Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Son of Stimuloot

Related: Pelsoi Says Stimuloot a Success

Second Stimuloot on the Way

Same as the first stimuloot, sigh.

"Republicans question value of latest jobs bill in Senate; Wonder if it will boost hirings" by Jim Abrams, Associated Press | January 4, 2010

WASHINGTON - When the Senate takes up a jobs bill later this month or early in February, the debate will center on whether it really will create jobs and be worth plunging the government tens of billions of dollars further into debt.

Republicans scoff at the “Jobs for Main Street Act’’ title that House Democrats put on their $174 billion package last month. They refer to it as “son of the stimulus,’’ the $787 billion economic recovery plan of nearly a year ago that they say was ineffective at producing jobs....

Yes, we saw how DECEPTIVE the TALLIES were!!!

The attitude seemed to be a job for every buck spent, no matter on what!

And now the DemocraPs want to throw away more tax loot to well-connected interests and concerns.

Democrats tick off the job prospects from the House bill’s $75 billion in infrastructure and public sector spending: tens of thousands of new construction jobs, 5,500 more police officers, 25,000 additional AmeriCorps members, 250,000 summer jobs for disadvantaged youth, 14,000 part-time jobs for parks and forestry workers.

Yeah, yeah, PROMISES, PROMISES!!

And WHERE YOU BEEN?

The RECESSION and JOB LOSSES started TWO YEARS AGO!!!!

You JUST GETTING AROUND to US now?!!

“Why don’t we just put everyone in the United States on the federal government payroll and call it a day?’’ counters Representative Jerry Lewis, Republican of California.

House Democrats diverted $75 billion from the Wall Street bailout fund to offset some of the costs. Opponents said that amounted to a shell game because unused bailout money is supposed to be used to reduce the deficit, which hit $1.4 trillion in the 2009 budget year.

See: The Trillion-Dollar Interest Payment

The Senate, however, has less of an appetite for another costly round of economic stimulus measures, particularly with a vote on tap for Jan. 20 to again raise the ceiling on the government’s total debt just a month after upping it to $12.4 trillion....

Yeah,

"Democratic leaders are eyeing a new figure close to $14 trillion, pushing the issue past next November’s election."

THEY WISH!!!

The job creation issue is complicated. Much of the money in the House bill goes to programs that may stimulate the economy but don’t appear to directly put people to work.

Which is why despite the "stimulus" you STILL LOST JOBS, America!

There’s $41 billion to extend unemployment benefits for six months and $12.3 billion to extend a health insurance subsidy for people who have lost their jobs. There’s extension of a child tax credit for poor families, $23.5 billion to help states cover Medicaid costs and $23 billion so states can support some 250,000 education jobs over the next two years. An additional $2.8 billion goes to clean water and environmental restoration projects. Even the investment in “shovel-ready’’ highway and bridge projects may not immediately translate into a reduction in the nation’s 10 percent unemployment rate.

What do you mean by immediate? It's been a YEAR!!!!

Isn't that a LONG ENOUGH WAIT?

Republicans cited government figures showing that, as of Sept. 30, only 9 percent of $27.5 billion for highways in the first stimulus bill had been spent....

So WHO STOLE the REST, hmmmmm?

A lot of the money “hasn’t even gotten out of Washington yet,’’ said Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House’s second-ranked Republican. “Why is it still here if it was designed to create jobs?’’

**********************************

The low federal spending rate, committee officials said, is because the treasury outlay comes at the end of the process, after the contractor bills the state and the state bills Washington.

Are you TIRED of LAME-ASS EXCUSES like ME, America?

Dan DuBray, spokesman for the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation, said his agency will have no problem putting to work the $100 million it would receive under the jobs bill to provide clean drinking water to rural areas. “Projects in Reclamation are much akin to planes waiting on the taxiway waiting to take off.’’

Yeah, right, those are going to save us and restore millions of jobs, yup.

--more--"

And look WHO will be PROFITING!

