Suppose you wanted to stimulate the US economy and believed that the expenditure of $787 billion would do it, despite the other alternatives of letting the economy heal itself in the natural course of events or simply addressing the financial issues causing all of the economy’s problems. How would you go about it?
Pericles built the Acropolis and we laud his name to this day for being a great leader. FDR had the TVA, the Hoover Dam and the Rural Electrification Administration and Teddy Roosevelt, the National Parks. Barack Obama is installing toilets and trimming the greenery about the federal buildings in D.C. Now why would that be?
Where are the plans for monorails, to improve the highway system, build subways and bridges, modernize water systems? Plans which a dedicated big government type would be implementing. Someone with a vision for the country. Certainly, there is enough money to do so. The money to be spent could have been used for major capital improvements to infrastructure and new infrastructure. Rather it is being utterly wasted on the picayune, mostly maintenance, of very small things.
So what does this tell us about Obama? It all suggests he is not interested in improving life in the US, but just jamming the system with unsupportable debt and a multi-generational albatross about our necks.
What he might fail to realize is that with major capital expenditures, he would have more support from the populace – even if it didn’t get spent right away. Citizens would know that grand plans were in the offing and would be interested and willing to wait. Plus, in the tradition of great leaders he could build monuments to himself and to our civilization. Even the right wing would have problems fighting such projects. The idea that major capital improvements would be made would have a salutary effect on many people, who would view them as honoring the US’s sense of its own innovation and talent.
But that’s not Obama’s view. While his narcissism knows no bounds, and he is thus naturally inclined to place himself above all mortals and create monuments to himself, he would be unwilling to build projects which vaunt American civilization, for which he has total contempt. No Pericles he. And as a result we have expenditure equivalent to that meant for massive projects and nothing visible to show for it, now or ever.
Since his other citizen-breaking plans, cap and trade and health care are viewed with great skepticism because of the misguided, small-minded way the stimulus was planned and executed, its allocation, or misallocation in this case, is quite important to his presidency and its future.
