Dear Senator Collins:

Still, it’s an awful lot of zeroes, isn’t it? A billion here, a billion there… it’s made to seem like it’s nothing at all. I don’t know about you, but big time spending for any reason makes me big time nervous.

I keep thinking to myself…”When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you need to do (if you want to get out of the hole) is to stop digging.”

Japan tried to dig their way out of a hole a decade ago. It didn’t help them. Just prolonged their agony and left another generation deeper in debt to the State.

Bush crammed $750 Billion of spending down our throats “quick quick quick vote and don’t discuss it!” Doesn’t seem to have helped us much beyond allowing his Corporate buddies to continue handing out bonuses and keep up the appearance of business as usual.

Now, I realise that most of the sheeple in our nation have held to the incorrect assumption that all levels of Government are here to shelter, feed and protect us from cradle to grave since FDR’s Raw Deal, but I had hoped that with all the talk of ‘Change’ recently that someone inside the Beltway would actually mean it.

Simply relying on the age old Liberal Big Government (as opposed to W’s supposed ‘Conservative’ version of Big Government) to “Borrow from tomorrow’s generation’s paychecks to pay the bills that our parents accrued which coming due today” is NOT change. It is the same sort of whacked thinking from both parties that created the burst bubbles that we are dealing with now on both a macro and micro economic scale.

Many economists believe that FDR’s spending spree prolonged and deepened the (first) Great Depression. Luckily (?) FDR had WWII to restart an economy that was largely built on manufacturing.

In case anyone isn’t looking, war hasn’t been the “health of [our] State” for a good number of years and we no longer have an economy built on manufacturing because our union based shops cannot compete with subsidised near slave labour abroad.

I respect you Marde, but I completely disagree with you here. The sad fact is, if we want things to actually change, (more than just putting a bumper sticker on our car that states “Change”) we need to stop lying to ourselves that substantial and meaningful change will not require us to re-evaluate our reliance on a Corporate based economic system which is mostly predicated on our ever increasing access to cheap credit to feed an ever increasing consumerist appetite to buy cheap plastic stuff that we don’t want or need to replace the cheap plastic stuff that we didn’t want or need last year.

This way of life is unsustainable and is at the very root of most of our society’s ills…from our interventionist wars abroad to the flagrant poisoning of our environment. Putting a several trillion dollar band aid of ‘stimulus’ on it will only prolong the inevitable total collapse.

The alternative? Stop spending tax dollars that we haven’t collected (Hel, haven’t even printed) yet in hopes of controlling a Market that is impossible to so manipulate. Bernie Madoff is small potatoes…The Federal Reserve, IMF and World Bank run the real Ponzie Scheme. If a business over leveraged itself, let that business fail and then prosecute the corporate leadership for gross negligence. Anything less, incentivises future greed and wrong doing because the Federal Government is there to protect their Corporate masters to see that no ill consequences are in effect for such wrong actions, but there is much profit to gain in between bubbles bursting.

Foster small, local and sustainable economies based on reasonable profit, but not reliant on ever increasing growth. This worked pretty well for thousands of years prior to the Industrial Revolution and that was before we had the technology that we have to keep us Globally connected.

Nope. Nothing wrong with agreeing to disagree amicably neighbor.

Most humans really all want the same things from life. That we can looks for so many solutions to any problem that faces us in this country is our greatest strength and one of the few things that gives me hope.

The plan will pass regardless. No sense in my griping about it I suppose. I’m just doing what I can to teach my grrrls how to survive any consequences that may (likely) result. Hope I’m just being overly cautious and that I’m just listening to the wrong economists.

State Education funding definitely should not be trimmed out of the stimulus. I feel your letter was well written. This stimulus package actually has some substance within it, and while, yes it may borrow future taxpayer’s dollars.. it provides the opportunity to provide for new jobs that are desperately needed. The United States is falling further and further behind China and India… and we still keep investing money in the wrong places.