Is Barack’s package excessive?
Image by Dog Company
Bernini’s baroque Triton Fountain (Italian Fontana del Tritone) is located in Piazza Barberini, Rome, near the entrance to the Palazzo Barberini (Now the museum, Galeria de Arte Antica), which Bernini helped redesign for his patron Maffeo Barberini, who had become pope as Urban VIII. It is a few blocks from Borromini’s San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane In the fountain, which Bernini executed of travertine in 1642–43, an over-lifesize muscular Triton, a minor sea god of ancient Greco-Roman legend, is depicted as a merman kneeling on an opened scallop shell. He throws back his head to raise a conch to his lips: from it a jet of water spurts, formerly rising dramatically higher than it does today. The fountain has a base of four dolphins that entwine the papal tiara and the heraldic Barberini bees in their scaly tails. The Tritone, first of Bernini’s fountains, was to provide water from the Acqua Felice aqueduct that Urban had restored, in a dramatic celebration. It was Bernini’s last major commission from his great patron.
At the Triton Fountain, Urban and Bernini brought a garden feature familiar from villas decisively to a public, wholly urban setting for the first time. All the previous fountains of Rome had been passive basins for the reception of public water or had garden settings in the urban villas.
The triumphant passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses book I, evoking godlike control over the waters and describing the draining away of the universal Deluge, which Urban set Bernini to illustrate, was well-known to all literate Roman contemporaries:
Already Triton, at his call, appears
Above the waves; a Tyrian robe he wears;
And in his hand a crooked trumpet bears.
The soveraign bids him peaceful sounds inspire,
And give the waves the signal to retire.
His writhen shell he takes; whose narrow vent
Grows by degrees into a large extent,
Then gives it breath; the blast with doubling sound,
Runs the wide circuit of the world around:
The sun first heard it, in his early east,
And met the rattling ecchos in the west.
The waters, list’ning to the trumpet’s roar,
Obey the summons, and forsake the shore.
—free translation by Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden, et al..
Legend has it that any visitor who throws a coin into the water will have guaranteed their return to Rome.
Question by Underdog: Is Barack’s package excessive?
I see some dollar totals on the stimulus plan and can’t help but wonder what’s really needed & do they really cost that much. I agree with many, but wonder why they’re getting attached to this bill:
50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
380 million for Women, Infant, & Childrens program
300 million for grants to combat violence against women
6 billion for university building projects
1.2 billion for youth ( up to the age of 24 ) summer jobs
4.2 billion Neighborhood stabilization activities
650 million Digital TV coupons
150 million for the Smithsonian
34 million to renovate the Dept. of Commerce headquarters
500 million for improvement projects fot the National Institute for Health facilities
44 million for repairs to the Dept. of Agricultures headquarters
350 million Agriculture Dept computers
88 million to help move the Public Health Service into a new building
600 million to convert federal auto fleets to hybrids
1 billion for the Census Burea
89 billion Medicaid
30 billion COBRA extensions
36 billion for unemployment expansions
20 billion more food stamps
850 million AMTRAK ( when will they ever make a profit? )
87 million for a polar ice breaking ship
1.7 million National Park System
55 million for the Historic Preservation Fund
7.6 billion Rule community advancement program
150 million Agricultural commodity purchases
150 million Producers of livestock, farm raised fish and honey bees
160 million for paid volunteers at the Corporation for National Community Service
6.2 billion Weatherization program
“Green” programs are too numerous to list!
Hey trickle up. If you take a look at my comment, you’ll see that I said I agree with many of the projects, but NOT attached to a “stimulus” bill.
Add your own answer in the comments!
21 Responses to Is Barack’s package excessive?
Leave a Reply
Yes to say the least
Brian the brain
September 5, 2012 at 1:53 am
Yes. It is.
Gatsby's Widow
September 5, 2012 at 2:48 am
Women like Obama’s impressive package.
Women have given him the nickname PRESIDENT JOHNSON ! (know what i’m sayin’)
Senator Max E. Padds
September 5, 2012 at 2:50 am
Given that you’re including things like Medicade and Cobra…..No.
It isn’t.
It does the economy little good to save it if people are freezing to death, starving to death or dying to death.
Thomas R
September 5, 2012 at 2:57 am
His wife said it’s not nearly big enough.
danrathersdrunkagain
September 5, 2012 at 3:30 am
LAISSEZ FAIRE!!!
I could scrape a good 815 billion off this plan and get the same results
Dan R
September 5, 2012 at 4:09 am
I smell bbq PORK!!!!!!!!!
Tazmanian Devil
September 5, 2012 at 5:04 am
One word: skullduggery.
Rooker
September 5, 2012 at 5:46 am
Might as well have a bonfire with truckloads of currency. Insanity! The U.S. Congress do not have a clue how our system really works. It should be renamed “The Tower of Babel.”
Madoff Knows ...
September 5, 2012 at 6:45 am
Oh you meant this package. Its pretty large too.
warriorfstride
September 5, 2012 at 7:36 am
it’s obviously an attempt to blow all the money in one weekend….and to compensate for some other small area in obama’s life.
main st.
