335 million dollars for STD Prevention. I don’t think this has anything to do with a true “Emergency stimulus”. What about you? Who needs earmarks when every pet project of every Democrat on Capitol hill is covered in these 647 pages.
For your reading enjoyment, if you want to read a 647 page book!
http://www.rules.house.gov/111/LegText/111_hr1_text.pdf
    Alot of this stimulus package is throwing money into programs that have been around for some time. Increasing existing scholarship programs, etc, which is also increasing the government budget later. Most of the items in this package are grants. There are some loans. Grants do not have to be paid back. Loans do. This means that a lot of the stimulus is like water, once you use it, it is gone. For the most part this stimulus plan is an opportunity to push through a lot of Democratic ideals hidden in “Emergency Stimulus” clothing. Here are some of the good and bad items from the stimulus.
    Bad: There are provisions in this stimulus for grass on the Washington mall, There are wage rate requirement (Anti-competition), Broadband Internet to rural locations (If they wanted broadband, they would have moved closer to town), money to help people pay for converting their old TVs to new digital, use it or lose it requirements, all steel and iron used in projects must be made in the US to use stimulus funds, education money has to use at least 25% for “Green” Renovations, the more children you have the bigger your tax break will be, money to study the requirement of students to do community service, incentives for hiring veterans and disconnected youths, increased funding for low income housing construction, government will pick up the tab for COBRA health coverage, health info more readily available which makes it vulnerable and huge amounts of government oversight across all industries. There was a provisions for Increased funding for condom distribution programs. Wrong kind of Stimulus
     Good: There are a lot of good items in this bill. But before you get the wrong idea, I am still not for the bailout. Bailouts are diluting the waters of our free market system. I do believe that eventually it could harm the system completely. With that being said, here are some of the items in the bill that are good: Increased funding for school systems through renovations, upgrades etc, money for research for technology improvements, increased tax incentives for businesses, increased incentives for having alternative fuel refueling capabilities, increased money for energy research improvements, increased tax credits for alternative energy production, extension of unemployment until Dec 31 for those cut off by March 31, increase of unemployment credit and Improve Health information technology.
 Total time to Skim through this 647 page legal mumbo jumbo Approx 4 hours and counting. 
I am taking notes that I will type up discussing some of the good and bad points of the Stimulus package.
Feel free to discuss any of the items above.
It has been rightly pointed out that this does not guarantee the creation of one job.
Robert Reich (Obama Economic adviser) has expressed an interest in keeping the money money from going to ‘white men contractors’ (heaven forbid they might be qualified to do the work supposedly being paid for) which might give you some indication of the motivations of this bill. (http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2009/01/stimulus-how-to-create-jobs-without.html)
Also, only 3% of this bill is slated for ‘infrastructure projects’ (http://businessandmedia.org/articles/2009/20090123164740.aspx) which, according to people around us, are desperately needed.
Left by Nicholas on January 28th, 2009