I apologize but this is a very long post.  If you want to come back tomorrow I have no problem with that.

So yesterday I posted a short list of my favorite pork found in the stimulus bill. I angered some readers. Below is the lengthy comment from one commenter who chose to remain anonymous and submit a false email address. Beyond their comments is my response to that person and some thoughts of my own.

I didn’t vote for Obama (nor for McCain), so don’t take this as a defense of The Sainted One or anything. I have some respect for the guy, but I never drank the Kool-Aid.

But.

If you are going to position yourself as some kind of critic of the government, you might first want to make sure you know what you’re criticizing. I know some of the stimulus items sound funny, but if all you’re doing is looking at where the allocations are going and refuse to try to understand the underlying issues, you make yourself look like an idiot.

I know that blogging and laziness are kind of synonymous. I say that, having blogged. But that doesn’t mean they *must* go hand in hand. So do better. Couple of examples:

1. The NEA is about arts, period. Not just giving money to artists, but also encouraging the teaching of the arts in public schools. To make a living as an artist one must first realize that one has artistic talent and then must learn the tricks of the trade to produce art. A kid with talent born into a family with none, who has no money for supplies and doesn’t know what’s possible, is not ever going to have a shot at an art career unless he’s exposed to it at some point in his life. And arts programs are the first to go when schools cut spending. The NEA helps to alleviate that somewhat.

I know there are artists who figured their thing out without the help of public schools. But we all take different paths in life, and what’s obvious to one kid may not be obvious to another simply by virtue of having different backgrounds and influences. So, giving them many different options early in life to learn what’s possible is going to do them more good in the long run.

The NEA also helps build things like theaters and museums for communities that couldn’t otherwise afford them.

http://www.arts.gov/about/Facts/AtAGlance.html
http://www.arts.gov/about/Facts/ArtsLearning.html

By the way, the state of popular music should be a big clue as to what would happen if we left the promulgation of the arts up to the “free market.” Ew?

2. The relationship between the United States and American Indians is a very complex one. There are good arguments for and against the BIA. American Indians themselves often have little regard for the agency because more often than not it is THE ultimate method by which Uncle Sam attempts to destroy Indian culture, since it is no longer politically correct to go on military campaigns against the tribes.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Placing ethical people in the BIA and insisting that they honor treaties and give the tribes what they are due from Uncle Sam would go a long way to repairing some of the ill will between us and them. And frankly? We owe them. We owe them a hell of a lot.

“We did some bad things”… is the understatement of the millenium, frankly. We did the same thing to them that the Nazis did to the Jews, only slower and with fewer machines. Decent people do not behave that way. We are long overdue for behaving decently towards the first Americans. 10,000 people is understaffing as far as I’m concerned.

3. Education of homeless children: Do you have any understanding whatsoever of the issues involved in keeping homeless kids in school? No, I didn’t think so.

4. Military housing: Even if we brought all our guys home and scaled back, military barracks is still in bad shape. It was true in the early nineties, post-Reagan-Bush, and it’s true now. When I was in the Army I lived in barracks that had been condemned as unfit by the Air Force. Even military family housing is pathetic, especially in places like Hawai’i, where it’s even more expensive to live off-post. This is shameful.

5. State tax deductions: It’s another way to reduce the overall tax burden. I thought that was a good thing?

Seriously. I don’t get people. It’s like what I’ve heard from other quarters about how stupid it is that beekeepers were included in the stimulus bill. This was roundly mocked as pork spending.

But think about it.

Bees.

What do bees do?

“Oh, they make honey.” Sure. How do they make honey? They get nectar from flowers and eat it and vomit it back up. What flowers do they visit? All kinds, but especially flowers on food-bearing plants. Why is this important? Because in the process of picking up nectar they also fertilize the flowers. Why is that important? Because that’s how fruit is produced, including culinary veggies such as tomatoes.

And in case you haven’t noticed we’ve been seeing bee dieoffs in disturbingly high numbers. My local university has had to cut back on staffing to investigate the problem because money’s been running dry. They’re a land-grant university. If they don’t have the money for agricultural research, that is a PROBLEM.

But all these yo-yos can do is laugh. Not investigate, not learn, just laugh. And all the other lazy people who read them are going to laugh too, then get mad at the “waste of money,” then complain to their congressmen. Then none of this stuff will get any better.

If you have better ideas, run for office. Meanwhile, stick with what you know, which is apparently how much emo kids suck and not much else. Thanks in advance.

Wow, what a fantastic rant.  This is exactly why I write.  It’s easy to present my views to the world and close them up without further discussion, Bill O’Rielly has made millions doing this.  But I keep comments open instead, as most blogs do, so I can hear back from readers.

Most of your frustrations with me are the result of me not having enough time to write a 5,000 word essay on the problems with the stimulus.  However since you are very concerned with my opinion, I will do my best to address your comments.

First, by being American I am positioned as a critic of the government.  Our government was designed from the get-go with that in mind.

Second, I am merely pointing out that the stimulus bill has many, MANY components that are not stimulating. I am not saying these programs shouldn’t exist, I am saying these programs shouldn’t exist in a stimulus bill. There is a time and a place for everything I wrote about, but it should be in the normal budget, not an emergency stimulus.

