Please see the update to this post.
I found a rather strange article on Eurasianet.org on how the US House and Senate passed the HR: 6911, the Stability and Democracy for Georgia Act of 2008, or STAND for Georgia, as it is also called. (Get it? STA for “stability,” N for “and,” and D for “democracy”. Rep. Howard Berman [D-CA] is so clever!) The bill which, according to section 6 of the bill will allocate $1 billion to Georgia for “urgent humanitarian needs,” “reconstruction,” “economic development,” and “governance.” The bill authorizes $470 million for the 2008 fiscal year alone.
One would think that Congress doling out $1 billion to Georgia at the same time its desperately trying to plug the capitalist bleed with $700 billion tourniquet is a bit perverse. Especially since if today’s markets are any indication, the US government’s upward redistribution of wealth doesn’t seem to be working. Perhaps the fact that one stop measure here only produces a leak elsewhere is a sure sign that capital has no center.
Thankfully, perhaps Congress isn’t that perverse. Despite Joshua Kucera’s claims that “the large spending bill that included the aid to Georgia passed the House of Representatives on September 23 and the Senate passed it four days later,” I can’t seem to find any official entry on the Congressional record to confirm it. According to govtrack.us, the bill hasn’t seen any action since September 16 when it was introduced.
The only evidence Kucera provides to the bill’s passage is a few quotes from a nameless Congressional staff member. He might want to go back and ask Nameless what s/he’s talking about.
If this bill has passed, and it’s only a question of when, I would certainly like to know if Congress is awarding Georgia for starting a war.
