Archive: Opinions

Years ago when I had just gotten a new computer programming tool I decided to learn how it worked by writing a little text editor.  I laid in the basic editor, and a menu for opening and saving files.  I was working very fast, because I had a lot of 'real' work to do.  And to save time I just used the code for the text editor I was writing as my file to test how it was working.

Somehow there was a glitch in my code, and while working on the 'Save' feature I wiped out all the code I had written.  My editor program was gone!  Oops!  That's what happens when you work too fast!

That's also what happened to the hundreds of billions the United States government gave the banks a few months ago, and they're about to do it again.

After the money was gone, everyone waited for foreclosures to stop, and for some of that money to show up in the economy.  We're still waiting.  There has been a lot of chat about untoward executive bonuses and one corporation buying an expensive jet plane.  But not so much about the economy improving.

Congressman Maurice Hinchey's met with the Tompkins County Council Of Governments (TCCOG) to tell them about the next round of money-hemorrhaging, it looks like speed is the one thing the government wants at the expense of everything else.  There seems to be a rough trickle-down management plan that will put the county in charge of what projects are funded in the local municipalities.  But it doesn't sound as if anyone has any idea how that will work.  And the feds haven't even agreed on an overall plan yet.

When you are talking about nearly a trillion dollars I would think you would want a couple of things.  First, accountability, something we haven't seen with the hideous financial bailouts of the past recent months.  The government was tougher on the auto industry than on the financial industry, but it sure looked like they were just throwing gobs of money at a problem and hoping it would go away.

After that TCCOG meeting at least some officials were feeling confused, or at least feeling that the federal government is confused.  Everybody wants some of the money, but it is not clear that it will be used to any good effect.  Just because you throw it into the economy fast doesn't mean it will stimulate the economy or even make the world better.

If only shovel-ready projects are eligible for infrastructure money, who is checking to see if they are worthy projects?  Some would have been built anyway so how is choosing those projects putting more money into the economy?  Wouldn't choosing projects that aren't funded do that because the money for the funded ones would go into the economy anyway?  Is anyone evaluating projects to see if they will genuinely make peoples' lives better?

Yeah, I'm grousing about the apparent impossibility for the Town of Lansing to get affordable sewer in an economic package that supposedly wants to add and improve infrastructure.  But mostly I am suggesting that making momentous decisions about almost a trillion dollars in relatively no time at all is stupid.  When the money is gone, if there is no tangible improvement what will the government do next?  Throw away two trillion?  Toss out five?

Why not think about it for a while, put safeguards and oversight in place, and then do something that has a chance of working because it has been planned?  Wouldn't that be better than throwing out all that money and then saying, "Oops!  We worked too fast!"

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