Here's the Pork

Well, our new president has been in office less than a month and already has shown that the Washington democrats are running business as usual. Tax and spend, tax and spend. The new "stimulus" bill is being touted by Dem's as the cure all to end all cure all's. I say HA. They say they met his requirement for no earmarks, no pork only stuff that gets the economy going. Yet in the bill there is spending, worded vaguely, that effects only 2 or 3 companies in the entire country. Spending for payments to Filipino WWII vet not even living in the us, 198 mill. If they want to right a wrong and help them like the US promised after the war then do it by itself not here. It will do NOTHING to stimulate the US economy.
A portion for habitat and water needs in San Francisco bay, 50 mill. 62mill for military projects in Guam (not part of the US), 1.2 billion to transportation security for hardware and explosive detection devices made by only 3 companies.
They even had a tax break that would allow Hollywood studios to write off production costs. That one was removed along with a couple more that were getting bad press. Like a few million for condoms to be provided by medicaid.
they have just gotten better at wording to cover up the blatant earmarks. I do not see how many of these items will help get the US economy going. There is little in there to help small businesses which employ a great portion of Americans.

Now if there is anything left for actual infrastructure work, like it was originally intended to be for, along with new energy tech, the town of Cumberland is trying to get ready with "shovel ready" projects that we may be able to secure funding for.
At the Feb 4th 2009 meeting the council approved spending budgeted money for final engineering on multiple projects so that they will be ready for submission when the Federal government asks for them.
I am not terribly optimistic that there will be much for roads and bridges as the President told us it would be for so I did ask for and support the council being given the right to deny spending on the engineering projects that come in as to costly. I do not want to spend a lot of money just on the engineering and not get funding for the project itself, nor do I want to give free reign to companies to come in with proposals that magically cost the same amount we are setting as our top dollar amount.
We have a good number of roads that need attention as well as sanitary and storm sewer issues. The town put in a wonderful sewage treatment plant but spent so much on it that the rest of the system was neglected and needs work.