There are investments in those areas but they don't really represent a particularly large portion of the bill ... When it comes to electrical the bulk of the money goes towards items like battery research, smart metering, tax incentives on renewable energy and tax credits for feel-good efforts like plug-in hybrid cars. There is some investment into broadband access, but that is mostly for connecting small communities and not really about building the infastructure for the internet of the future, and there is some investment in transportation but the bulk of that requires states to match the funding and (with the financial state of the states) that is unlikely to happen.

You think investing $250 Billion in internet infrastructure is a wise idea? Your conservative brethren were gnashing their teeth at the very idea of spending anything on that recently. And frankly I think that is way too much for that one project.

The stimulus package is doing a lot of different things like what you are talking about. Why is that worse than investing in just one thing? The odds sound better to me that you don't put all your eggs in one basket and stimulate several different sectors of the market rather than just construction.

I honestly don't see why people think if it isn't something like construction it isn't stimulus. Hasn't our economy moved away from manufacturing and things of that nature progressively more every year? Why should we only stimulate that sector of the economy when our economy has so much broader of a base? It just doesn't make sense to me.

I think your misreading what he's saying.  Infrastructure doesn't mean construction.

Construction actually kinda seems to be what he's argueing against.  Or at least pointless construction.

Also the problem with the intrenet stuff isn't that it's happening or a lot of money... but that it's the wrong type of internet spending.  It's for areas that aren't connected... for jobs that aren't going to stick around after the stimulus money stops flowing.

Now updating the internet infrastructure of areas that will use that stuff... and will be using it for a long time... and a lot.  That's helpfull.  Like improving internet in cities where a lot of buisnesses are likely to exist.

The internet infastructure spending wasn't a "Plan" as much as it was an example of the difference between stimulus and a spending bill ...

Now the reason why construction is what people envision as stimulus is because a stimulus package is supposed-to-be a one time government spending bill that has long term residual value. The whole point of education is that improving the education of a child from kindergarten through university or trade school provides value throughout the rest of their life; and the whole point of medicare is that improving/maintaining a person's health through their entire life provides value for society on the whole. No matter how much you value education or healthcare, you can't realistically think that investment in these fields really acts like a stimulus bill is supposed to.

When it comes to R&D spending the problem is that the US government is spending money in areas where private industry is already spending enough money on that diminishing returns mean that further investment is (mostly) wasted. An example of this is battery research and development ... Between a few hundred million Cell Phones sold per year, the Nintendo DS, Apple iPod, Sony PSP, and countless other devices that use batteries there is aready a massive investment in battery technology and the improvement is happening about as quickly as is possible. Whether or not people are willing to accept it or not, renewable energy sources like Wind and Solar are also developing nearly as quickly as is possible being that countless massive corporations are spending tons of money developing these technologies because they see the potential return on this investment.

Where the potential for R&D spending to produce the long-term residual value comes in is when the government undertakes a massive project with unprecidented challenge which ends up forcing people to develop solutions to problems they didn't know existed before, like the space race did.

But Republicans were incredibly critical of similar proposals such as the ones you suggested (well at least analogous to what you suggest) on how to make medical treatment more efficient in this country since costs are so out of control.

A lot of people are saying that what you are suggesting (which I'm not saying are bad ideas) ARE bad ideas. So essentially proposals like yours would have run into the same roadblocks that Obama's did. For whatever reason, people were getting hard-ons for orange road cones and new highways and didn't think anything except those should count as stimulus. So I think we agree in principle, although I do not think it would be wise to limit a stimulus to things just like those.

I honestly think the current "scattershot" approach was the best that could have been done as it is spread out among the market and has less risks of being completely ineffective in case the money went to the wrong places.

If both sides are for the USSA (United Socialist States of America), then 10.

f it's just the democrats that are after that goal, I say 1.

Now that this huge spending package has been passed, it's time to move on to the next Socialist issue. Governments buying part of your home loan.

On proposed plan (and the one I think he wants to pass), has the government paying for any part of your loan over 31-38% of your salary.

I am sorry, I said that wrong. The governments had no income. They want the American people to pay other peoples home loans.

Can't have people with to much debt in a socialists society can we? The USA is dead. I doubt I will see it's return in my lifetime.