Porkulus!

Wondering...do you feel eight hundred billion wealthier today?

To be honest, I'm actually feeling quite disillusioned, not over this stimulus per se, but this in combination with what California is going to do to cover their forty billion shortfall, and in the fact that the Bicycle Advisory Committee hasn't even acknowledged my application.

Remember my mantra: fuck hope. I say this with some degree of sincerity, because I've mostly come to believe that those who hope things are going to change or get better, or whatever they hope for, are actually part of the problem. I think I might go about my life without any expectation for change and just accept my surroundings, and have fun simply describing how things are. I certainly enjoy my monologging!

That said, consider this one item thrown into this Porkulus package -- that the sales tax on all new car purchases will be tax deductible! Fantastic! This is exactly what we should expect of an American stimulus package, right? If 72% of our economy is consumer spending, then subsidize consumers to spend more, and encourage spending in exactly the worst possible way -- more fucking cars!

Why new cars, huh? Why not condoms? Or crayons? I've not yet had a chance to read it all the way through, but it sounds as if you're gonna be able to write off the taxes on a new Kia along with a new Chrysler, so "saving our domestic autos" isn't the main focus. The main focus, apparently, is to keep us buying new cars to combat global warming, buying new cars to keep road builders building, buying new cars to keep Merikans mired in perpetual debt, and buying new cars to wean us off diminishing global petroleum supplies.

Then, couple this asinine subsidy with the state of California today cutting public transit funds by $459 million. We need to cut spending, for sure, and doing away with these transit funds ensures my 2009 prediction that my level of transit service will decrease, because I knew that my "green" California would step up to the plate by cutting transit funds and eliminating environmental reviews for highway building projects. Nothing I didn't expect from the greenest state in the nation.