You sound you are quoting an Obama campaign speech, everything bad about the economy now is because of Bush and repulicans, no need to back up that argument, just because it happened during his watch everything he ever pushed for is automatically wrong. Correlation doesn't imply causation and all that, and MOST of his time in office the economy was doing very well.

What the crap does high speed internet have to do with fixing the economy? I'm assume you read an earlier article on slashdot, the reason we don't have high speed everywhere in the US is because ... people don't really want it that bad. Cell towers popped up everywhere because people did want that technology, but high speed internet they could live without. Some people are not interested in pet projects being pushed just because there's a crisis.

It's funny how most of those items on that page were going to do very little to help the economy (the purpose of the bill), and you pick up on the one thing which may have been useful, school construction, don't address if its really the BEST way of using tax payer dollars to stimulate the economy, and point out that on ideological grounds schools we need new/better schools, yes ok, but why is this the best bill to do it in? That's the kind of thinking which got all of these ideologically based items in a stimulus bill in the first place. All the cuts in the article seems to suggest, at least to me, the exact opposite of what you concluding, it sounds as if compromise between parties is causing a stricter look at what is actually being funded to HELP the economy, and not make a crisis an excuse to give congress a blank check to fund every problem they care about. These magic pixies you mentioned are they going to pay off this check too?