The stimulus package does help the ones who were srewed by the BUSH admin but will not create 3.5 mil jobs - the hidden agenda

Lets make some top down math and deduct the 212 Bil tax cuts as they will not create any jobs might help to keep some existing ones though. The remaining 575 bil. we need to deduct the 87 bil for Medicaid as that brings healthcare to the poor /which is good) but will provide almost no job effects. 39 bil extended jobless benefits (no jobs again). 25 bil ,n subsidies to keep health insurance and as you can read in the article below many more of those subsidies for the underprivileged - which is good - but does not realy create jobs in the way Obama claimed.

It rather tries to equal the subsidies that Tarp and other aid money was used to finance bonus checks and saved 10k's of banker jobs as most of them would have lost their jobs without the massive intervention by the government throwing a few trillions at risk and a few more into the system makes look the 200 bil subsidies for the whole socially underprivileged part of US society look like petty cash. I think this are rather measure to equal things out a bit and from a pragmatic point of view keep social unrest under check which is also an important part as social unrest would harm the whole situation.

On the other hand the whole system needs a radical overhaul as the excesses of wall street and other corporations accompanied and benefited by the administration brought the whole world economy into a disastrous situation. The phony statements you hear these days that we have to learn from those mistakes is complete bulls... as we have made those mistakes several times already in history and nobody seems to have learned anything. Just the opposite this things were mostly done deliberately and with the pure intention to benefit a few on behalf of the big rest. They call that capitalism but in communistic regimes they do basically the same as they have done through all centuries under different names.

So we have nothing to learn as that behaviour is a basic function of humankind for a few thousand years now they used to be a bit tougher as slavery was a big part of it until hundred years ago but now they make it more sophisticated through the invention of the TV the chains have now a digital appearance but the mechanism is quite the same. Thats the sad part of history we almost learned nothing. even the smart one's ( at least they think they are) brought something upon them which is out of control now as the magnitude of this development can end in WW3 but they have a contingency plan it seems as at the south pole the build a high tech bunker complex for 100 mil. which has stored all DNA to rebuild in the worst case when complete destruction hits. Its interesting to see who sponsored that project to name a few Bill Gates, Rockefeller and Dupont

“Doomsday Seed Vault” in the Arctic

Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don’t ?One thing Microsoft founder Bill Gates can’t be accused of is sloth. He was already programming at 14, founded Microsoft at age 20 while still a student at Harvard. By 1995 he had been listed by Forbes as the world’s richest man from being the largest shareholder in his Microsoft, a company which his relentless drive built into a de facto monopoly in software systems for personal computers.

In 2006 when most people in such a situation might think of retiring to a quiet Pacific island, Bill Gates decided to devote his energies to his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest ‘transparent’ private foundation as it says, with a whopping $34.6 billion endowment and a legal necessity to spend $1.5 billion a year on charitable projects around the world to maintain its tax free charitable status. A gift from friend and business associate, mega-investor Warren Buffett in 2006, of some $30 billion worth of shares in Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway put the Gates’ foundation into the league where it spends almost the amount of the entire annual budget of the United Nations’ World Health Organization.

So when Bill Gates decides through the Gates Foundation to invest some $30 million of their hard earned money in a project, it is worth looking at.

No project is more interesting at the moment than a curious project in one of the world’s most remote spots, Svalbard. Bill Gates is investing millions in a seed bank on the Barents Sea near the Arctic Ocean, some 1,100 kilometers from the North Pole. Svalbard is a barren piece of rock claimed by Norway and ceded in 1925 by international treaty

On this God-forsaken island Bill Gates is investing tens of his millions along with the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Corporation, Syngenta Foundation and the Government of Norway, among others, in what is called the ‘doomsday seed bank.’ Officially the project is named the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard island group.

Doomsday Seed Vault

The seed bank is being built inside a mountain on Spitsbergen Island near the small village of Longyearbyen. It’s almost ready for ‘business’ according to their releases. The bank will have dual blast-proof doors with motion sensors, two airlocks, and walls of steel-reinforced concrete one meter thick. It will contain up to three million different varieties of seeds from the entire world, ’so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future,’ according to the Norwegian government. Seeds will be specially wrapped to exclude moisture. There will be no full-time staff, but the vault’s relative inaccessibility will facilitate monitoring any possible human activity.