Now I will attempt to address your numerated examples:

1)  The NEA is about the arts, period.  I 100% agree with you.  I also agree that support of the arts in very important.  Our society as a whole has expanded based on the creations afforded by our greatest artists, lyricists, and philosophers.  This website has embraced the arts, in having haikus every once in a while.  The expression of oneself through methods other than traditional spoken words and written text is perhaps the greatest way to express an opinion.  I like haikus because they force you to keep it simple and short.

That being said, the NEA does provide an emergency stimulus to the economy, this is how the bill was marketed to Americans.

2) I am so sorry for not going on a full rant about the atrocities of every oppressed ethnicity and the sad attempts of government to make up for it. What was I thinking? Of course that should be a major point of digression of any article. Seriously, we all know what happened, spending time talking about it here does no one any good.

Once again though, my point had nothing to do with Native Americans not deserving some kind of funding. My point is a bloated government agency doesn’t need $500 million in what is supposed to be an economic stimulus. Give it to the Native Americans themselves instead, I’m sure they could put it to better use. I’m big on flattening houses because there are too many already, give them $500 million to buy up some of their land and flatten the houses. I am not joking.

3) I understand many of the issues associated with education. My mother has been a special education teacher for as long as I’ve been able to talk. She has/had students that were born addicted to meth, have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, are homeless, have been beaten, are starving, etc. As a boy I played with one of her students in my home. He had been deserted by his parents and lived in a box.

My point in the post was, once again, that TARRA is meant to stimulate the economy. Education issues deserve their own proper legislation and funding.

Instead of making a valid point, you’ve initiated a personal attack which will not be tolerated.

4) I went to a school near a military base, the issues about housing were always in the news. I don’t disagree one bit with your point. But we go back to the point of the stimulus once again. Fixing barracks and military housing shouldn’t be a problem of the military. It should already be in their budget to fix it. Congress should mandate the improvements or the Department of Defense budget would be cut appropriately to reallocate funds within the federal budget to do so. But it doesn’t belong in an emergency stimulus.

5) My comments are indicative of someone who was against those taxes in the first place. They weren’t two things I hated, they were two tax breaks I thought should never have needed breaking. We should always get tax breaks on sales tax of any kind, and why oh why does the government tax people on the money they gave them? I think it was preposterous to do so in the first place and am a big supporter of both breaks being introduced. I believe I said in the post the breaks “should have existed a long long time ago.”

Bees:
I didn’t say anything about bees.  I love bees, and I eat honey every day.  A problem that deserves funding for research though is not the same as a direct stimulus to our economy.  It deserves to be a line item in the standard federal budget, or in a grant.

Okay, I’m done responding to the commenter. But I am not however done with the commenter. They used an anonymous name and faked an email address in order to provide a comment. This is a practice I frown on because it allows the user to hide behind the anonymity of the internet. I have no problem with anonymity, but if you don’t back your comments with some kind of name or contact information, I find it very difficult to respect your thoughts. At least give me your email address so I can privately explain my opinions to you.

However fear not readers, because I found my mysterious commenter. I’d like to say I used some super sleuthing skills to track down this person, but it was much easier than that. They linked to me from their own blog. Please everyone say hello to our mysterious commenter, Dana S. of Ohio (last name withheld). Dana has a LiveJournal blog and a personal website. Dana reposted her comment on her blog, fearing that I would not allow it to be published on mine.

For someone that doesn’t want to be known, Dana has quite a bit of herself on the internet. A simple Google search of her first and last name revealed her Facebook page, Flickr photo stream, and Linked In profile. Don’t assume I’m a good person for not linking to any of it, I had to be talked out of it. However I have read her blog (which includes another personal attack quoted below), I now have her email address for my records, and asked her to be my friend on Facebook.

You might ask why I went through the trouble of all of this. First of all I felt I wasn’t clear enough in my first post about my opinions on the stimulus. My readers deserve clarification. I’ll restate it one more time just so we all know.

I’m not against these programs, I only think they belong in other legislation as they are not a direct stimulus.

This bill was held up because of all the random bits of pork in them. Whether your support a program or not, an unrelated line item entry into a bill is pork.

Secondly, it is a pet peeve of mine when people hide behind the internet and don’t own up to their comments for appropriate discussion. Dana chose not to give me a method to contact her, so had I not been able to track her down she might have always thought of The Weakonomist as a “racist little shit.” This is libel posted on her personal blog, and I will not allow my name to be defamed on the internet without a proper opportunity to explain myself.

So if you’ve actually read through all of that I thank you. Tomorrow we’ll get back to our regularly scheduled Weakonomics discussions.

By The Weakonomist

The Weakonomist is the founder of Weakonomics. Clicking the picture of the puppy will tell you more about him. If you like what you're reading consider subscribing to the blog, following him on Twitter, and checking out the related posts below. Please consider a donation if you really enjoy Weakonomics. Also keep in mind that nothing I say can be construed as financial advice.

categories: economics, government, personal