Federal stimulus money

I just read some information about how the state divvied up its road construction stimulus money from the federal gumment.

Louisville, and the rest of the county around it that didn't merge into the city-county government, has a population of around 700,000 people. About 17% of the entire state's population is here, plus a huge network of state highways and a very important set of Ohio River freeway bridges that are in need of repair, and trying to get two new ones added to keep the ones that are there from getting jammed up any further. The county has so many people that it is a state district in and of itself, and it got about 8% of the $440 million allotted to Kentucky.

The guy who is the equivalent of the Senate Majority Leader in the state senate somehow magically ended up with 18% of that money for his district. A backwoods district in the middle of fucking nowhere (it includes the area my mom grew up in, so I know for a fact there is not a goddamned thing there to even spend money on). A four-county area with a combined population of 78,000. They're getting nearly a fifth of all of the Kentucky road construction stimulus money.

I naively thought you were talking about our stimulus package. Everyone earning under 100k gets $950, as a means of stimulating the economy but even more obviously as a major suck up.

Everyone but me, that is, because I haven't done last year's taxes...damnit.

Swerve wrote:I naively thought you were talking about our stimulus package. Everyone earning under 100k gets $950, as a means of stimulating the economy but even more obviously as a major suck up.

Everyone but me, that is, because I haven't done last year's taxes...damnit.

Yeah, we've done that a couple of times in the last several years. And look how much better our economy has gotten!

yeah, a lot of the stimulus money is going to disappear. you can't count on that, thanks to the hundreds of billions of dollars of waste from our government each year.

hell, by skipping this little sojourn in iraq, we'd have 2 trillion dollars that we could dump on the economy. hell, we could have given every working person 10,000 dollars and thousands of innocent people wouldn't be dead, too! awesome!

fuck this country.

i wish theyd give us handouts......but then they'd just add it to the 100k+ every taxpayer in the country owes as national debt because gordon brown cant do his job properly

debt is the new savings...

or something.

The reserve bank is pretty much saying Australia's in a recession now. A stimulus package was needed. If the Government didn't need to worry about the voters, the money could have pumped directly into infrastructure projects and the industries that need the help. By that I don't mean bailouts, but the Govt could have just cut out the middle man and bought toys and clothing for charities, equipment for schools etc.
Instead, each person gets $950. Everyone knows a ridiculous proportion of this will go towards cigarettes, alcohol and into poker machines. But at the same time, everyone loves getting their own piece of the deal and loves getting something back in a time of need.

Democracy has committed us to the stupid option on this one.

The should offer the option to decide where your tax money goes. I hate when they take my fucking money and waste it on all kinds of bullshit I don't give a fuck about.

Omni wrote:The should offer the option to decide where your tax money goes. I hate when they take my fucking money and waste it on all kinds of bullshit I don't give a fuck about.

It sounds like a good idea, but when I look at how popular all these reality shows are, and how "17 Again" was the #1 movie in America last weekend, I don't think I want the public deciding things like that. All of the roads will be broken and the schools will be shut down due to underfunding, but everyone will be able to ride their government-issued Rascal scooter to their free Ford Expedition in their garage and drive it to their own personal Dairy Queen drive-thru that everyone now has at the end of their driveway, and there will be a giant 500-foot statue in the middle of town depicting the fat guy from "Lost" playing Texas Hold 'Em with Tricia Helfer from "Battlestar Galactica."

here's a solution: fucking demolish every empty building in developed nations. if there is some commercial property with 'for lease' or residential with 'for sale', just back up the dynamite truck and flatten it. if there's anybody inside, it's their own fault for being stupid.

JaysonAych wrote:

Omni wrote:The should offer the option to decide where your tax money goes. I hate when they take my fucking money and waste it on all kinds of bullshit I don't give a fuck about.

It sounds like a good idea, but when I look at how popular all these reality shows are, and how "17 Again" was the #1 movie in America last weekend, I don't think I want the public deciding things like that. All of the roads will be broken and the schools will be shut down due to underfunding, but everyone will be able to ride their government-issued Rascal scooter to their free Ford Expedition in their garage and drive it to their own personal Dairy Queen drive-thru that everyone now has at the end of their driveway, and there will be a giant 500-foot statue in the middle of town depicting the fat guy from "Lost" playing Texas Hold 'Em with Tricia Helfer from "Battlestar Galactica."

so true

people act like 17 is such a novel movie idea. i already saw it 20 years ago with tom hanks and a giant piano.

17 again is the complete opposite of Big.

still the same idea

No. One involves a kid becoming an adult overnight but remaining in the same time, the other (presumably because I haven't seen it) involves an adult going back in time with his current memories and being a kid again.

you saw it.

If we were allowed to allocate our tax dollars directly I would put it all into buying cool, china-crushing military tech.


So basically no change.

dunnas wrote:No. One involves a kid becoming an adult overnight but remaining in the same time, the other (presumably because I haven't seen it) involves an adult going back in time with his current memories and being a kid again.

Oh.... so it's morelike the one with Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron. Or the one with Fred Savage and Judge Reinhold.

I have a feeling that i've probably seen both of those, many many years ago, but am thankful I can not remember at all what they are.