"Energy conservationist helps plan ‘Cash for Caulkers’; Sees federal project as natural evolution of 30 years of work" by Erin Ailworth, Globe Staff | January 1, 2010

Related: A Caulk-Sucking Stimulooting

TYRINGHAM - Explaining why he was having lunch with President Obama recently - chicken soup and spinach salad in a dining room off of the Oval Office - local businessman Steve Cowell’s mind wandered back to the Iranian Revolution and oil crisis of 1979.

Related: Obama Talks With His Mouth Full

At the time, he headed the state’s Office of Citizen Participation, which, Cowell recalled, was charged with setting up “community mobilization’’ programs to get Massachusetts residents to do “something to lower their energy use.’’

*************************

Three decades later, Cowell is leading Conservation Services Group, a Westborough nonprofit that helps make businesses and homes more energy efficient. He also is one of the key players hashing out a federal program to retrofit and weatherize homes. Called HOME STAR, the energy-saving effort is more commonly known by the nickname “Cash for Caulkers,’’ a play on Cash for Clunkers, last summer’s federal rebate program for car buyers.

Yeah, except the clunker program was a failure.

HOME STAR is meant to cut the nation’s carbon footprint, and employ 250,000 workers this year to retrofit US homes to be more energy efficient.

Related: The Death of Global Warming

Hey, we are ALL for ENERGY EFFICIENCY; however, since when has the AGENDA-PUSHING PAPER PROMOTED ANYTHING GOOD FOR YOU?

Is that what all the LIES are for?

Obama wanted a plan ready by today. Thus the trips to Washington.

And WHAT, pray tell, is the CARBON FOOTPRINT there, huh?

In November, Cowell was on Capitol Hill the night he and his nonprofit were honored at the New England Clean Energy Council’s annual Green Tie Gala.

Pfffffffffttt!

Two weeks ago, it was lunch with the president and others, including Home Depot Inc. chief executive Frank Blake and Andrew Liveris, president of Dow Chemical Co. And for the last week, Cowell admitted, the plan was to be tied to the computer in his at-home office in the Berkshires, trading e-mails and phone calls with his energy-efficiency peers and government representatives as they hustled to draft the legislation that will create the HOME STAR program....

Oh, so ONCE AGAIN CONFLICT-of-INTEREST CORPORATIONS are WRITING the LAW, huh?

Your "democracy" is broke, 'murka!

Among the last details to be hashed out were just how much funding HOME STAR will get - the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board is recommending $23 billion - and how it will work.

23 BILLION?!!

TOO MUCH!

On one snowy Wednesday afternoon, Cowell popped into his home office a few times to check for updates on a draft of HOME STAR. Cowell’s house, a Shaker barn more than 150 years old, is the perfect setting to craft a federal incentive program that will help homeowners nationwide reduce their energy use. He and his wife rebuilt it two decades ago with energy efficiency in mind....

Yeah, he's a real self-serving superhero, huh?

--more--"

And look who is promoting his agenda:

"The administration would still be wise to use the “cash for caulkers’’ moniker, recalling as it does the popular “cash for clunkers’’ program. One reason the latter succeeded in getting Americans to buy more fuel-efficient cars is that Congress was able to make the money available quickly, without extensive rule-making.

BULLSHIT!

That is also the plan for the new program, whose more official name is Home Star....

--more--"

Here is who is not getting the $$$:

In Massachusetts, the stimulus effort has provided $437 million for road construction, but only a scattered amount to build schools, municipal buildings, and other structures.

The differing fates of the two companies underscore the spotty effectiveness of the $787 billion stimulus program, which contractors and labor leaders say is creating haves and have-nots in the state’s beleaguered construction industry....

From an economic standpoint, all construction projects provide employment. But building a new school or hospital tends to create more jobs than repaving a section of state highway. In general, road projects tend to be modest in scope - one of the largest so far in the state is the $5 million resurfacing of Route 2 in Harvard and Littleton - require only small crews, and usually are completed in days or a few weeks. Moreover some of the same paving companies get multiple contracts, meaning the work is done by a limited pool of employees.

Yeah, this is MORE about GETTING TAX LOOT into FAVORED HANDS than JOBS!

