Update: The Senate voted yes on cloture. What this means is now the bill can come up for a vote to pass it with a simple majority.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is now online.
The amended Senate version, February 7, 2009 is here (click this) (large pdf).
To find out the latest, well frankly watch the Senate Floor Proceedings and also go to The Library of Congress links.
Huffington Post is hosting a what's in the bill citizen legislative text watchdog volunteer tell us what you found effort.
The Buy American provisions are on page 414, line 12. This covers Steel, Iron and probably the most important provision, use of American made manufactured goods.
I believe that this news article sums up what is wrong with the government bailing out the economy.
SAO PAULO -- General Motors plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind of problems the U.S. automaker is facing in its home market, said the beleaguered car maker.
According to the president of GM Brazil-Mercosur, Jaime Ardila, the funding will come from the package of financial aid that the manufacturer will receive from the U.S. government and will be used to "complete the renovation of the line of products up to 2012."
A GM spokesman has denied using bailout funds to export American jobs, but that appears to be nothing more than a bookkeeping matter. This is bad enough as it is, but it doesn't stop there by any means.
General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC may have to be forced into bankruptcy by the U.S. government to assure repayment of $17.4 billion in federal bailout loans, a course of action the automakers claim would destroy them.
U.S. taxpayers currently take a backseat to prior creditors, including Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., according to loan agreements posted on the U.S. Treasury’s Web site. The government has hired a law firm to help establish its place at the front of the line for repayment, two people involved in the work said last week.
Since when does free trade theory mean one is trading people, increasing the labor supply, displacing citizens of a region, repressing wages and avoiding the rights of citizen workers through specialty work visas?
Agreement ends wildcat strikes over foreign workers
A worker celebrates as he and colleagues return to work after voting to end their strike at the Lindsey oil refinery in north Lincolnshire. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism this past weekend dismantled a small piece in the Wall Street Journal which had attempted to show that income disparity in the U.S. is not at an all time record. Back in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America, compared the compensation of French and American civil servants, with the king and President. What the Journal added was a comparison of the U.S. minimum wage with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein's annual pay and bonus of $69 million in 2007.
But the King was almost certainly the richest and best paid individual in France. He made 8,000 times the most menial civil worker. Our disparity (minimum wage versus Lloyd Blankfein) at a mere 5,000+ isn't quite as bad, right?
If anyone recalls there was major controversy and outrage over a huge $35 billion dollar contract going to Northrup Grumman instead of Boeing.
Now the contract is up for new bids with the political insider implications being for Boeing this time.
Frankly the entire thing is a joke. Yes Northrup Grumman is using Airbus and other European subsidized manufacturing, but Boeing also offshore outsources jobs, manufacturing.
The committee chairman, Rep. John P. Murtha, (D-Pa.), has threatened to withhold funding for the program.
Tomorrow, Treasury Secretary Geithner is scheduled to unveil his proposals for dealing with the financial crises. I will be measuring the proposals against the solution outlined by Ian Walsh on Friday: How to Perform Triage on the Banks and Stop the Bleeding
Not only is the financial situation getting worse, but a lot of securities either really have no market (they're hardly ever sold) or the market price is actually below their probable long term value. If the government is going to take over banks, or insure the securities, or set up a bad bank, they need to know whether they're solvent and how risky the securities they hold are—how likely they are to go bad in the future. Once they know that, they know how much to pay, which banks to take over and which banks can be saved.
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