By Josh Dorner
RAW: Uncooked truth, beyond belief
Issue #274
Feb 13, 2009
America is suffering from many ills at the moment, but we can add a new one since January 20: Post-Traumatic Bush Disorder. It's the nagging suspicion that despite President Obama's truly amazing first few weeks in office, that the government is still somehow out to get us or will simply screw it all up. We've all been so beat down for the past eight years, it's like we simply can't let ourselves believe that President Obama is as amazing as he has now proven himself to be. Well, I think America's cure has arrived. It's called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
As regular RAW readers know, week after week your correspondent has never had trouble finding something utterly terrible to write about. There are still lots of terrible things happening, but just this once we're going to take a break from all that to celebrate something truly monumental: the passage of President Obama's economic recovery package. It should finally let us all allow ourselves to believe that change has come and Washington is once again in the business of getting things done for the American people.
The bill includes nearly $100 BILLION -- yes, billion with a capital B -- in green spending. President Obama has met a once-in-a-lifetime crisis with an effort to transform this country not seen since the greatest generation. The package includes more than $62 billion in direct spending on clean energy, energy efficiency, and the like and also throws in another $20 billion in tax incentives for clean energy. Other investments will help clean up past environmental wrongs, ensure that we have clean water, and fund research into the technologies of tomorrow. The scale of the investments -- more than $15 billion for energy efficiency and weatherization, $8 billion for public transit, $8 billion for high-speed rail, $500 million for green jobs training, $4.5 billion to green federal buildings -- is simply unprecedented.
Post-Traumatic Bush Disorder begone!