Building projects, meanwhile, tend to be bigger in scope. For example, an average-size project funded with stimulus money, a new clinic for the Whittier Street Health Center in Roxbury, will cost $32 million, employ 450 people, and take many months to complete.

The Whittier Street project is being funded with $80 million in stimulus money Massachusetts received for neighborhood health centers. The state also received $122 million for home weatherization improvements, and $185 million for water and sewer treatment facilities. But the weatherization projects are, like road work, narrow in scope and short term.

And YOU SEE who is WRITING the FUNDING BILL, right?

And the treatment plants are taking longer to get going because of extensive engineering and permitting requirements. Paul Martini, the chairman of commercial builder AJ Martini Inc., said the stimulus has been “100 percent useless’’ in terms of creating jobs.

Yes, after a YEAR of FURTHER JOB LOSSES we KNOW!!

“So far it is a joke,’’ he said....

And NOT a very FUNNY one!

The funding imbalance has put Governor Deval Patrick in the awkward position of approving huge sums for road contractors, while offering little help for others.

Related: Slow Saturday Special: Patrick Pimps Football Footpath For Patriots

Patriots' Kraft Passes Checks to Patrick

Yeah, that is "awkward," isn't it?

In an interview with the Globe, Patrick said he is trying to rectify the situation by devoting some of the stimulus funds to infrastructure work around large privately developed real estate projects - a shopping center and office-residential complex in Somerville, for example, and a highway interchange into an business park in Fall River - in the hopes of getting those projects underway.

“We’re investing some of our money so that it unlocks additional investment,’’ Patrick said. “That is a strategy that is more than sound - it’s wise.’’

Still there’s a gamble to that strategy. Private developers still have to rely on the financial sector to provide money for construction. And even with the state picking up the cost of infrastructure work related to those projects, banks and other lenders remain reluctant to fund large commercial development because they are worried the weak economy won’t support the businesses that would move into the new buildings.

And after WE gave them TRILLIONS to LOAN back to us!

Even in the best of financial circumstances, construction work on these private developments is still weeks or months away. That has carpenters, ironworkers, and others frustrated and impatient....

And THEY SHOULD BE!

--more--"

They weren't partying, where they?


"Secret nook, with TV and videos, found at rail yard; Extended breaks by workers cited" by Noah Bierman, Globe Staff | December 15, 2009

The new manager on the late shift at the Somerville facility immediately noticed something awry. Many of his workers seemed to be taking long dinner breaks when they were supposed to be fixing trains for the region’s commuter rail system.

An investigation led to a strange discovery hidden in a storage room: a makeshift entertainment center, including three televisions, two DVD players, one VHS player, surround-sound speakers, a video game system, and DVDs, some of them pornographic, a transportation official said yesterday.

The equipment, slyly camouflaged within the commuter rail’s massive Somerville maintenance facility, even had an illegal cable television connection that came through a 1,000-foot cable, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is not yet concluded.... The investigation includes one employee who is accused of spending long breaks on the night shift at a bar he is believed to own on the North Shore. It is not clear whether the employee was drinking at the bar while on duty....

The employees do not work for the MBTA. They work for a private consortium, the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad, which runs the T’s commuter rail service under a contract with the public agency....

--more--"

Would it matter, because here is who IS "working" at the MBTA:

"No-show MBTA boss to spend year in jail; Inspector also hit with $10,000 fine" by Noah Bierman, Globe Staff | January 5, 2010

Christopher Peatridge earned tens of thousands of dollars as owner of a security business that took him out of state for weeks at a time, during which he would stay at luxury hotels, authorities said.

But as he fulfilled his entrepreneurial duties, Peatridge had a backup job. He was on the MBTA payroll, submitting time sheets and collecting a salary as a construction supervisor for hours when he was far away from MBTA properties, according to authorities.

NO WONDER the state is in the RED!!!!

Peatridge was among three men who pleaded guilty late last week in connection with a no-show job investigation, according to a statement from the attorney general’s office, which conducted an investigation with the inspector general’s office....

Where can I get one of those?

The MBTA has had well-documented and extensive problems with construction projects that have been subject to extensive delays and cost overruns....

And this is only the tip of the iceberg!

--more--"