Passing The Bucks

Fresch Fisch asks:

The “stimulus” money coming to Minnesota will be full of strings and conditions in order to accept the money. Will our state elected officials let us read the details of the handouts before they accept them?

Oh, goodness no. Any good con man knows that getting in and out fast is the key to pulling a fast one on a ripe suck.

10 thoughts on “Passing The Bucks

  1. Did I hear correctly? Did President Obama say he’d come down like a ton of bricks on state and local districts if they “misuse” the stimulus money?

    Are there not vague areas in the stimulus bill? What’s more… doesn’t that suggest there might be a tendency for federal overreach on state and local government?

    Again (Peev, you ignorant slut), I might have missed exactly what the President said.

    (Notice how I called him the President and not Hitler or a chimp or the Current Occupant? I noticed that, too… that makes me better than a whole bunch of whiney leftists.)

  2. Actually, there is language in the bill that allows the money to go directly to state assemblies should the Executive be seen as intransigent.

  3. That is called an “end around”, Kermit.

    I say the Governor should reject… DFL legislature can’t say no to money… Governor can ignore the strings and conditions… flip the bird to the Federal Govmint and say piss off bring me to court…

  4. The governor of South Carolina today said he would be turning down stimuless money for unemployment because it mandates giving unemployment money to people not looking for a job, or able to work.

  5. Medved had a fun time with the food stamps for people not looking for work today, didn’t he? My goodness….I can understand wanting to help people, but helping people that are dead set on sitting on their rears as much as possible, but are otherwise able bodied? Have the Democrats lost their minds? (did they ever have them?)

  6. I don’t think they will look closely at the strings, but, odds are, if they do, it’s probably still worth it to take the money. I’m not saying that a trillion dollars of pork leavened with a bit of beef is a good idea, but I think it’s very unlikely that things would be better for Minnesotans, given that it’s been passed, to pass on whatever share Amy the K and her buddies in the House have gotten for us.

  7. There may be some ambiguity on who is not currently looking for work being automatically dead beats. People who are the sole care taker for one or more dependent individuals where it is cheaper for them to be the responsible care giver than $$ being paid from some other source to do the job. People who are temporarily back in school as part of seeking subsequent re-employment. I can’t imagine that there is all that much of an attraction to being unemployed and existing at a marginal level that it is the preferred choice the way it is presented when these kinds of benefits come up for discussion.

  8. I can’t imagine that there is all that much of an attraction to being unemployed and existing at a marginal level that it is the preferred choice the way it is presented when these kinds of benefits come up for discussion.

    Sure- not at first. It’s just that if you overdo welfare and other benefits, it just breeds a kind of “passive dependency”.

    And the problem isn’t necessarily the “deadbeats” or “welfare queens”- our legislators write the orders that are carried out by the social worker gestapo.

  9. I attended a CLE a few weeks ago on what’s going on at the State legislature and the majority of the presentation focused on the State budget deficit. During the Q &A the panel was asked about whether the “stimulus” bill would help alleviate the problem and most of the speakers agreed that even if it did in the short-term*, it would actually not due much to help the problem in the long-term with our State finances because they are structural in nature and the “strings” attached the federal funding require us to pretty much maintain the status quo.

    The problems is while Obama liked to justify all of the pork that he and the rest of the governing party threw into his bill as a “investment” in the future, the fact is that the way States like Minnesota spend money on things like HHS and K-12 is unsustainable particularly with the baby boom generation getting ready to “retire” and begin draining those services. There is a serious need for reforming both the priorities of our State, local and federal budgets and how the money is being spent that just got pushed aside for at least another two years.

    Central planning in action, ain’t it grand?

    * The “strings” with the federal funding usually require that the States spend money a certain way either by committing not to cut certain services or restrict eligibility for benefits or in some cases it may even require that the States expand eligibility.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.