Biden Relief Too Much?

I’m concerned the President’s Covid relief bill is way too big, untargeted and wide open to abuse. We’ve already dumped $4 trillion into the economy and haven’t spent it all. Another $2 trillion risks inflationary pressure. But like Joe Manchin, who makes sense to me on this, I’ll let it go.

Think I’d prefer saving some money for infrastructure spending.

President Biden wonderful in CNN Town Hall last night. We’ve gone from Hitler to Mr. Rogers in one election. What a country! Here’s Uncle Joe at his best…

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craigcrawford

Author: craigcrawford

Trail Mix Host

75 thoughts on “Biden Relief Too Much?”

  1. “Biden relief too much?”

    craig, which biden relief you talking about? the relief to the nation’s psyche that he’s giving as the new mr. rogers or the big stimulus package relief which a lotta economic types & corps are saying it’s the only way to get us out of this mess.

    imho, neither one is too much

    [lest we forget the WPA and CCC programs courtesy of FDR]

  3. “For four years, all that’s been in the news is Trump. The next four years, I want to make sure all the news is the American people. I’m tired of talking about Trump.”

    joe, you and me both.

  4. wapo:

    Toward the end of the event, Biden marveled at the experience of living in the White House, recounting the sense of history while longing for some of the wooded privacy — and the swimming pool — at the vice president’s residence he used to occupy, compared to what he called “a gilded cage.”
    “I get up in the morning and look at Jill and say, ‘Where the hell are we?’ ” Biden joked.
    He said he was less daunted than he once was by the presidency, having seen seven chief exectives up close, adding that he has been in touch with most of his living predecessors.
    “All of them have — with one exception — picked up the phone and called me,” Biden said.
    He paused and chuckled along with the audience, who knew which president Biden had not spoken to, and is trying not to speak of.

  5. for our trail friends BiD, TT and cbob (aka OM)
    hopefully you are all safe, warm and get a chuckle out of this cartoon

  9. It’s plain to see who should be taxed.   Billionaires, corporations, sports franchises, and churches.   

    Tax ’em, Danno.

  11. What Bob said yesterday was right. WaPo 

    As the cold hit, demand for electricity soared past the mark that ERCOT had figured would be the maximum needed. But at a moment when the world is awash in surplus natural gas, much of it from Texas wells, the state’s power-generating operators were unable to turn that gas into electricity to meet that demand.

    In the single-digit temperatures, pipelines froze up because there was some moisture in the gas. Pumps slowed. Diesel engines to power the pumps refused to start. One power plant after another went offline. Even a reactor at one of the state’s two nuclear plants went dark, hobbled by frozen equipment.

    “At a time when the need is the greatest it’s ever been, it’s a strain on the system like we’ve never seen,” said Tom Seng, director of the School of Energy Economics, Policy and Commerce at the University of Tulsa.

    Throughout the Southwest, he said, there has been a scramble for gas as sources have gone offline. Most surplus gas is stored underground, he said, and bringing it to the surface becomes more and more difficult in such prolonged low temperatures. March futures for natural gas are selling for $3 per million BTUs in Oklahoma, he said, but the spot price hit $600 over the weekend.

    But Abbott and Cruz go on tv and lie their asses off. I’m shocked.

    And is it too much?  Who knows?  I’m ready to take the chance. 

  13. The new amount isn’t too big and the unspent should be long gone.  It isn’t the size, it is the targeting.  If nothing else, a modern WPA should be functioning including every single school ready to accept students.  Every food bank should be well stocked.  Any family with children should not be facing eviction.  All interest on college loans should be cancelled.  I’ve got a long list that basically comes down to the rich get the gold mine and everyone else gets the shaft.

     

     

  14. Remember how they squelched oversight on all the money from the last stimulus?  And all the big m0ney disappeared?

  15. My latest “Pissed off at People” hobby horse is anyone who for any reason uses a rodenticide poison that causes internal bleeding or fails to dispose of hunting targets properly to clean lead out of the environment.  The deaths in eagle nests this year has been high and it is an ugly, painful death.  

  16. For people who just so much adore cancelling things the gopers sure do a lot of screaming about “cancel culture”.

  17. sturge, with regard to GOPers that’s spelled cancel “Vultures.”  cult, yes, but no culture.

  19. If 56 million have gotten a shot, and 11 million doses per week WERE going to states, now announced to be 15 million per week, henceforth, then where the heck is my shot?  There aren’t 11 million people in my state. 

