PrintJanuary 27, 2009
If it walks like a duck
The 2008 election year gave rise to the phrase "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig". This year, I will make it my personal challenge to put the phrase "If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it must be a duck", on the lips of Americans who are now choking on the poisonous elixir that Washington has been dispensing for decades.
We are now being told by the Washington brain trust that this new stimulus plan will create three to four million jobs and "jolt" the economy out of our economic malaise. While this drink appears to be more Kool-Aid dispensed in a sippy cup, it is, in reality, arsenic with a hemlock chaser-being administered with a siphon hose (disguised as a must to save the economy).
Our leaders, professionals at political spin, have perfected the Jekyll and Hyde ruse. While Jekyll broadcasts to the world that we will no longer accept corruption and opaque government transactions, Hyde is sneaking around the back, skulking in the shadows as he hands out the quiet truth. America, it's time for us to take a pass on the Kool-Aid sound bites and pay attention to what Hyde is doing out back. This truth-spinning rhetoric, while easy on the ears, is nothing more than political doublespeak.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the new stimulus (currently at $825 billion), would have the government only spending about $26B in 2009 and $110B in 2010. Now Jekyll tells us that $3 of every $4 of the stimulus should be spent within 18 months as we need to stimulate the economy, yet Hyde out back shows that this plan calls for only one out of every six dollars to be spent in the next two years! Keeping in mind, this is the non-partisan CBO making these assessments.
Jekyll is also telling us that this duck is a stimulus plan, yet Hyde out back tells us that Nancy Pelosi wants to include a $200 million subsidy for Planned Parenthood and contraceptives. Jekyll is out front naming his duck "progressive stimulus", yet Hyde out back is showing us the birth certificate naming the oddity "PORK".
Remember the group ACORN? These are the good folks who, in the name of community activism, registered dead people to vote, registered the same person multiple times and even registered Mickey Mouse to vote. They have run afoul of the law in multiple states for their "community activities". Put simply, this is an organization that is doing its best to destroy the electoral process with bogus voting-and now they want us to pay for it! The new stimulus plan wants to reward these fine folks and help them grow their activities. According to Fox news, the Democrats' bill makes groups like ACORN eligible for a $4.19 billion pot of money for "neighborhood stabilization activities." Funds for this purpose were authorized in the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, signed into law in 2008. The funds were however, limited to state and local governments. Now House Democrats are taking the unprecedented step of making ACORN and other groups eligible for these funds.
Hunting season or not, it's time to take aim at this duck!
