Obama Stimulus package in historical terms

Posted by Bob Weber on Feb 14th, 2009 in Economics, Government Waste, Our Changing World, Politics | 0 comments

The stimulus package that just passed both legislative houses of the government is set at $789bn. This cost, along with previous stimulus packages and the guarantees the government has made to back some financial institutions could bring the total costs of this bailout, in a worst case scenario, to over 9 trillion dollars.

Just to put things in perspective, here is an analysis by Jim Bianco of Bianco Research of what the largest historical US government projects cost in today’s dollars.

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

The New Deal, which was created to get us out of the worst depression this country has experienced and which included the construction of numerous parks, roads, buildings, dams, power plants, airports and other projects which are still in use today would ONLY cost $500 billion today. That’s less than 2/3 of the plan President Obama has managed to push through congress this week, and only a drop in the bucket compared to all the guarantees the government has made.

We can only hope that this money doesn’t go to bonuses, office remodels for CEOs and other perks for the upper class like the last round of bailout money did.

Creepy PSAs

Posted by Bob Weber on May 16th, 2007 in Government Waste, Humor, Our Changing World | 0 comments

Your tax dollars at work – PSAs warning kids about how the Internet works.

How is it possible that high school kids don’t get that once you post pics of yourself on the net they will be there forever? I think it’s the parents, Ad Council and government officials that were shocked by this. Kids know it will be up there forever, but don’t care, just like they don’t care about the tattoos, nose ring or GPA.

The first video makes me wonder what Neil Flynn would think about the evil Janitor stereotype.

Stupid Daylight Savings Time

Posted by Bob Weber on Mar 11th, 2007 in Government Waste, Our Changing World, Personal, Politics | 0 comments

There are probably thousands (maybe millions) of posts today complaining about this, but I’m going to say it anyway.

I HATE Daylight Savings Time. Actually, it’s not the DST that I hate as much as it is the TIME CHANGE. Not everyone has this problem, but I’m screwed up for at least a week after the spring change. Losing that hour out of my life is hard on my schedule.

My favorite thing about the whole time change is the idiocy of it all. We don’t get ‘an extra hour of daylight’. The amount of daylight is the same yesterday as it is today (except for the 30 seconds we gain going in to summer). The whole thing is just a nationwide gimmick used to trick us into going to bed an hour earlier and getting up an hour earlier. How dumb is that.

We save energy at the cost of thousands of hours of lost productivity due to sleep schedules being screwed up. Then in the fall, when we could really use the ‘extra hour of light’, they take it back. Why? ‘Because of the children’ who can’t go to school in the dark.

The whole thing is just ridiculous and makes me irritable. I’m going to keep complaining until somebody puts a stop to the nonsense!

Texas Judge dismisses MySpace case

Posted by Bob Weber on Mar 7th, 2007 in Government Waste, Our Changing World, Personal, Sex & Dating | 0 comments

Just found this, but back in February a Federal Judge in Texas dismissed a suit against MySpace. The lawsuit was brought by the mother of a 14 year old girl who lied about her age on MySpace, made a date with a 19 year old and was assaulted while on the date. They alleged that MySpace should have done more to make sure the 14 year old was who she said she was.

Sparks’ decision to dismiss the lawsuit was based mainly on the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which exempted websites and Internet service providers from responsibility for what their users said online. The law also states that those providers can’t be held liable for adopting imperfect protections against indecent or harmful content — a provision aimed at encouraging sites to do the best they could to safeguard users. To its credit, MySpace has taken several steps to guard against sexual predators, such as limiting the contact between adults and users who say they are younger than 16 years old. It is also lobbying state legislatures and Congress to require convicted sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses, and it plans to unveil software that could help parents see how their children are identifying themselves on MySpace.

This relates closely to my recent post about adult websites. A website should not be held accountable when an unsupervised underage minor is exposed to unacceptable content, especially if they lie about their age.

In related news, the Connecticut legislature has take the opposite approach.

Connecticut lawmakers unveiled legislation Wednesday that would require MySpace.com and other social-networking sites to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent before minors can post profiles.

It will be interesting to see how much time and money is wasted in court due to this law…

California sues carmakers

Posted by Bob Weber on Sep 20th, 2006 in Environment, Government Waste, Our Changing World | 0 comments

In the most insane news of the day the State of California is suing automakers for Global Warming.

This is actually an interesting case. California is going to have to convince a jury that

1. Global Warming actually is occurring
2. Greenhouse gasses are causing global warming
3. Automakers are responsible for these greenhous gasses

This should really bring the global warming to the forefront – what do you want to bet that automakers can find (buy) scientists that dispute global warming alltogether thus disputing the idea that there is a consensus in the scientific community on the subject.

Personally, I think we should all get together and sue the State of California for global warming since they have

• Allowed drivers to drive too fast and not enforced traffic laws causeing vehicles to burn excess fuel
• Created bigger roads to encourage more driving than needed
• Provided it’s citizens with inadequate public transportation forcing them to drive their cars
• Allowed businesses and residences to run air conditioning which uses power causing greenhouse gasses from coal-fired power plants

In fact, we should also have a lawsuit against the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and other environmental organizations for blocking US production of Nuclear power plants. If they had not done so, cheap electricity would have promoted the widespread use of electric cars.