Is the US headed towards a socialist government?

[kandrathe]

Me too, and the answer is almost certainly "the corn lobby". But that's a different issue. The question before us here is whether what they're doing *now* is a good use of money, not whether everything the government does is good. Perpetual wise investments is not a hallmark of anyone except maybe Warren Buffett. Surely nobody, in the wake of this colossal clusterfrack, is going to pretend that private enterprise can do no wrong.

I'm not saying that businesses are infallible, but as a whole, the aggregate of allowing market forces to determine the course of the river will be a better result than getting out the government bulldozers and digging a channel for the economy. Why? Because if the government limits its role to merely stimulating the economy, then once the disaster is over then the natural flow of the economy will not need further tending. However, if the government channels the economy into specific industries, then 3 things might happen; a) continuous maintenance will be required or what has been built will crash because it was not a good idea (e.g. ethanol). But, this will be after many years and billions of dollars have been pumped into the *wrong* direction. b) The industries propped up will experience a boon and will no longer need stimulus, but because our government never rescinds anything the money will continue to flow (and be wasted) into these programs where it is no longer needed. or, c) it will either be a colossal failure from the get go beset with problems (which would die in the private sector), or it will have the unintended consequences of blue sky thinking without proper planning (e.g. we idealistically pass the Pacific Railway Act of 1862, which inevitably led to the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890.)

"Insane" is a little over the top, but use whatever source you like. They all seem to be painting about the same picture about the breakdown of expenditures. The rest is just window dressing in any case. Which committee is this, that writes policy, but only Democrats sit on? And, if they wrote it, and it passed without anyone reading it, in what sense could it be a "compromise"?

Obey is a loon (imho), but check out his youtube hits if you don't believe me. Well, the process is that the House writes the bill and tries to pass it, then the Senate writes a corresponding bill and tries to pass it. Once that is done the two bills go to a conference committee selected by House and Senate leadership (all Democrats now), they resolve the differences and make a common bill. Which then needs to get passed by both the House and the Senate again. The bill in this case was filed at midnight by the conference committee (peopled with a select few House and Senate democrats), and then the House passed it as the first order of business the following morning. No one read the final bill, which might have language stripped, or language added. The point is that the people who voted for it didn't actually know what it contained. Which means that if you are a D now, you don't really need to think but merely vote the party line. I mean, its only the largest spending bill, ever. So why would you bother reading it.