Dead Tree Planter

Gail Collins, NYT columnist, writes:

Whenever a president gives a major address, like the one Barack Obama delivered to Congress this week, the opposition party delivers a rejoinder. Which American citizens always ignore. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s speech was, therefore, a kind of triumph. So bad, people actually paid attention!

We will pass over Jindal’s delivery, which sounded a little like a junior high schooler’s entry into the Chamber of Commerce “I Speak for Fiscal Restraint” contest. The content was the thing: a message to the nation that the Republicans were not going to have anything important or useful to say about the current economic crisis.

She also makes a good point about stimulus waste:

The waste argument is a perpetual winner because there will always be some. Years ago, when I was a reporter, I remember getting a call from a woman in the Bronx who was screaming: “They’re over on Moshulu Parkway planting dead trees!” Sure enough, a city work crew was digging holes along the side of the street and carefully sticking in brown and dried-up pieces of foliage. The men claimed the trees had simply lost their leaves for the winter — an explanation somewhat undermined by the fact that they were evergreens.

I’m telling you this because on Tuesday I was talking with a high-ranking Obama administration official about the stimulus plan. “There will be a dead tree planted, figuratively speaking,” he said somberly. “That will happen.”

How could it not? Much of the stimulus money is being channeled through state and local governments, through tens of thousands of governors, mayors, county executives, transportation commissioners, parks superintendents and so on. Try to imagine the person in that pyramid with the lowest I.Q., and you’ll understand that there’s a dead-tree planter hidden in there somewhere.