Did we miss something here? Their press release stated, ’so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future.’ What future do the seed bank’s sponsors foresee, that would threaten the global availability of current seeds, almost all of which are already well protected in designated seed banks around the world?

Excerpt 2

Individual Income Tax Credit Is Biggest Chunk of Stimulus Plan

By Nicholas Johnston and Brian Faler

Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The costliest item in the economic stimulus plan passed by Congress is a tax credit of up to $400 for individuals earning less than $75,000 year.

Married couples earning less than $150,000 could claim a benefit of up to $800 under the provision, which has a price tag of $116 billion over 10 years, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

The Senate approved the $787 billion stimulus plan 60 to 38 last night. Hours earlier, the House passed the plan 246 to 183. The package goes to President Barack Obama for his signature, providing the first major legislative victory of his administration.

The plan includes $212 billion in tax cuts and $575 billion in spending that Obama says will create or save 3.5 million jobs.

Infrastructure construction makes up a large part of the bill’s spending provisions, including $29 billion for highways, $17.7 billion for mass transit and rail and $18.8 billion for clean water and flood control projects.

The plan provides $87 billion for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor. It contains $39 billion for unemployed workers in families, including provisions extending jobless benefits for 20 additional weeks in most states and 33 additional weeks in states with high unemployment rates. It also increases weekly benefits by $25.

The bill spends $25 billion to provide subsidies to help jobless workers keep their health benefits by paying 65 percent of their premiums for nine months for married couples who earn less than $250,000.

Senior Citizens

The bill authorizes a one-time $250 payment for senior citizens, disabled veterans and disabled people living on Social Security benefits.

The measure’s tax-related portions include a $70 billion reduction in the alternative-minimum tax this year that would spare more than 24 million households from paying the levy. The provision would waive the AMT on so-called private-activity bonds, a type of municipal bond used to fund airport runways, housing projects, sewage-treatment plants and other facilities that benefit the public but aren’t explicitly city-run endeavors.

The bill allows businesses to write off the cost of equipment purchases more quickly. Another provision eases tax burdens on companies that restructure debt without entering bankruptcy.

The legislation repeals a tax rule issued by the Internal Revenue Service last September that made banks’ losses more valuable as tax deductions for those banks acquiring other financial institutions.

Earned Income Tax Credit

The earned income tax credit, a benefit for the working poor, would be expanded. And families who don’t earn enough to pay income tax would be eligible to claim the $1,000 child credit.

For homebuyers, the bill increases the value of a tax credit enacted last year by $500, to $8,000, and waives a requirement that the break be repaid over a 15-year period. The credit would still be limited to couples with income of less than $150,000 and to first-time buyers.

Buyers of new cars will be able to deduct the sales tax on the purchase, regardless of whether they itemize deductions.

The legislation consolidates tax incentives for higher education into a $2,500 credit that could be claimed by most working families. And it makes college-related book and computer purchases eligible for the write-off for the first time.

Other tax breaks for individuals include a waiver of taxes on the first $2,400 of unemployment benefits.

Wage Tax Credit

For businesses, the bill provides a 40 percent tax credit for the first $6,000 of wages paid to military veterans and “disconnected” youths, those who haven’t had regular employment or attended school in the past six months.

It also allows owners of small businesses to exclude 75 percent of profits from capital gains taxes, provided they owned the company for at least five years.

Among other spending measures, state and local governments will get $53.6 billion to prevent cuts in education services and for school renovations. The measure allocates $15.6 billion to increase higher education Pell grants by up to $500.

Other spending includes $19 billion for health-care technology programs, $20 billion to increase food stamp benefits, $4 billion for state and local law enforcement agencies and $4 billion to help train unemployed workers.

Financial companies that get money from the Federal Reserve and government rescue funds will face stricter rules for hiring foreign workers under the H-1B visa program. The visas are sought by U.S. businesses for highly trained overseas workers.

The provision requires companies that want to apply for a visa on behalf of a foreign worker not to dismiss employees in similar positions 90 days before and 90 days after requesting the visa. The companies also will have to prove they attempted to recruit a U.S. worker before requesting the visa.

The plan retains “Buy American” provisions for material used in construction projects it funds, though such rules cannot be implemented in a way that violates international trade agreements.