Varifrank, on Twitter:

Pass it now or we may never recover’ – is he talking about the Dems or the American people?

Bad as the democrat stimulus package is on the surface, Charles Hurt notes that it contains a covert clause with far-reaching ramifications.

Buried deep inside the massive spending orgy that Democrats jammed through the House this week lie five words that could drastically undo two decades of welfare reforms.

The very heart of the widely applauded Welfare Reform Act of 1996 is a cap on the amount of federal cash that can be sent to states each year for welfare payments.

But, thanks to the simple phrase slipped into the legislation, the new “stimulus” bill abolishes the limits on the amount of federal money for the so-called Emergency Fund, which ships welfare cash to states.

“Out of any money in the Treasury of the United States not otherwise appropriated, there are appropriated such sums as are necessary for payment to the Emergency Fund,” Democrats wrote in Section 2101 on Page 354 of the $819 billion bill. In other words, the only limit on welfare payments would be the Treasury itself.

“This re-establishes the welfare state and creates dependency all over the place,” said one startled budget analyst after reading the line.

In addition to reopening the floodgates of dependency on federal welfare programs, the change once again deepens the dependency of state governments on the federal government.

Ben Stein voices outrage at the feckless irresponsibility of Congress and the newly-hatched Obama administration.

The new kind of politics of hope. Eight hours of debate in the HR to pass a bill spending $820 billion, or roughly $102 billion per hour of debate.

Only ten per cent of the “stimulus” to be spent on 2009.

Close to half goes to entities that sponsor or employ or both members of the Service Employees International Union, federal, state, and municipal employee unions, or other Democrat-controlled unions.

This bill is sent to Congress after Obama has been in office for seven days. It is 680 pages long. According to my calculations, not one member of Congress read the entire bill before this vote. Obviously, it would have been impossible, given his schedule, for President Obama to have read the entire bill.

For the amount spent we could have given every unemployed person in the United States roughly $75,000.

We could give every person who had lost a job and is now passing through long-term unemployment of six months or longer roughly $300,000.

There has been pork barrel politics since there has been politics. The scale of this pork is beyond what had ever been imagined before — and no one can be sure it will actually do much stimulation.

How do you improve the economy? You restore confidence by reducing taxes and government expenditure and by adopting policies calculated to assure a sound currency.

Under Bush, and far more under Obama already, even in his first week in office, the policy of the US Government has been to throw money out the window, assuring higher taxes, significant inflation sooner or later, and demolishing confidence. The only difference between the administrations is that the Bush administration gave federal money to the financial industry, and Obama is giving away a lot more money, primarily as a democrat dream-fulfilling shopping spree.

Rush Limbaugh offers a bipartisan stimulus package idea. Rush’s proposal isn’t perfect, but it certainly makes a great deal more sense than Obama’s.

There’s a serious debate in this country as to how best to end the recession. The average recession will last five to 11 months; the average recovery will last six years. Recessions will end on their own if they’re left alone. What can make the recession worse is the wrong kind of government intervention.

I believe the wrong kind is precisely what President Barack Obama has proposed….

Yes, elections have consequences. But where’s the bipartisanship, Mr. Obama? This does not have to be a divisive issue. My proposal is a genuine compromise.

Fifty-three percent of American voters voted for Barack Obama; 46% voted for John McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Give that 1% to President Obama. Let’s say the vote was 54% to 46%. As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009: 54% of the $900 billion — $486 billion — will be spent on infrastructure and pork as defined by Mr. Obama and the Democrats; 46% — $414 billion — will be directed toward tax cuts, as determined by me.

Then we compare. We see which stimulus actually works. This is bipartisanship! It would satisfy the American people’s wishes, as polls currently note; and it would also serve as a measurable test as to which approach best stimulates job growth.

I say, cut the U.S. corporate tax rate — at 35%, among the highest of all industrialized nations — in half. Suspend the capital gains tax for a year to incentivize new investment, after which it would be reimposed at 10%. Then get out of the way! Once Wall Street starts ticking up 500 points a day, the rest of the private sector will follow. There’s no reason to tell the American people their future is bleak. There’s no reason, as the administration is doing, to depress their hopes. There’s no reason to insist that recovery can’t happen quickly, because it can.

As a side note, this editorial makes it clear that Rush Limbaugh has become the main conservative source of leadership for the Republican Party.

Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before. – Rahm Emanuel

The Wall Street Journal quotes the democrat White House Chief of Staff’s dictum in explaining what the democrat’s so-called stimulus package is all about.

Democrats in Congress are certainly taking his advice to heart. The 647-page, $825 billion House legislation is being sold as an economic “stimulus,” but now that Democrats have finally released the details we understand Rahm’s point much better. This is a political wonder that manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years.

We’ve looked it over, and even we can’t quite believe it. There’s $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn’t turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There’s even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.

Read the whole thing. You and your children and your grandchildren will be paying for it.

The Twisted Spinster identifies the election victory of a second basically-unknown leftwing democrat in the aftermath of another GOP debacle as signifying a return to 1970s America, an America of economic disaster at home, humiliation abroad, and bell bottoms.

