Archive » fiscal stimulus

Old metric: Jobs created or saved.
New metric: Jobs inflated or craved.
The White House put out its new fuzzy porkulus math report — and then patted itself on the back for “transparency:”
More than 650,000 jobs have been saved or created under President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan, the White House said Friday, saying it is on [...]

Hey, how’s Obama’s job-creating stimulus working out for you, Philadelphia?
More hype than hope, as usual:
MORE THAN six months after President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package was passed into law, the city of Philadelphia has spent less than $1 million in recovery money and retained just 52 jobs.
The data was laid out in a memo sent [...]

The WSJ spotlights tax code affirmative action for golf club carts:
We thought cash for clunkers was the ultimate waste of taxpayer money, but as usual we were too optimistic. Thanks to the federal tax credit to buy high-mileage cars that was part of President Obama’s stimulus plan, Uncle Sam is now paying Americans to buy [...]

Conn Carroll at Heritage’s Foundry blog breaks down the stimulus spin from the White House today:
The Obama administration released the first hard numbers on how many jobs their $787 billion stimulus package has created or saved on Recovery.gov today. The number: 30,383 jobs from roughly $16 billion worth of stimulus contracts awarded directly by federal [...]

Scroll down for updates…10:45am – Snowe wanted reassurance from CBO and Baucus that scoring “integrity” will be preserved as conceptual language becomes legislative language…1:04pm Eastern…Snowe will vote YES on government health care takeover…2:54pm Eastern Senate Finance Cmte vote is 14-9

Sen. Olympia Snowe was one of the three members of the Senate GOP Turncoat Caucus who [...]

President Obama was unavailable for comment:
The American economy lost 263,000 jobs in September — far more than expected — and the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, the government reported on Friday, dimming prospects of any meaningful job growth by the end of the year.
The Labor Department’s monthly snapshot of unemployment dashed hopes that the [...]

Photoshop: Leo Alberti
So, now the White House has issued “new guidelines” in the wake of the “inappropriate” political lobbying call coordinated by the National Endowment for the Arts and exposed by Patrick Courrielche .
Translation: Instead of delivering “specific asks” to potential government grant recipients, they’ll stick to non-specific asks on behalf of Hope and Change.
***
Commenter [...]

Props to the Associated Press for stepping outside its traditional role as Obama water-carriers and shedding light on the none-too-surprising politicization of border security funding under DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.
She’s in a state of denial.
The White House is desperately undermining transparency.
And maybe it’s finally dawning on the media stenographers that the Era of [...]

Just to recap:
Cash for Clunkers.
Cash for Kitchen Appliances.
Cash for Coiffures.
And now…Cash for Convicts. Really.
The feckless feds are begging prisoners to give the money back. Really:
Federal economic stimulus cash was handed out to cons behind bars in Bay State prisons after a bureaucratic snafu resulted in $250 checks being sent to some inmates – and now [...]

Cash for Clunkers.
Cash for Kitchens.
And now…Cash for Coiffures:
Arguing in favor of President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in January Democratic Congressman and senate candidate Paul Hodes claimed the stimulus act would “Reduce Soaring Unemployment.”
It hasn’t worked out that way.
Instead, according to a report issued by the New Hampshire Office of Economic Stimulus, the [...]

Washington just doesn’t get it. Spending beyond our means is what got this country into trouble in this first place. Political gimmickry like Cash for (fill-in-the-blank) only exacerbates the root cause. Government has no business encouraging people to take out car loans or home loans — or buy new refrigerators or dishwashers — when they [...]

Keep this inspector general in your prayers. Watchdogs are an endangered species, you know.
Engineering News-Record reports (Hat tip – Steve G.):
The Obama administration used economic stimulus money to pay for 50 airport projects that didn’t meet the grant criteria and approved projects at four airports with a history of mismanaging federal grants, a government [...]

The nutroots were quite upset with George Stephanopoulos for inviting me on his This Week roundtable. They piled on him on Twitter. And even Paul Krugman tried to stir up lefty ire.
God forbid a non-establishment, non-Beltway-certified “acceptable” conservative have a voice in a mainstream forum!
Unlike Matt Lauer, Stephanopoulos wasn’t compelled to play “beat the clock.” [...]

Stimulus money for the National Endowment for the Arts is supposed to be “restricted specifically to job preservation. ”
But a look at the list of NEA stimulus projects reveals that the money is being used instead for sexual titillation. Fox News reported on some of the eye-opening projects here.
Straight from the National Endowment for the [...]

Of course, it’s all Bush’s fault:
The U.S. economy is not only shedding jobs at a record rate; it is shedding more jobs than it is supposed to. It’s bad enough that the unemployment rate has doubled in only a year and a half and one out of six construction workers is out of work. What [...]

$9,090/month pork salesman.

…the lower his poll numbers go.
Down, down, down.
Heading into a critical period in the debate over health-care reform, public approval of President Obama’s stewardship on the issue has dropped below the 50 percent threshold for the first time, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll…
…Since April, approval of Obama’s handling of health care has [...]

It’s working! It’s working!
The city of Hoover will get $400,000 in federal stimulus money for a landscaping and beautification project at the Interstate 65 and U.S. 31 interchange, city officials learned this week.
The project will be paid completely with federal funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to the Alabama Department of Transportation.
The [...]

My syndicated column today covers the dawn of Generational Theft Act II. Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi purportedly walked back the rhetoric. Except she didn’t. While saying she was “committed to the first stimulus, and to giving it time to work,” she then turned around and floated another extension of unemployment benefits and a giant new highway [...]

Spawn of the Porkulus Beast!

Waiting for “we inherited this” spin from the White House…
Employers cut a larger-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June, driving the unemployment rate up to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent, suggesting that the economy’s road to recovery will be bumpy.
The Labor Department report, released Thursday, showed that even as the recession flashes signs of easing, companies [...]

Wrecovery.gov!
It’s a good thing the White House can’t fire GOP Sen. Tom Coburn the way it fires inspectors general for blowing the whistle on waste.
He’s doing the job no one else in the administration is allowed to do — telling us the truth about porkulus fraud and abuse.
While Bozo the VP Joe Biden clowns around [...]

The WSJ broke the news on Friday about Obama’s new “pay czar,” Kenneth Feinberg.
His official title as executive-pay-limiter-in-chief: Special Master of Compensation.
Can’t wait to see his logo.
Next up: Obama appoints the…
…Distinguished Overlord of Oxygen Intake (to limit individual human carbon emissions);
…Royal Captain of Calorie Consumption (to limit weight gain and end obesity);
…Exalted Diva [...]

Abracadabra!

Shut up.

ARRA agitprop.

Shovel-ready.

The nose knows.

Washington can’t meet the Cheerios Standard
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009
I think it’s time we applied the same advertising standards to Washington’s legislative products that the feds apply to breakfast foods. The Food and Drug Administration rapped General Mills this week for making misleading claims about the benefits of Cheerios. The food manufacturer says the whole-grain [...]

It’s going to dead people:
Millions of Americans on Social Security are receiving $250 checks as part of the president’s stimulus plan — including an Anne Arundel woman who died more than 40 years ago.
The woman’s son, 83-year-old James Hagner, said he got the surprise when he checked his mailbox late last week.
“It shocked me and [...]