The Hammer Nails Another One

"Meddling grouches"

Stimulus Watchdog Earl Devaney Doesn't Appreciate Internet Criticism One Bit

BY Mary Katharine Ham

Stimulus watchdog Earl Devaney has taken to his blog to clear up some "misconceptions" about the stimulus bill— "misconceptions" that came to light, oh, about a year ago. No word on why he's using a Pony Express time table to respond to criticism or how that might reflect on his ability to accurately chart where $900 billion dollars is flowing daily into nooks and crannies all over the country. I'll leave that to your judgment for the moment.

I have no problem with the chairman clearing the air on what he thinks was misreading of bad data. The press and people learning to parse government data is as much of a learning process as the government learning to actually deliver accurate data, and Devaney's more than welcome to offer guidance. Although, it'd probably be more helpful if he did it less than a year after the fact.

It'd also be helpful if he kept an unfailingly civil tongue when dealing with critics.

After all, it is the dispersed expertise and power of the Internet (both press and regular citizens) that will push the government to get better at what it's doing. Which is, by the way, something it should already have been doing, since it's our money they're spending.

It doesn't engender confidence when the head of the transparency board uses this tone to start his "clear the air" piece:
Over the past year, the Recovery Board has received its share of gratuitous criticism from some journalists and Internet grouches.

Nonetheless, feel free to read Devaney's points, some of which are legitimate gripes, but most of which are spin-like clarifications and a bit whiny. But we meddling "grouches" have already hurt his feelings once, so the least we can do is listen, huh?

Heritage Morning Bell-Stimulus and Snowjobs

Snow Slows Obama's Second Stimulus
The snowstorms that have already dumped over two feet of snow on the nation's Capitol and that are threatening to dump another 12 to 16 inches, have grounded the legislative process to a halt. But that might not be such a bad thing. Senate Democrats had hoped they could pass President Barack Obama's second stimulus today, but with only three of the Senate’s 100 lawmakers able to make it to the chamber, that vote has been postponed indefinitely. And the more we learn about what might be in President Obama's second stimulus, the better a little delay looks.

The Las Vegas Sun reported this weekend that big labor leaders are pushing to include their long-sought "card check" provisions into Obama's Second Stimulus. This legislation would effectively end a worker's right to fight unionization through secret ballot elections, would give the federal government the power to run small businesses and would cost the American economy thousands of jobs.

The other major provisions of Obama's second stimulus are also job killers. The $5,000 new worker tax credit does not create any incentive for already-struggling companies to begin long-term hiring. What's worse, it could even increase unemployment; companies would delay existing plans to create jobs so they could take advantage of the tax credit. And it would add to our national debt. Then there's the TARP-funded government-subsidized loans for small businesses. It's a big-government program destined to fail since the Small Business Administration has a terrible record of effectively allocating capital to the private sector.

For months, the American people and small businesses have been trying to tell the White House and Democrats in Congress that federal regulations and spending are part of the problem, not part of the solution. According to the latest National Federation of Independent Businesses survey, small business owners identified high taxes and government regulation as two of the top three problems facing their business.

Instead of piling on more debt and more regulations, the federal government should move in the opposite direction. For example, suspending the Davis-Bacon rules for the construction industry could fund 160,000 new jobs. Rescinding the unspent dollars from Obama's first failed stimulus would signal business owners that they will not face crippling new taxes enacted to cover the deficit. Killing the economically-devastating cap-and-trade legislation and prohibiting the EPA from regulating carbon-dioxide under the Clean Air Act would stabilize the regulatory environment so businesses could safely make long term decisions again.

There are things this Congress could do to help spur job creation. Notably, those job-creating ideas do not include more regulations and more deficit spending. Maybe a good thaw is what Washington needs to get back on the same page as the American people.

Heritage Morning Bell-Jobs

$787 Billion in Stimulus, Zero Jobs "Created or Saved"

On February 11th, President Barack Obama stood on a windy hilltop in front of a dusty construction site in Fairfax County, Virginia, and promised the American people: "Here in Virginia, my plan will create or save almost 100,000 jobs, doing work at sites just like this one." Standing alongside current Democratic National Committee Chairman and former-Gov. Tim Kaine, the President continued: "Where we're standing, that could mean hundreds of construction jobs. And the benefits of jobs we create directly will multiply across the economy." Eleven months later, none of those promised jobs have been "created or saved." In fact, the Obama administration quietly announced last week that they were dropping the fraudulent "saved or created" terminology altogether.

