House OKs stimulus bill without any GOP votes

32 comments January 28th, 2009

 

The Senate will take up the $819 billion MEASURE next week.

POSTSCRIPT: Is it any wonder that there are just five states, collectively containing about 2 percent of the American population, in which statistically significant pluralities of adults identify themselves as Republicans? Read about it HERE.

UPDATE: Some economists think the stimulus should be BIGGER.

Why doesn’t Catholic hierarchy push for laws against birth control?

9 comments January 28th, 2009

 

The CURRENT FUSS over birth-control funding in the economic stimulus bill brings to mind a question that has always puzzled me as a lapsed Catholic.

The Catholic Church officially considers artificial birth control to be INTRINSICALLY EVIL, but the American bishops have not in recent decades, as far as I know, pushed for laws against contraceptives as they have with regard to abortion.

Of course, it’s a WELL-KNOWN FACT that most of the American Catholic laity pay little or no heed to the church’s stand against birth control. But is that any excuse for the hierarchy to treat the prohibition as a dead letter?

I mean, if it’s intrisically evil, why the relative silence?

I’m guessing there are two reasons: 1) Legislation banning birth control would have no chance of passage; 2) The effort would alienate much of the American Catholic laity (not to mention non-Catholics) and perhaps thin the ranks in the pews.

Never any chance that more than a few House Republicans would back Obama’s stimulus bill

5 comments January 28th, 2009

THIS GUY reminds us that the opposition party is…well, the opposition party.

UPDATE: THIS OTHER GUY says House Republicans would rather vote to bring on a depression than back Obama’s plan.

When a federal stimulus program put thousands of people to work in Rockford

5 comments January 28th, 2009

 

The current debate over the Obama administration’s proposed economic stimulus bill brings to mind the Rockford experience when the Works Progress Administration was established during the Great Depression.

The following account is from “Rockford — Big Town, Little City,” which was authored by a brilliant journalist and local historian whose name escapes me:

In 1933, Progressive Party candidate and former Socialist C. Henry Bloom was elected mayor of Rockford, a post he held for the next 20 years, except for one four-year term.

“We are assuming office under the most trying period ever confronted by a new administration,” he said in his inaugural address. “We shall strive to practice economy…without too greatly crippling public and social service.”

The challenge was daunting. City revenues were down sharply. The water department was $90,000 in arrears on its bills. Local law enforcement faced added burdens with the repeal of Prohibition.

The new mayor’s first step was to push a referendum on on a $450,000 bond issue for new storm sewers. The project, Bloom said, would put hundreds of people to work, and a third of the cost would be paid by the federal government, “an outright gift.” But voters rejected the plan.

Then, in the election of 1934, Bloom lost his Progressive Party majority on the Rockford City Council.

He lamented the implied knock on his administration and the “ill will arising from the great universal distress — blind resentment against the inability to obtain jobs…It is hardly reasonable to blame the mayor for matters that were beyond his power to remedy or change.”

Bloom won re-election in 1935, but only by 413 votes out of almost 25,000 cast.  His hand was strengthened, however, by the resurgence of the Progressives, who regained control of the council.

Now Bloom was ready for new efforts to spur economic recovery.  Critics, the mayor said, were only trying to “mislead the people to oppose matters that are in the interest of their own welfare. Many so-called radical ideas of yesterday are recognized as practical necessities today.”

During Bloom’s first term, the Federal Civil Works Administration put hundreds of local people to work planting trees and installing new street lights at an average weekly wage of $15. When that program was replaced in 1935 by the Works Progress Administration, the city was ready with a list of road improvements, bridge and culvert construction, school repairs and flood-control projects.

“We wanted to avoid the leaf-raking jobs,” said Bloom.

By the following spring, 4,153 people were on WPA payrolls in Winnebago County.

In all, WPA projects in the Rockford area included: an 800-foot flood-control dam on Keith Creek; a disposal plant in Pecatonica; 44 miles of sanitary sewers and 31 miles of storm sewers; 22 miles of streets and alleys; 12 miles of curbs and gutters; 11 miles of water mains; 31 miles of sidewalks; a pedestrian underpass at Highland School; 46 other schools repaired; 200 street lights installed; and 4,500 maple trees planted and 5,000 dead trees removed.

[The following year], the Rockford area experienced a comeback. More than 4,000 news cars were sold locally, and retail sales topped $42 million, double what they were three years earlier.  The worst of the Great Depression was over.

Obama the most famous living person ever?

13 comments January 28th, 2009

 

Vanity Fair MAKES THE CASE for Barack Obama’s unprecedented global fame.

But aren’t Rod Blagojevich and Roland Burris coming on strong?  (Just kidding, of course.)