  20. Yes indeed, targeting the funds is key to the success of the package.  Biden spokesperson Jen Psaki said yesterday that the Covid vaccines are being pushed out to the states at a rate 57% higher than when Joe took office.  If that’s true, I’m willing to take a chance on Joe’s admin properly administering the $1.9T.  Of course that assumes that there is sufficient specificity in the bill to get the chunks of money moving in the right directions in the first place. 

  22. one more day to go!

      here’s a pretty good crash course on the project with a lot of insider info from a guy who worked on the previous rover at JPL   worth the 17 minutes, indepth but not boring

    This will be cooler than the Super Bowl. Thanks to Bill and Melinda Gates for partnering with me on this video. Read the 2021 Annual Letter, here: http://gatesnot.es/3cfnMF6

  23. “[your vaccine’s] in the mail”
     
    …sure wish Louis DeJoy didn’t rip the guts out of the sorting machines! 😒

  24. More from the Wapo article on Texas’ massive power grid fuckup.

    In Texas, production of natural gas Tuesday fell 6 billion to 7 billion cubic feet per day from earlier in the month, Anne Swedberg Robba, head of American gas and power analytics for S&P Global Platts, wrote in an email. Nationally, production has dropped by about 14 percent.

    “But this is not the first time we’ve had this issue in Texas,” said Hirs, of the University of Houston.

    There was a severe cold spell in the Southwest in 2011, and frigid weather in 1983, 1989, 2003, 2006, 2008 and 2010. A study by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. of the 2011 event, which also led to widespread blackouts for much the same reasons, found that “the massive amount of generator failures that were experienced raises the question whether it would have been helpful to increase reserve levels going into the event. This action would have brought more units online earlier, might have prevented some of the freezing problems the generators experienced, and could have exposed operational problems in time to implement corrections before the units were needed to meet customer demand.”
     
    On Tuesday, both agencies announced that they would now investigate the causes of this year’s failure.

    Now where’d that dang horse get off to?

  25. TEXAS:  WINTER STORM
    Because Tejas repubes don’t want to deal with the Fed., they have their own POWER GRID. They do get power from MEXICO. You can vet what I’m saying,  I don’t have time because Spectrum has been mostly out for days.
    ERCOT manages the power grid. They’ve pushed off to carriers like Oncor and providers like TXU the power problem, of course,
    This is what ya get with repube deregulation. There’s no oversight for ERCOT, et. al.  After the 1988 storm everyone said they should winterize the power plants.  And after the 2011 storm the same thing.  And here we are in 2021, the same thing.
    The gas, coat, and nuclear plants are all frozen due to no winterizing.  NO power lines are down.  It’s not like the great ice storm of 1991 in Rochester, NY where lines crashed due to the weight of ice.  However, there’s supposed to ice tonight.  ha-ha And then power lines will be DOWN on top of everything else. We’ve had power because we live close to a firehouse.  People living close to hospitals also have power.  The rest, nope. They’re counting in hours how long the area has been below freezing, 32.  Last I hears was 144 hours.
    Warming centers are open for the homeless creating a covid super spreading event.  All the stray animals are dead by now.  Frozen to death.
    The only reports on roads are freeways.  I went to the food store because there’s more storm coming tonight. They don’t report on the roads because there’s nothing to report.  Certainly no salt put down.  And no sand either. The main roads and side roads are pristine snow covered. And driving wasn’t bad if you’re from the north.
    In their wisdom, someone turned off the power to the Eagle Mountain water treatment plant.  Without power, they can’t move nor clean the water.  Genius!  So people are asked to boil water.  Boil if they don’t need electricity to boil anything.
    DART light rail trains have been still for days.  Covid vaccines have stopped for days in an already f’ed up distribution system.
    Hotels with power are full.  Price gouging is running amuck.  One hotel room, the news said, was $900/night.  A women at DFW airport was charged $200 to get home in an adjacent town.  Greed, repube greed at it’s best.
    All this and more due to republicans not wanting to deal with the Fed. This is what no oversight, no government control, free markets, and regulation gets ya. And when Tejas succeeds from the union, it’ll be even worse than this. I went to the food store. Dairy, produce, meat, and bread were empty.  No transport. Trucks can’t get here. If everything were deregulated, it’d be like a banana republic, more than it is now. 
    Keep voting republican.  Keep getting screwed while they get theirs.
    Wednesday, Fed. 17.
    Gov. A**hole Abbott now says the cause is due to AOC and the Green Deal!  It’s them frozen wind turbines that make up 10% of the grid what are the problem.  This after days of hearing how it’s the frozen fossil fuel generators that were NOT winterized. And he wants transparency from EROT!
     
