Sunday, February 08, 2009

Mo' Money for N'awlins

Our Knight-Protector and Defender of Yarn Balls has this little bit of news from the Land of the Stimuloid Porkgasm.
Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D) is presently asking Congress for 250 BILLION DOLLARS to rebuild New Orleans .

Interesting number... what does it mean?

Well... if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, and child) you each get $516,528.

Or... if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans , your home gets $1,329,787.
It reminds me of the comparison Mark Steyn made between The One and Christ.
Jesus took a handful of loaves and two fish and fed 5,000 people. Barack wants to take a trillion pieces of pork and feed it to a handful of Democratic-party interest groups.
Finally, there's this little bit of analysis from Michael Greenspan.
This monstrosity of a bill, and the assumptions underlying it (e.g., "Politicians are wiser than non-politicians," "Citizens don't own what they earn," etc.), are making me consider joining the Republican Party. Not because the Republicans are great, but because they've shown they can be decent. The Democrats are just ravening parasites.
That sounds about right.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you realize that if every congressman and senator were given a billion dollars to take home, we'd still be ahead by a quarter TRILLION dollars?

535 billion vice 800+ billion. Conservative-leaning congressmen can just return it to their constituents; liberals can give it to their buddies; the enterprising can drop it from helicopters.

That would be an interesting experiment... and then see how things are in each congressional district in a year.

K T Cat said...

I love that idea!

Ohioan@Heart said...

I keep wondering, does the average American even begin to comprehend the magnitude of these numbers?

I mean this seriously.

Most probably have some kind of grasp of numbers up to say 100,000 (a huge crowd at the very biggest sports stadiums). A few, maybe, up to 1,000,000. But after that do they comprehend, really, the differnces between 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000, or are the names (billion / trillion) synonymous with "gillion".

Does a typical family of four realize that an additional borrowing of $1,000,000,000,000 divides out to about $13,000 for their family? Even at today's low interest rates, it takes something like $70/month, every month, *forever*, from their family income, to service this additional debt.

Who can honestly think this is a good idea?