Written : Mar. 16, 2010
It’s difficult to locate any relevant information about the stimulus bill, even using the Web, but a good place to start is recovery.gov. The website says 594,644 recovery funded jobs were reported by recipients so far. Unfortunately, many of those jobs are temporary construction jobs. Compare the almost 600k ‘funded’ jobs to the 4.4 million jobs lost since the administration took office. We’ve gained about an eighth so far, if that’s what ‘recovery funded jobs’ means, even though we’re still losing jobs each month.
I agree, our infrastructure could use some help, but what worries me is how we’re going to pay for what’s in this bill. According to Sean Hannity’s March 12 show, subtitled "Waste 102", $4.3 million was spent on new escalators in Washington, D.C. Speaking truth to power, Tucker Carlson rhetorically asked whether it would have been more cost effective and healthier to replace the escalators with stairs? … $200,000 are earmarked for studying the voting habits of Africans. In the long run, how will the study help our economy? … $500,000 will be spent on recycling bins in Dayton, OH. The bins will have microchips embedded in them to track participation. Isn’t that a bit creepy?
Jenny-O Turkey got over five million dollars for production and delivery of cooked deli breasts (total jobs reported: 286). At first, the Jenny-O award looks good. But divided up, it gets 286 employees a one-time total of about $18,000 each, but if and only if all the money goes to the people, otherwise it’s a lesser amount per worker.
There’s a cost of living adjustment (COLA) for Head Start workers in Puerto Rico (total jobs reported: 6). This is just shy of $600,000 for 6 workers. Either that’s quite a healthy adjustment, or six people were hired to administer the COLA, or, I just don’t get it. It’s all very puzzling, and I didn’t mention how unreadable the bill is. Remember, our kids, and most likely our grandkids will help us fund everything we get from this one stimulus bill, needed or not.
For a cost breakdown of about 100 silly things the stimulus will give us see: Waste 102 - Warning: When you see the list you may start screaming, “Haliburton! Haliburton!” Or maybe not. Seriously, you may get a pop-up question regarding the running of scripts in the page. Either answer will let you view the site.
You may be more comfortable with this site: Stimulus Watch - You can examine each description, read more by clicking on each grant or contract, and vote yes or no if they do or don’t meet with your approval.
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