If It Walks Like A Pig, And Talks Like A Pig

Duh.

Some of those sound better than others, the worst being Boxer's. We want lending and spending.

odd, isn't it, how Michael cites only Democrats as among those looking for what "looks like a pig"?
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And while the article he cites is equally biased against Democrats, it does make the point that REID IS WORKING WITH NEVADA'S GOP SENATOR TO GET THIS STUFF INTO THE BILL....
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So Michael, why did you leave out the stuff about GOP Senator Ensign's involvement?

Some of those sound better than others, the worst being Boxer's. We want lending and spending.
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I think that the Nevada stuff (at least the stuff benefitting the casinos) is equally bad to what Boxer is trying to pull.
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(Nor do I think that the airport construction project deserves any special consideration on the US taxpayers dime. If they need more money, increase fees on the airlines, which can pass it on to their customers who can afford to lose money at the craps table.)
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Re Boxer, rather than providing incentives to return the funds to the USA, why not provide major disincentives for using offshore tax havens?
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Personally, I think that the US should tell the Cayman Islands that it wants full information on all accounts connected to Americans -- and then put liens on those accounts. And if the Caymans refuse, then set up an air and sea blockade until they do the right thing.

Isn't the question which of the underlying initiatives have merit?

I left out Ensign for space, as there is a length after which excerpting blog posts get annoying without a jump. But yes indeed, Republicans are on board too:
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and you're so jump-ophobic that its preferable to make it appear that only one party is bellying up to the trough? Sorry, while I'm usually one of the few who defend you, this was inexcusable.

On Boxer's idea, this may not be bad. The companies may simply leave the profits offshore without the break. They might not, of course, like the threat banks make to move to NJ to keep from paying NYC property tax.
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(This once again illustrates why the corporate income tax is a bad tax.)

Here again we see how the Federal trough functions like a lottery or gambling pool. Presumably any projects that are local to States could be bought and paid for with State tax dollars. But by everyone agreeing to pay a much larger percentage as Federal outlay, the competetion to get that money back proceeds apace and in the meantime fiscal-conservative journalists get to tut-tut about how wasteful it is that people want to see their DC dollars returned to their districts.
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It's all tacitly agreed to, and Scherer moralizing on the subject is just part of the whole dishonest game.

Boxer's idea seems fine in general, but right now is about getting banks lending and people spending - not necessarily profits. What bugs me is the laziness in just slapping a "pork" label on stuff. Some things are good. Some bad. Educate us. Which proposals seem stimulative and which don't? Absent that, it's a big jerk-off.

This doesn't sound Kosher to me. Republican's are pork free? Republicans not listed in a WSJ dispatch, shocking?

Whatever. Just STOP covering the rescue mission for our economy solely from the angle of a political contest. The stimulus package has an underlying meaning - an effort to stimulate the f---ing economy so people don't keep lose jobs and all behind on saving for college, and push retirement out to forever. I'm way past weary of the whole thrust of coverage being a scorecard on the political parties. How about some saturation coverage about what smart people think will work and whether we are doing it? We're trying to send kids to college and retire some day out here.

Which proposals seem stimulative and which don't?
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keep in mind that a lot of spending -- especially that going to support existing state run programs -- are not designed to "stimulate" so much as prevent further layoffs.
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I don't see how any of these tax dodges will be used to provide additional jobs. And while they might prevent a casino or two from going bankrupt, the fact is that the tax breaks aren't going to make a difference in the demand for what the casinos provide, and there will be job losses regardless of whether they get the tax break or not if fewer people spend less money in Vegas.
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As for Boxer's "repatriation" proposal -- like I said, why should we reward those who took money offshore in a tax avoidance scam? Even if it comes back into the country, its not going to create jobs -- it will just inflate stock prices.
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If we're going to use federal dollars to help businesses create jobs, those dollars should come in the form of loans (or loan guarantees) on projects that will actually create jobs. Make more money available through the Small Business Administration, and tell steve wynn to stuff it.

