So they’ve passed this massive spending bill without having read it. Who could have read it in the time they gave it? President Obama is set to sign it, unread of course. He’ll depend on his aides to tell him what’s in it. That’s the excuse he’ll give for not having read it either.

The Dems have had their wish list for 40 years and they’ve accomplished a lot of it with this bill. Most of what is in this bill should have been taken care of in the regular appropriations cycle, but maybe they were afraid that even with Dem control of both the legislative and executive branches that they wouldn’t get this stuff though in the regular process.

Then, too, this is supposed to be such a big deal. The President was able to get this huge spending bill passed so quickly, so soon into his administration. Yipee!

But he got no Republican support in the house, in fact he got bipartisan opposition to the bill. In the Senate, he got Specter and the Maine twins to help get it passed. But still, there were more than twice as many Democrats in opposition than there were Republicans in favor…

It’s not such a great accomplishment. The House has enough Democrats to pass anything they want without any Republican support at all. A fact they proved with this spending bill. Nancy Pelosi passed the bill with no Republican support and even with Democrat defection. An accomplishment would have been to garner Republican support. But that’s hard to do when you won’t let them have any input. When you just expect them to roll over and vote your way.

They want to help out people who are upside down in their mortgages, people who are in danger of foreclosure, or who are already in foreclosure.

What about me though? I pay my mortgage on time every month. I didn’t purchase a house that was out of my range. But, being a responsible person, I’m stuck. I have a 1200 square foot ranch house on a 1/10th acre lot. I have a crawlspace (with a full cement floor, not just a splash coat) that has flooded a few times rendering everything I had stored down there unusable. With no garage and no basement for storage, we spend extra each month for a storage locker to hold larger items and now smaller items that we used to store down below. The new Christmas tree since the old one was ruined, othere seasonal decorations, the children’s school work (lost quite a bit of the older childrens’ stuff), etc.

I wake up every morning with a badly aching back. If I had one of those Sleep Number beds with the hospital bed effect (raising the back, raising the knees, etc. I could sleep better and not have as much pain on waking as I do now. But I can’t fit a king size bed (which is what I would need, as Hubby likes to sleep flat…) in my house.

My house also only has one bathroom. Oh, for a second bathroom, even just a half bath, for when the main bath is occupied. Even just an extra toilet somewhere with a curtain around it. The kitchen sink is fine for handwashing after use.

This bill would give first time homebuyers a deal. Or people buying a new car or truck a deal. I am not a first time homebuyer. I may want a second vehicle, but we just don’t have the money for a new car or truck.

I would certainly love to get a bigger house with a basement and a garage. I would certainly love to have another vehicle. When the weather is inclement, Hubby leaves work early so I can take the truck to go get The Little Guy from school. If the weather is clement, I will walk a mile to the school and then a mile back with The Little Guy. I won’t let The Little Guy do this by himself yet. Too many scary people in the world. And eight year old boys are known for wandering and meandering and getting distracted during the walk home.

I’d love to have a bigger house that would allow me to have a dedicated office. One that would allow Hubby to have his own office too. A place where the kids can play, where The Little Guy could set up a train, or a Lego town and be able to leave it up instead of having to put it away all the time. A place where I could store my stuff without having to spend on an external storage area. A place for the Bowflex…

Oh, I hear that Hubby’s paycheck may have an extra $13 a week until next January when it goes down to $8 extra a week… W00t!

I wish the story had been more in depth, but it’s a start…

click for video

Today is a day to remember why you love him or her.

These books are no longer legal under CPSIA. Children’s books printed before 1985 may be toxic!

Aunt Louisa’s was given to an Estella on Christmas Day 1879 by her “Pa Pa”.

The Never Ending Story is printed in both green and red ink. Red for the story and green for the story in the story.

I’ve had The Five Children and It, by E. Nesbitt forever it seems…

at night because I forgot to set something up…

Dinner:

Chicken breasts, asparagus, and peaches all in the grill pan from Ikea. I used a moroccan spice blend from Target. Really good.

For an emergency bill why is most of the “spending” set for years in the future? If it’s in the future, then why does it need to be in this “emergency” bill?

See what happened in Kentucky (and is still happening) and see what’s happened before in many different areas of the country, a good choice for infrastructure spending would be on upgrading the electric grid. Get the lines underground. I think it was the summer of 2003 when a squirrel on an electric line disprupted power to nearly the entire eastern seaboard.

Getting the lines underground will protect them from weather, ice storms, tornados, etc. As a side benefit, getting the electric (and telephone and cable) lines underground will remove an eyesore and will save trees. How many times have you seen a tree that’s been utterly butchered to remove branches that may endanger lines?

We also need an upgraded electric grid to cover all the plug-in electric vehicles that we’re all supposed to buy. The current grid can barely handle the capacity it needs to now, let alone when all these electric cars are sitting in our driveways. Rolling blackouts, anyone?

Any new or rebuilt road contracts should include trenching for utilities where poles are.

And for all these “shovel ready” projects: we have to guarantee that they aren’t “Big Digs” and that they are “St. Anthony Falls Bridge Rebuilds”. On a road near where I live, all last summer was spent completely tearing up the road in the eastbound lanes and rebuilding it. In the fall, before construction was suspended for the winter, the east bound lanes were ready for travel, and they closed off the middle so eastbound is on brand new 18 inch thick concrete and westbound is still on 8-11 year old rebuilt concrete with massive asphalt patches.