     

  27. Can we get some of the potholes around here filled BEFORE we colonize Mars, por favor?  The roads are a complete mess after this weather.
     
    If the COVID don’t get me, these potholes might.

  29. Abbott’s EO:  I’m shocked, shocked and outraged, I tell you.  I demand answers.   
    He was so worked up on camera yesterday.  As I said, it was hilarious to watch.

    What won’t be hilarious are the power bills, for those of us lucky enough to have power.  I got a brand, new HVAC last year, but it runs almost constantly just to keep it at 66 in here.  They should’ve invested in some insulation around doors and windows.   I’ve put up shipping tape around the doors and a rug in front.  Glad Press n Seal on the windows.   It looks crazy, but I think it helped. 
     
    Mars will gets its new rover, plus, a helicopter (drone with a whatsit on top), but I can’t even get on a list for a vaccine and I should be in 1C, at least.

  30. BiD glad you’re alive and kicking.  Every time I move, I put strip caulking around all the windows before I move in.  I also have door snakes, the roll of fabric filled with sane, in front of the doors.
     
    It’s each women for herself around here.

  31. “Dear Spectrum Customer,

    Winter Storm Shirley has caused a Spectrum service outage in your area. Our crews will begin restoration as soon as conditions safely allow.”
     
    Winter storms now have names?  This one’s Shirley??

  34. Hey you Texans….  if you can…  get insulated blinds to cover your windows at night.  A lot of heat goes out those windows.  Rick and I invested in quilted insulated window blinds a couple years ago… we have a lot of glass in the front (south side).  It cost us a couple thousand bucks…  but it’s been worth every penny.
     
    ps…   I remember when some Texans used to have bumper stickers on their pick-ups that said “Use lots of oil, freeze a Yankee”.   Yeah….   look who’s freezing now.

  37. RR, reminds me of Huston’s ENRON laughing at the “little old ladies in California” who had no power as they flicked the switch.

  39. Gladwrap over the windows is well-played, BiD, you can buy a very similar product specifically marketed for that purpose at the hardware store, which i’ve found useful.

    (if your luck is anything like mine, the instant you finally get everything winterized, the weather will warm back up, but you’ll also be warm, either way🤷‍♂️)

  42. TT…  so glad to see you are ok and have electricity.
     
    Yup…  Texas is a perfect example of how republicans govern….   give everything they can to corporations and fuck everyone else.  But hey…  if the little people are stupid enough to keep electing them…   ya must love bending over.

  43. c-span press conference yesterday on the NAACP lawsuit.  about 16 minutes long.

    the opening announcement:

    TODAY, YOU WILL HEAR FROM PRESIDENT AND CEO FROM THE NAACP. THEY CONGRESSMAN, THE U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSISSIPPI IN THE SECOND CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. GENERAL COUNSEL FOR THE NAACP. AND THE PARTNER AND COCOUNSEL. WE HAVE OPENING REMARKS FROM EACH ONE OF THOSE AS WELL, AND AT THE END, CONCLUSION OF THEIR COMMENTS, WE WILL OPEN THE FLOOR FOR ANY COMMENTS YOU MAY HAVE. I WILL TURN THIS OVER TO THE PRESIDENT. THE FLOOR IS YOURS.

  44. Listening to The TX Standard on NPR. ERCOT is a self-regulating, non-profit with board members chosen by Governor Abbott and others. ~Really, what could go wrong?~

    Power companies say ERCOT told them to hold back. ERCOT says they told companies to release power. Companies said, “I’m given’ her all I’ve got, Captain.” Now, the rumor is that producers were/are holding back product to drive up the price.

    Meanwhile, water pressure is starting to go south because pumps need power to run. And, we have the big thaw to look forward to, when we find out how many pipes froze and cracked/burst.

    ps – Flaming tildes are not a sufficient heat source.

  45. Kind of hard when you’re under a “boil water” advisory when you don’t have power.  

    Oh, and the Harris county (Houston) judge said she doesn’t expect power to come in line as soon as it thaws this weekend. She thinks some may be without power for weeks.

  47. Limpballs dead….     best news ever (or as we say it eva)!
     
    Well…  I’ll admit it is second to Donny no longer being prez.

  49. My karma for stating i was reasonably confident wearing double masks, yesterday, is being besieged by people wearing exactly zero masks, today.
     
    WTF😭 

  50. Gee, pardon me if I don’t shed tears for the newly departed El Rushbo.  I wonder if Dumbass will deliver his eulogy?  I wonder if he went out thinking about how good those cigars tasted.
     