September 5, 2012 at 7:45 am
You know some of these are actually good programs that should be funded, but not in this bill. That should be done in the budget not in a stimulus package. The whole point of this thing is supost to be getting the economy going again. Instead it should be call the social enginering pet project pork bill.
tim p
September 5, 2012 at 8:04 am
All of this plan is garbage but I do like the one for National parks- this plan won’t do anything at alllll
Hello, ladies
September 5, 2012 at 8:51 am
most of these will do nothing to stimulate anything
when will these politicians learn to live within their means like we have to do?
Wendy
September 5, 2012 at 9:47 am
I’m a Republican and even I agree with some of the stuff on here. The National Parks, Arts, Smithsonian, Hybrids, Historic preservation, I would support all those things.
NOT, however, on a bill disguised as a means to stimulate our economy.
The only things I could see as economically useful would be the parts which pertain to agriculture, livestock, and unemployment…
The main thing is that they finally have the votes to push through all this crap they have been sitting on for years. But unnecessary or untimely Government spending is the LAST thing that is going to stimulate our economy!!!!
snake_girl85
September 5, 2012 at 10:20 am
Yes.
You can’t pull money out of your asss.
It will do nothing to stimulate the economy what so ever.
emily b
September 5, 2012 at 10:50 am
Yes and how much of it appears to be an economic stimulant? Dems have a language or an understanding problem.
David S
September 5, 2012 at 11:20 am
Stimulus packages never work. People assume that it’s free money, that when people get this money they will go out and spend it and thus perk up the economy. What they fail to comprehend is all that money had to come from someone, and those people will now not have the money so they won’t spend it. Net effect, no new spending.
The spending we need is investment in businesses that will create the wealth we consume, and by extension require labor, which leads to more jobs. Most of this is list is just consumption, it is wealth spent once and gone.
If I ever get in charge of the government, the very first program I would totally eliminate is the National Endowment for the Arts. Anyone who thinks this program is a stellar idea should sit down with single mothers struggling to make ends meet and explain that part of the wealth that would have made their lives better went to some performance art. Besides you can never have great art without suffering and I figure cutting off these folks tax money is a good place to start that suffering.
Marvin the Martian
September 5, 2012 at 12:07 pm
YES and you’re not even touching on the specifics which would piss off alot of tax payers. Sad to see so many Americans believe this crap will put money in “tax payers” hands. Not hardly. Have you seen the revision cutting billions of dollars from states running out of money? Some states didn’t even see money for roads like they were told. This is another knee jerk band aid on a problem that will not work in the long run. And there’s no guarantee it will work in the short-term. But hurry up and support it because O’bummer is playing on your fears big time…and he wants to look like he’s doing something for you.
Gabriel V
September 5, 2012 at 12:28 pm
I’m sure that ‘green’ projects are just too difficult to imagine — for some folks — how much CO2 emissions they save, less dependence on coal and petroleum, or the jobs that the green industries will create. Yah. That’s such a tough concept, HUH?
and 1.7 for the National park system? that’s about a penny an acre, money that Bush wouldn’t spend, as are many of the other items on your list
honeybees: they “only” pollinate 25% or more of our food crops: no bees = no almonds, oranges, grapefruit, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc. I guess you haven’t kept up with the mysterious disease that has been killing bees faster than apiarists (look it up!) can keep up with. hence the “honeybee insurance.”
It seems obvious, at least to me, that most people who oppose these things are not really doing their own research, they’re relying on that obese drug-addled thrice-divorced rabid fascist windbag radio guy or the ever-smarmy Sham Hannyjob or Bill-O The Clown.
On the other hand, those smug union-busting Southern Senators and their lickspittle sycophants at the non-union Chamber(pot) of Commerce are requiring that the “Buy American” provision NOT be in the StimPack…that smacks of treason to me, certainly shortsightedness at the very least. Maybe Toyota and BMW and Honda are holding Mitch McConnell and his cohorts hostage? They are being peckersniffian, according to all objective reports. Or maybe they don’t care that our bridges, overpasses, etc., will now have “Made In China’ (or India) stickers on them. Obama is trying to EMPLOY AMERICANS in AMERICAN JOBS. That’s the easy part to understand… I hope.
Let’s see what happens to those jerks in 2010 when re-election time comes around and they have to explain themselves to their broke, hungry, needy, unemployed, foreclosed-on constituents.
and that pesky Women Infant Children program for food, etc. Yah. Maybe if Bush had spent a few bux on sex ed, condoms, etc, there would be fewer little boogers needing help… but no-o-o-o-o-o. Now the Fed Gov feeds them; after all, no matter how they got here, I’m sure that you don’t babies dying of starvation, dehydration, etc… don’t you? Surprise me and say no, please.
.
Trickle-Up Economist
September 5, 2012 at 12:36 pm
This is not the time to be speding so much money. It will probably be printed, causing even more inflation.
Thomas R – “Dying to death”? Aren’t you being a little bit overdramatic? The economy isn’t in good shape, but it isn’t because of capitalism, and it isn’t as bad as the mainstream media makes it out to be.
Militant Libertarian
September 5, 2012 at 1:27 pm