Well, the "stimulus package" (though I find it very full of earmarks), has finally passed the House and Senate and will be on it's way to the Presidents desk for signing.
I question whether President Obama is going to follow the rules he set up for himself. Or, like some lawyers(not every lawyer) do, they create an out for themselves and only apply the rules to others. He said when a bill comes to him, he will post it on the White House web site for five days to give "the people" a chance to read and comment on it before he signs or vetos. Nice idea. I hope he does it with this piece of legislation. It is one of the most influential pieces of legislation, I think, to ever be created. It is going to affect lives generations from now, and may change our country forever, and not in a good way. Having said that, I doubt he will give "the people" a chance to really read what is in this thing. His back door will be, it's an emergency, and I have to sign it now. Just trust me. So much for transparency in this new presidency.
Here is a big beef I have right now though. I read this on the CNN web site and thought this was kind of setting up a bad presidence.
The vote by the Senate took several hours longer than a simple roll call of its 100 members generally would. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, attended a wake for his mother until about 8 p.m. Friday.
Voting began about 5:30 p.m. Then, the Senate chamber sat nearly empty until Brown arrived to vote about five hours later.
He was flown from Ohio to Washington on a plane provided by the White House, which said no commercial flights were available that would have allowed Brown to cast a vote and return to Ohio in time for his mother's funeral Saturday.
Now remember all the CEO's coming to Washington getting there tongue lashings from the Congress for using private jets, and they were basically told they should use commercial flights or other means to travel? Well....... I guess our government doesn't have to follow it's own recommendations that it has for how private citizens run their business, and they can do private flights any time they want. On our tax dollar dime, I might add. I know, I sound like a hard nose. "The man was at his mother's funeral. How could you be so mean. There was no other way for him to get back to Washington, vote, and then return for the funeral on a domestic flight."
Ya know what, CEO's have emergency meetings too. They have important and vital business to attend to, or have others that work for them that have business to do. Don't they have the right, especially since it is on "their dime" to use their planes how they see fit? Is this a case of "do as I say, not as I do"?
I think it is a case of " you hate in others what you see in yourself".
We really need to keep a really close eye on Washington D.C., and make sure they stick to their rules. Especially the transparency, the chance to read legislation before signing, and ethics.... Now that is another post I may get to sometime.