What irks me, Dirks, is California. They've undertaxed themselves into a crisis, and will be rewarded for it.
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Also, this stupid pork frame is especially damaging to the need for infrastructure investment.
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It may be that Nixon's block grant idea is a better one--with the amount of aid set by some formula involving population, income levels and required fraction directed to urban populations (because bicameral state legislatures skew rural, just as the fed does).

like I said, why should we reward those who took money offshore in a tax avoidance scam? Even if it comes back into the country, its not going to create jobs -- it will just inflate stock prices.
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The SBA idea is also a good one. But, of course, small business has no representation in DC.

And you know, you might tell the High Sheriffs that nobody is really gonna be interested in a twitter feed that consists of the titles of swampland blog posts.

@jayackroyd - Full TIME feed - http://twitter.com/TIME

Are you following that, PMC? Am I alone in thinking this is a stupid misunderstanding of what twitter is?

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Thoughts:
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1) Isn't that part of what a state's representatives are supposed to do? Not to greatly defend Glass Jaw Harry - there are plenty of projects that shouldn't get funded - but the allocation of tax revenue is part of the job.
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2) You cut out this part:

Last week, Mr. Reid worked with his Nevada colleague, Republican Sen. John Ensign, to include one version of the debt-buyback provision in the stimulus plan in the Senate Finance Committee...This week, Mr. Reid has helped a group of Republican and Democratic senators who are trying to iron out a compromise on the provision. The senators hope to add the compromise to the final bill in the next week.

Did you do that in order to present Democrats in a more negative light? That's worse than what the WSJ did by writing, "Dozens of other senators..." and only pointing out Democrats in the final two paragraphs. Makes it look like another attempt to stir up public outrage.
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3) Isn't government spending related to job growth the purpose of this recovery act? That's a bit different than renewing the budget for a failed weapons system, which would truly be a waste of tax dollars.
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4) I object to the right-wing's framing of this debate. Reading "All Pork is Bad" off of a bumper sticker over and over again does not demonstrate an understanding of the legislative role in allocating tax dollars.

The lenses through which this thing is being looked at are some monumentally stupid: whether it's a tax cut, extent of bipartisanship, percentage porkiness, etc. We need more analysis of the plain and boring likely stimulative effect as well as a sustained level of teaching about macroeconomics. This is the real deal here.

@jayack - People use Twitter in WILDLY different ways. I like some news feeds like that for sort of a "river" effect -- whenever I'm in the mood, I can check it out and either engage or not based on the icon, etc.

Imagine that, the Wing Nut Journal is calling the bill pork laden. Still not pointing out that even if you tallied everything they could find up it wouldn't total more than 2% of the entire bill. And the question remains, what is the definition of pork? Nobody ever wants to define it other than governement spending. Scherer doesn't define it because that would mean he would actually have to do some work other than just pasting the part of the Wing Nut Journal article that highlighted Democrats transgressions. Not realizing that he still let the cat out of the bag. By acknowledging that Senator Ensign was behind the tax cut in the first place it gives truth to the lie that Republicans haven't been included in the process. But will we see a post about that? HELL NO. Instead lets just keep flogging the "pork" meme. I mean phuck it if we go into a great depression, Scherer probably won't have a job and the country will probably be in peril but hey at least Scherer got to pump out some bullsh*t might hurt the Democrats in 2010 if our country doesn't disolve into anarchy by then.
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BTW Right now Dick Durbin is kicking ass on the floor of the Senate

Doesn't Cali still give the Federal Government more money than it receives, even if this bailout thing happens?
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Also, not a fan of Reid. I hope Obama is on the phone with these people today kicking ass ans smoking cigs. And he quit the cigs.

I'm starting to max out with twitter. i'm wondering if it's gonna scale. It's still in the early adopter phase.

I am not joking when I say that I wish Obama or surrogates would go a little Perot on the nation -- charts, graphs, and similar. Hey, I was an Economics major but I could use a refresher on Keynesian economics. Obama is a PowerPoint guy at his core. Fire it up and play past all the bull---- and talk to us about what is going on here. Some or even most of it may go over our head but even so it will show us that you have your eye on what matters, not this surface gloss.