with that out-of-pocket tuition being so minuscule compared to some place like M.I.T or Harvard, quite a lot of people won't qualify for any financial aid at all, if any. If something is not done in this area, there will be a lot of disappoinhted Americans because of lack of space for many of these potential students, & admissions personnel having to apologize to these people.
1 person likes this
@KrazyKlingon (5005)
• United States
18 Feb 09
There have also been news reports mentioning that banks that got Bush's bail-out sought to hire workers from other countries for high-paying jobs while laying off like mad. Here's that discussion:
http://www.mylot.com/w/discussions/1892879.aspx
Another thing this present bill would need is some way to prevent using taxpayer money to hire people who did not pay into this (as in their taxes). We probably need to add tariffs to those things that have been made outside the United States.
As for the automobile industry, I have noticed that all three of them have a habit of discontinuing popular models, & replacing with something that probably would not be as popular. Or, they take a popular model & make changes to it so that it renders it unpopular. If the auto industry gets any more of the bailout money, something needs to be put in there as a condition to stop the practice of discontinuing popular models that would cause the average consumer to go & buy that foreign vehicle.
@ladyluna (7004)
• United States
17 Feb 09
Hello Klingon,
Thanks for sharing here. You're so right that many are deciding to further their educations, so as to render themselves recession-proof. While I agree that eforting one's self toward recession-proofism is very wise, I'm not at all convinced that targeting education for specific tax relief is really going to do anything about the insane costs for education today. It seems to me that targeted tax rebates equates to just one more in a long line of band-aid fixes. Any thoughts?