The failure of Obama's $787 billion stimulus is particularly acute in Virginia where, as Heritage fellow Ron Utt has documented, despite $695 million in allocated infrastructure funding, only 16% of designated projects had begun. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar (D-MN) even publicly complained about Virginia's slow transportation spending, writing to Gov. Kaine: "your state ranks last among all states [51 out of 51, including the District of Columbia], based on an analysis of the percentage of Recovery Act highway formula funds put out to bid, under contract and under way."

But even where infrastructure spending has been spent, the hard evidence shows that there has not been any positive effect on unemployment. According to an Associated Press analysis reviewed by independent economists at five universities, the $20 billion spent nationwide on infrastructure so far "has had no effect on local unemployment rates." And this was just the most recent embarrassing headline for the White House's signature economic policy. Since the first reporting deadline in October, newspapers and other media outlets across the country have identified 94,341 fake jobs reported by the Obama administration as jobs "created or saved" by the stimulus. After the Government Accountability Office issued a report finding "significant reporting and processing problems that need to be addressed," Obama administration spokesman Ed Pound offered this defense of the Obama administration's jobs numbers: "Who knows, man, who really knows."

Now Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag issued a little-noticed memo last month ending the "saved or created" metric and instead directing agencies to count only jobs "funded" by stimulus dollars. But as Harvard University labor economist Lawrence Katz tells ProPublica, this is not really an improvement: "I just think it’s a silly exercise." Instead Katz says a more accurate way to account for the effect of the stimulus is to look at the unemployment numbers put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That is a great idea. The latest BLS report issued last Friday found that the U.S. economy dropped 85,000 jobs in December, bringing the jobs lost total to 2.7 million since the stimulus was passed and 3.4 million since Obama became President. In contrast, the President's White House Council of Economic Advisers had promised total employment of at least 138.6 million by 2010. Actual employment as of December was reported to be 130.9 million, leaving the Obama jobs deficit at 7.7 million.

The problem with infrastructure spending as stimulus, and really government spending as stimulus, is that Congress does not have a vault of money waiting to be distributed. Every dollar Congress injects into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. No new spending power is created. It is merely redistributed from one group of people to another. Businesses are telling pollsters that among the biggest reasons they are not creating jobs is the prospect of new tax and regulatory burdens. A better solution to reduce unemployment is to simplify and reduce the barriers to business success.

D.C Wildfire Firefighting fund?

This is what happens when corrupt idiots are allowed to print their own money and bureaucrats are told to spend it.

D.C. wildfire funds rebuked, then restored. Over 2.7 MILLION dollars wasted. On creating a DC green jobs corps, instead. Instead of, you know, burning it. At least that we would generate heat....

Who knew that there was a threat of wild fire in the D.C. forests?

Why aren't people being arrested for fraud?

And yes, I mean Congress.....

A Picture is Worth...

...A Thousand Words.

Or in this case, 1,200,000,000,000,000. And those words are "DOLLARS."

A certain Suitably Flip blogger also illustrates what you can get for this amount of moolah.

Change has come to America. Where, once, the "prohibitive" cost of the Iraq War was debated endlessly (as long as a camera was present), we now find it perfectly legitimate to spend TWICE as much with less debate than it takes to dedicate a Post Office. Apparently, all it takes for principles to "change" is for an election to occur.

Spending in defense of the USA is wrong. Spending in defense of re-election is good. Killing Terrorists - Bad. Buying Pork - Good. Paying Back Terrorists - Bad. Paying Back Special Interests - Very Good: Doug Ross: By the Numbers, spells out where the money has gone.

Obama wants to "preserve jobs" with this pork bill. He wants to ensure that only US products and services are used. (Hmm, we bailed out GM. They build cars all over the world, some of which are sold here. Is that subsidizing foreign workers?) Let's see what happens, according to Doug Ross: $1,646,000,000,000 ($1.646 trillion): the approximate amount of annual United States exports endangered by the "Stimulus" package, which provides a "Buy American" stricture. According to international trade experts, a "US-EU trade war looms", which could result in a worldwide economic depression reminiscent of that touched off by the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Act. (Obama wants to be FDR, but is going to be the next Hoover.)