Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog 8/2/2021
The pork-laden “infrastructure” bill has been unveiled, and it’s a monster. Some 2702 pages long, H. R. 3684 seems geared to shovel as much money into various branches of the federal bureaucracy as quickly as possible with as little oversight as possible.
The table of contents alone is some 17 pages long. And the usual crappy government PDF practices seem at work here. Looking for “high speed rail”? That search brings up nothing, but if you search for “high speed” with two spaces “high” and “speed,” you get one mention on page 2331. “Rail” appears 322 times (because Democrats obviously love subsidizing choo-choos).
Some random gleamings:
• The word “tribal” appears 226 times
• “Diversity” appears 23 times (most mentions appear to be unrelated to the SJW kind)
• “Equity” appears 59 times, many under the “Digital Equity Act” (broadband subsidies)
• “Housing” appears 68 times
• “Marijuana” appears 12, most under “Sec. 25026. Report on marijuana research,” because evidently “driving while high is a bad idea” needs more federally funded research.
Some random minutia that somehow is found in a giant federal spending bill:
• Sec. 11133. Bicycle transportation and pedestrian walkways.
• Sec. 11527. Blood transport vehicles.
• Sec. 11528. Pollinator-friendly practices on roadsides and highway rights-of-way.
• Sec. 22402. Grade crossing accident prediction model.
• Sec. 24214. Hood and bumper standards.
There’s a “Carbon Reduction Program” (starting page 328) because of course there is.
There’s a lot of sections on “Cybersecurity” (194 matches), some of which might be a good idea in a separate cybersecurity bill, but is probably misplaced in an infrastructure bill. (The overwhelming problem is properly securing the technological infrastructure we already have. Buying new servers isn’t going to prevent the Tony Podestras of the world from using PASSWORD as their password…)
More:
https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=48827