You read that right. A road that was completely rebuilt 8-11 years ago is again being rebuilt. Only a few years after the road was first rebuilt, large (lane wide and 4-20 feet long) asphalt patches were required. A large portion of the road was cut out and replaced by asphalt and now the entire fairly new road is being totally removed and replaced. This is a main east/west artery. The road work is causing nightmares for commuters, slowing down traffic, extending each worker’s commute, increasing pollution…

If they’d put fly ash, a byproduct of coal power production, into the concrete mix, the road could last for 5 decades or more. That would decrease construction delays, decrease pollution from vehicles, save people time, and put a byproduct of coal power production to good use – another decrease in pollution. And think of the savings in taxpayer money if the road doesn’t have to be completely rebuilt every few years.

Generating public sector (government) jobs will not grow wealth or the economy. Only private sector jobs can do that. Public sector jobs don’t create anything. There is no manufacturing, no sales. Sure they consume a lot of stuff.  But what do they show for it?

Government can encourage or discourage the private sector. At the moment they are discouraging the private sector. Government wants to increase entitlements and increase government jobs. But if everyone is on the goverment teat with entitlements or employment, where does the money come from? Will government pay it’s employees with one hand and take from them with the other to pay the entitlements?

Without private sector business growing wealth and jobs, the money supply will decrease. Then, because government needs more and more money to pay for all they want to pay for, government will infuse more cash into the system, devaluing the dollar. It could, indeed, get to the point where we get in line to pay $300 for a left shoe because that’s all the government run shoe factory produced this month…

Wealth is not a zero sum affair. There isn’t only so much wealth around and no more. Business creates wealth. But they can’t create wealth if government taxes eat up too much. If there’s a de facto penalty for creating more profit, creating wealth. It will end up that all the money flows from and to the government and that will be a zero sum affair.

With government in charge it does mean that some will have to have a smaller piece of the pie in order for someone else to have a larger piece, or a piece at all.

With business creating wealth, it’s easy to just make more pie.

This administration has just gotten its beloved SCHIP expansion passed. The administration is going to pay for this by increasing the federal cigarette tax. Many adults in the families that SCHIP is supposed to help the most are smokers. So, government is paying for the expansion of SCHIP with taxes on a product used by people in families SCHIP is supposed to help. Then too, an increase in the cigarette tax will encourage many people to quit so as to avoid the added expense. Thereby reducing the revenue stream just as expenses for SCHIP will be inevitably increasing. Many will drop private insurance in order to take advantage of SCHIP. Why pay for something when you can get it for free?

According to the New York Times a very large snake fossil was found in Columbia. In life it was as long as a school bus and weighed more than a ton.

From the article:

But the existence of such a large snake may also help clarify how hot the tropics became during an era when the planet, as a whole, was far warmer than it is now, and also how well moist tropical ecosystems can tolerate a much warmer global climate.

all emphasis mine. So how is it again that it was decided that warmer than it is now is BAD?

This Alec Baldwin Hulu commerical.

click for video

[cref congressional-term-limits Reposted] by request from November 2006…

I think it’s time to discuss congressional term limits once again.

There are way too many old fossils in the House and in the Senate in both* parties.

Terms were set by the Founders at two years for the House and six years for the Senate for some very good reasons.

The Founders wanted to minimize the disruption to a person’s life and livelihood while he (or she) served the people in the House of Representatives. They didn’t set a limit on the number of terms, but expected that citizen representatives would serve a term or two and go back to their regular lives.

The Senators were appointed by the states until 1913 when the 17th Amendment instituted direct election of Senators. The term has always been six years. This ensured some continuity. Each state had four continuous years of the same two Senators (barring death, impeachment, or resignation) and each Senator had six continuous years (to go with the two years for each House Representative).

The Twentieth Century brought with it career politicians. Gerrymandering districts aided re-election of incumbents. No one in Congress wants to give up their perks.

This is my new idea. Term limits, but they are only continuous.

It would work this way: A member could serve in the House of Representatives for no more than six continuous terms (12 years). Then he or she would be required to take at least one term off, at which point the (former) member could run for the post again.

In the Senate, the same 12 years would apply, but in this case it would be two continuous terms and he or she would have to take a break. The (former) Senator would have to take the entire six year term off – no fair running for the other Senator’s seat when it may come up…

Just my opinion, but getting some new blood in the House and Senate may help real things get done. Ethically it may help as well. If you can’t promise more than 12 years out…

Then, of course, there’s my wish that for every new law an old, obsolete law is actually repealed and taken off the books, but that’s another story…

***

Added February 2009…

Currently the succession for the Presidency is:

1. VP Joe Biden (served 6 [36 years] terms – would have started 7th if not VP)
2. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (currently serving her 11th term [20 years+])
3. Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Byrd (91 years old – currently serving his 9th term – over 50 years in the Senate!)

According to Wikipedia (with all due caution) the top 3 (in years) for both House and Senate are as follows (Biden used to be 4th…):

*currently all the top fossils are in the Democrat party.

Charlie Rangel (D-NY 38+ years = 19+ terms!) and Pete Stark (D-CA – 36+ years = 18+ terms!) round out the top 5 in the House. The list at Wikipedia lists all longtime congresscritters, not just the incumbent ones, and the Senate list only had 3 incumbents on it.

When our state and federal representatives make the laws that govern their districts’ composition and make laws that favor incumbency, it’s hard to see that there’s any Hope ™ for Change ™ at all, at all.

This Monday Morning it’s Groundhog Day. The movie with Bill Murray will be on FX at 6:00 Eastern.

This year the Vernal Equinox (first day of Spring) is on March 20th.

There are 46 days between now and then.

That’s 6 weeks and 4 days.

So, even if the groundhog sees his shadow there’s still 6 weeks of winter left no matter how you look at it.