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Bret Matthew’s article in The Hoot (Hypocrisy, thy name is Republican, Oct.23, 2009) was biased and uninformed, so I’m clarifying what was written with the truth.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the $787 billion “stimulus bill,” was proposed by Congress on Jan. 26 and signed into law less than a month later. Its components include several categories of federal programs involving health care, housing and urban development, nutrition, agriculture and other divisions. Among the grants listed in the bill are several vague divisions including $2.4 billion for “other activities” under the category “Commerce, Justice, and Science” and $6.4 billion for “various other activities” under the category “Energy and Water.”

The National Endowment of the Arts admitted that 630 grants, totaling $29,725,000, were given out by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Here’s a brief list where stimulus money also went to support porn, pedophilia and aphrodisiacs: $50,000 went to the Painted Bride Art Center, which is promoting “Tabla Ecstasy,” $25,000 to Counterpulse, which recently held a “Perverts Put Out” show that encouraged everyone to “join your fellow pervs for some explicit, twisted fun!,” $25,000 to the San Francisco Cinematheque and their documentary on the film “Thundercrack,” which featured “the world’s only underground kinky art porno horror film, complete with four men, three women and a gorilla” and $25,000 to Jess Curtis/Gravity, Inc., which featured portraits of nude couples, including naked children with adults (Malkin). The grand total for all of that, by itself, was $125,000 straight from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

As for the accusations of Republican hypocrisy, the fact that Matthew’s reference was the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is so completely and unequivocally biased, it’s laughable.

Hey, Bret, if you bothered to actually read what the DCCC wrote, you would’ve recognized that they did not post facts, only speculative assumptions. It is true that Republican congressmen requested stimulus money, since they’re supposedly receiving it anyway in this bill, to be accounted for and used where it’s needed. If you read the little paragraphs beneath the names, you’d find that the accusations of hypocrisy the DCCC make are more or less statements like this: ‘He supports tax cuts but he didn’t vote for our bill, so that makes him a hypocrite.’ That would make sense if the bill actually did support tax cuts. A $1.4 trillion deficit necessarily requires tax increases because the government can only obtain money in one of two ways—it can print money, which causes it to bankrupt its own currency (no, it does not have an unlimited supply of money), or it can raise taxes and take money from its citizens. How are Republicans hypocrites for saying that they oppose tax increases and then vote down a bill that necessarily requires massive tax increases?

How are Republicans hypocrites for requesting money they are allegedly receiving anyway, and asking that it be accounted for in the areas where the money is most needed? How are they at fault for requesting money from the federal government when the stimulus bill is supposed to be doling out money to everyone? Aren’t they trying to account for what they were promised in the bill, or do you think only certain people and groups can tap into the federal budget?

Infusions of money provide only short-term incentives and not long-term economic growth. The bottom line is that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did the opposite of what it claimed; the jobs that were reportedly created have now been exposed as lies or gross distortions—just refer to Bridgewater State college, which reported 160 jobs created with over $77,181 only to have spokesman Bryan Baldwin clarify to Boston Globe that the jobs created were “almost nothing.” It’s Economics 101—there is no such thing as ‘creating’ or ‘saving’ a job because the market is in constant flux. When a job is taken, that does not mean a niche is gone forever; new jobs are constantly being made out of necessity and innovation because the free market is not a zero-sum game.

Instead of accusing Republicans of being corrupt for wanting accountability for the money they’re being given (which isn’t corrupt at all), why don’t you ask this: The stimulus bill has failed miserably and tossed this country into a hellhole, so what’s going on with Democrats considering a second bill?

I’m sorry….Who’re the hypocrites?

Mary-Alice Perdichizzi,

Brandeis Republican member