For those who were born too late and therefore are under the impression that the Seventies was a gloriously innocent time of day-glo colored discoball party fun fun fun, that decade was actually when the American character was sunk in neurotic depression. We ran from Vietnam like a bunch of scared big girls. The economy sucked. Cynicism and selfish, destructive behavior was rampant. Cars were hideous junk painted ugly “earth tones” like crap brown, condensed-milk yellow, ketchup-stain red, and garbage can green. (My father’s giant boat of a ‘73 Ford LTD was that color. Driving it was like trying to pilot the Hindenburg on the ground.) Fashions made men and women look like clowns. (Two words: plaid pantsuits.) The divorce rate, the drug-crime rate, the venereal disease rate — everything bad went up. The idea of the psycho vet helped trash the military in the eyes of the civilian public. And when Carter became president the fan that the shit had been hitting got turned up to high. We became known as a nation of weak, effeminate suck-ups. That’s why the Iranians were able to take our embassy hostage for a year. That’s what Obama and his supporters want to bring us back to. Let me ask anyone reading this: did you know anyone in your school who was known for trying to get everyone to like them? Did you think they were great people or did you laugh when you heard they were stuffed in their locker by one of the jocks? Get ready for America to be stuffed in a locker.

Via Kathy Shaidle and Ed Driscoll.

British conservative Gerald Warner is not drinking any of the Obama Inauguration Kool-Aid.

This will end in tears. The Obama hysteria is not merely embarrassing to witness, it is itself contributory to the scale of the disaster that is coming. What we are experiencing, in the deepening days of a global depression, is the desperate suspension of disbelief by people of intelligence – la trahison des clercs – in a pathetic effort to hypnotise themselves into the delusion that it will be all right on the night. It will not be all right.

He has a point. The election of an ultra-leftwing socialist in the midst of a major and unprecedented financial crisis could easily be the recipe for the perfect financial disaster. It worked that way in 1932, after all.

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And Warner is not alone in lacking confidence in Obama. Markets tanked in the worst inauguration response in history to Obama being sworn in.

Bloomberg:

U.S. stocks sank, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its worst Inauguration Day decline, as speculation banks must raise more capital sent financial shares to an almost 14-year low. …

The S&P 500 plunged 5.3 percent to 805.22. The S&P 500 Financials Index fell 17 percent to below its lowest closing level since March 1995 as concern European banks need more capital also weighed on the group. The Dow average slid 332.13 points to 7,949.09. Both the Dow and S&P 500 retreated to two- month lows.

The S&P 500 is off to its worst start to a year, shattering the biggest rally since World War II, as analysts cut earnings estimates by a record 83 percentage points and companies signal worse to come.

David Brooks looks at Obama’s unprecedented stimulus package plan and predicts that “by this time next year, he’ll either be a great president or a broken one.”

It sounds like a lot, but, after all, as Edwardsville’s mayor explained, it will affect the entire region! And isn’t saving the planet, starting with Northern Alabama, worth every penny?

US News:

At first glance, the town of Edwardsville, Ala., with a population of 194 people, might raise a few eyebrows with its bid to receive $375 million from the economic stimulus package being assembled by Barack Obama and lawmakers in Congress.

The tiny town, located near the Georgia border and 26 miles from the nearest “big city” of Anniston (population: 24,276), added 33 proposals—about two thirds of them related to “green” energy—to the list of “ready- to- go” projects assembled by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Total sum: $375,076,200.

Hard times are not only impacting large financial institutions like Lehman and AIG.

NY Times:

Queen Elizabeth, the Kremlin and the White House have been customers, but in the current economic climate, luxury crystals and ceramics are a hard sell as Waterford Wedgwood conceded Monday.

The company, which is based in Dublin and whose roots go back 250 years, makes and sells crystal vases, glasses and ceramic figurines and kitchenware. It made the ball that drops each New Year’s Eve in Times Square, and its crystal chandeliers decorate Windsor Castle and the Kennedy Center.

Waterford Wedgwood said on Monday that its 10 British units and 4 businesses in Ireland were placed into administration, similar to bankruptcy protection in the United States, after running out of money and failing to find a buyer. The remaining subsidiaries, including those in the United States, Germany and Canada, remain unaffected.

The auditor, Deloitte, was appointed as administrator of the troubled businesses, which employ 2,700, or more than half of Waterford’s 5,000 employees. The units will continue to operate until the administrator decides to sell, close or reorganize them.

“I am disappointed that certain of the group’s U.K. and Irish subsidiaries have had to go into administration and receivership, but we remain optimistic that ongoing discussions will result in a buyer being found for the business,” the chief executive of Waterford, David Sculley, said.

Waterford Wedgwood was created in 1986 when the Irish crystal maker Waterford acquired the British ceramics company Wedgwood. Both companies have a rich history. Wedgwood was founded in 1759 by Josiah Wedgwood in Stoke-on-Trent, England. Charles Darwin, who formulated the theory of evolution, married a member of the Wedgwood family in the 19th century and was able to finance his research with the help of the family fortunes.

Waterford was founded in 1783 by the brothers William and George Penrose and named after the Irish harbor town where they lived. Waterford faced difficult times in 1851, when it closed because of rising taxes, but the business reopened almost 100 years later. The Irish government gave Waterford glassware as a present to each American president from Dwight Eisenhower to Ronald Reagan, who kept his jelly beans in a Waterford dish.