  51. SFB’s Eulogy: Never met him. Maybe he got coffee for me once.  I like bogus-medal-winners who don’t die. 

  52. Craig – I had a webinar at work with financial experts (Equifax and others) looking at the impact of COVID. They wanted the BIG relief package. As one of them said, even that’s not enough. It’s not really a stimulus, it’s just a floor to keep folks from falling down even more.

  53. 30 years ago, I told a Republican friend that Limbaugh was a raging racist who would destroy the Republican party.  Unfortunately, I was right and Rush was very successful at fulfilling the prophecy.

     

  54. First shot in and it was amidst a massive clusterf*&k at the VA medical center.  A nurse told us they had been doing seven hundred injections per day until today.  The number was increased to twelve hundred today and no one told the medical staff that they would need to almost double the staff to meet the increase.  Yup.  Two hours after my appointment I received my new hole in my arm filled with vaccine.  The SNAFU was greeted by a lot of old veterans with rather rude and irate talk.  But, after a bit the former officers took over from the civilian staff and got the lines formed up and the formations went through better than the civilians had done. 

  55. To make the day even more special, the hate monger croaked.  Unfortunately some of the media are trying to make him out to be more than he was, a white supremacist, hate monger, misogynist, drug addict, and possibly a repressed gay man.  He picked up on a need for white people to feel oppressed, even though they had white privilege, high percentage of the population, and a legal system designed to keep them in power.  He made millions, which I think led to the vangical preachers following his mode of operation.  They became rich which preaching to their cult members about how oppressed they were.  Something that fascinated me is once the hate monger lost advertisers and radio stations the media types still went to get his hate filled pronouncements.  I might say “thoughts and prayers”, but even that snide stuff is not worth it on him.  The best thing that can happen is the mortuary loses the body.

  56. Cheesy James Earl Jones-type voice over:

    Each man’s death diminishes me,
    for I am involved in mankind……
    therefore send not to know for whom the bell tolls
    ……………..it tolls for…………..

    [Tympani Drum: TAWM ta TAWM TAWM TAWM.]

    RUSH LIMBAUGH
     

  57. Grocery stores and distribution centers are tossing food lost due to power outages, as are folks with no working refrigerator.  Store shelves will be sparsely stocked for a few weeks. It’s not just dead animals and their by-products, but frozen fruits and vegetables and those requiring refrigeration, like leafy greens.

    I’m just hoping all water lines in my building held and this won’t be followed by a flood. A fire sprinkler in the townhouse I had in 2010 leaked after the thaw.

    What happens to companies who have lost money? It’s not just being closed for a week (or maybe more), but if they sell to large companies, there will be non-compliance fines for failing to deliver on time. Weather is not an excuse for them, because fines are their cash cow. It’s one way they keep prices low enough to kill off their competitors, if any remain.

  60. I just saw a little article about thirty some percent of active duty troops are refusing to get the COVID vaccine.  It may be a voluntary military but there is no reason to not just line the troops up and inject.  I have no idea what some of the stuff that was injected in me, but there was no saying I am not getting the injection. Sheesh.

  61. Military gives vaccines for lots of stuff.  When the contract is signed, wouldn’t getting vaccinated be following an order? 

  64. I had a horrible reaction to the pneumonia shot, but I  only ran a fever and felt crappy for a little over a day.  Beats pneumonia (most common strains, only) and I would do it, again. 
     
     

  65. ERCOT is going to blame COVID. They didn’t inspect facilities last year. They did virtual, tabletop reviews of some facilities. So, now Texans get to pay more to properly insulate power stations.

  67. Making their viewers think it’s still last year?  The rest of the media is fake news? January 6th never happened, because SFB won?

  68. Bwahahahahahah. Messed up the year of ElDumbo’s death? They got THIS year wrong?  Talk about fake news. LOL. 

  69. ONCOR delivers power to North TX (it doesn’t generate it), but they are allowing empty businesses downtown to run their lights. Someone told me NFM in The Colony was all lit up, too. Yet folks are freezing in their homes. The local reporter asked why they weren’t doing targeted conservation. He was told they can’t do that by address. He reminded viewers that’s exactly what they do if you don’t pay your bill, so that’s BS.

  70. who knows, maybe he did die last year and they kept it quiet to rake in a few more bucks from his gullible followers.   

  71. DJIA > 31k, must mean Biden is responsible for the “Greatest Economy in the History of the World”

  74. The end of July?  We will have enough by the end of July? How many more months beyond that to inject? 

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