Obama recovery plan stimulates whining

You just can't please some people.

In the wake of President Obama's signing of a historically ambitious economic recovery program last week, the nitpickers and pettifoggers have come out in force.

The program's too big, the program's too small. It's got too many local make-work projects, it's got too many long-term projects. There are too many tax cuts, there are too few tax cuts. Eight bucks more in your week's take-home pay won't save anyone, let's give millions to corporations instead. And so on.

The same thing happened when Obama announced a housing recovery plan Wednesday encompassing many of the provisions housing experts say are needed to spur more home buying and arrest the foreclosure wave. Among them are more low-interest loans from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, incentives for loan servicers to keep borrowers out of foreclosure, and new powers for bankruptcy judges to modify underwater home loans.

The next day, Rick Santelli, a market commentator and ex-futures trader on the financial news channel CNBC, staged an extended rant from a Chicago commodities pit about the injustice of helping people in distress, especially while there are still a few people around who aren't in distress.

Santelli asked "if we really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages or would we like to, at least, buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give them to people that might have a chance to actually prosper down the road. And reward people that can carry the water instead of drink the water."

When the futures floor erupted in cheers, he swept his hand about the room and proclaimed theatrically, "This is America!"

Well, no. America is a place where 8 million families are threatened with losing their homes, not a futures pit filled with braying traders.

CNBC should have known that the proper response to Santelli's tantrum was to instruct him to put a sock in it. Instead, it re-ran the video incessantly while its anchors congratulated him for making a big noise.

It may be inevitable that government programs of this magnitude bring out flocks of screeching magpies, for they're big enough to have something for any critic to hate. One reader wrote me to object to "Pork-barrel Pelosi's" inclusion of a skateboard park and a Frisbee park in the stimulus bill, though it wasn't clear whether his chief objection was to skateboarders, recreational facilities or the Democratic speaker of the House.