Tag: stimulus

New York stimulus money not stimulating… anything, really.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) Treating the symptoms, and not the disease.

Stimulus money plugs budget gaps while little goes to road construction in New York state

New York state has used most of its economic stimulus funding so far to plug holes in its budget and has spent very little on new highway construction, according to a federal watchdog.

New York has used $6.2 billion to close gaps in the state budget. The federal government intended for states to use the money to stabilize their budgets and it was especially important to New York since the state took a historic revenue hit from the collapse of Wall Street.

But the extra state money will soon run out, leaving behind the same state government machine that spends billions more than it takes in. Gov. David Paterson’s staff said it was working on an exit strategy to be revealed at the end of the year, when the next budget proposal is introduced to the Legislature. The state counties association, school districts and members of Congress have warned the state it needs to plan for the federal stimulus money to dry up.

I had a tedious metaphor all set and ready to go, but it’s not really necessary: the answer to New York’s problem is actually not complicated.

  • Stop spending money that you don’t have.
  • If you want something that you can’t have because you don’t have the money, get more money.
  • You cannot turn a luxury into a necessity by wanting it sufficiently enough.

Yes, I’m amazed that I have to write out all of this.  I’m also mordantly certain that it won’t make much difference – or any difference at all – that I did.

Moe Lane

NAME! THAT! PARTY! – Colorado Governor category.

It’s not what you know…

…it’s who you know.  Isn’t that right, Governor Bill Ritter (D-CO)?

Gov. Ritter Steered Stimulus Money To Ex-Employer

DENVER (AP) ― Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter has awarded some of the state’s first stimulus money to his former employer in a no-bid contract.

Ritter hired his former law firm, the Washington-based Hogan & Hartson, in a no-bid contract to review stimulus spending, The Denver Post reported Friday. It said the firm was paid $40,000 in stimulus money through June.

In this case, ‘who’ is a law firm full of political donors of Governor Ritter’s (D), including at least two “who work directly on the state’s stimulus issues.”  The Governor’s (D) office is claiming that the deal was righteous, as well as legal… although they didn’t go into explaining why they paid six times what they would have if they had run things through the Attorney General’s office: Continue reading NAME! THAT! PARTY! – Colorado Governor category.

Metal manufacturers pay the price for Joe Biden Opening His Mouth.

It was apparently their turn.

The annoying bit is that we can’t even put the Vice President in an undisclosed location, given that he’s already gone out and disclosed it. I would write that it’s days like this that make me miss Dick Cheney, except that doing so would imply that I’ve ever stopped doing so since 01/20/2009.

Biden comments drive metal manufacturers lower

NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of major metal manufacturers traded sharply lower Monday, a day after Vice President Joe Biden said the White House “misread” the economy, prompting concerns that an economic recovery could be slower than expected.

[snip]

During the second quarter, commodity prices “went through the roof,” and investors snapped up metal makers stocks on word that the economy was “less bad” than before, he said.

But, now, the market has switched its thinking amid broader concerns about the economy, he said.

See here for a link to the interview (Hot Air for the H/T). About the only thing that you can say about it is that at least the White House hasn’t sent out people to retract the economic portions yet – unlike, for example, the VP’s recent comments that could be read as the USA giving permission to Israel to bomb Iran (via Sense of Events). But the ‘pace of the ball is now going to increase,’ at least – and if you know what that actually means, I’m not sure whether to be envious of, or worried about you.

Just another Monday in this, the best of all possible worlds…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

White House predicts 3.5% growth by year’s end.

I’m sure that they mean well.

The White House is promising solid economic growth by the end of this year:

White House Sees 3.5% Growth by Year-End, Exceeding Forecasts

May 11 (Bloomberg) — The Obama administration projected that the U.S. economy will expand at a 3.5 percent annual rate by year-end, a rebound that would be almost twice as strong as private forecasters expect.

[snip]

As early as the end of this year, GDP may rise at a 3.5 percent annual rate, the same pace projected for all of next year, helped by a $787 billion stimulus package, the administration said in the report today. That’s more optimistic than the 1.8 percent fourth-quarter growth estimate in the monthly Blue Chip Economic Indicators survey released May 10.

Of course, this White House promised ‘only’ a $1.2 trillion dollar deficit this year; it’s now going to be $1.8 trillion, and probably rising. And it calculated an 8.1% unemployment rate for 2009 (last month’s was 8.9%, thanks largely to government seasonal work*). And then there’s this (via here): Continue reading White House predicts 3.5% growth by year’s end.

Schumer video bragging about cutting pandemic fund surfaces.

Hey, who here thinks that the Nation, ThinkProgress, Washington Monthly, Firedoglake, and the rest of the Journolist stenographers are going to reference this?

(For those who can’t see it: it shows Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer bragging about cutting out the very funding that a good number of ostensibly-unrelated Left-bloggers and writers are trying to pin on the GOP, in the person of Senator Susan Collins.  And never mind the fact that the cutting was done as a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to bribe the GOP into signing on to the Democrats’ debt bill; or that it was an incredibly tacky unsuccessful bribe in the first place.  Reality-based thinking is somewhat… flexible for the Online Left.)

Yes, neither did I. Even the ones that aren’t overtly obediently writing whatever they get told to write are busy with their uncritical willingness to accept Democratic talking points as gospel truth (as if it’s our fault that it takes a Cabinet appointment to make a Democrat pay his taxes). So it’s almost certainly foolish to expect that the dogs linked above will even dare bark at their masters. Never a good idea to make those who feed you angry, right?

Anyway, see Michelle Malkin, Don Surber, Protein Wisdom, The Sundries Shack, Legal Insurrection, Q & O, AoSHQ, Hot Air, and my unworthy self for more details of what is proving to be all the evidence that you need that not only is the Left-sphere being fed its points: it’s being fed its points sloppily. Frankly, any of the above could have done a better hit job, even if you assume (as well you should) that we’d be intending to sabotage it…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The sputtering of the Obama machine.

That’s the word that the Washington Post used, so don’t blame me (H/T: Glenn Reynolds):

Obama’s Machine Sputters in Effort to Push Budget
Grass-Roots Campaign Has Little Effect

When his post-campaign organization was unveiled in January, Barack Obama vowed that the 13 million-strong grass-roots network built during his presidential campaign would play a “crucial role” in enacting his agenda from the White House.

But in its first big test, the group dubbed Organizing for America (OFA) had little obvious impact on the debate over President Obama’s budget, which passed Congress on Thursday with no Republican support and a splintering of votes among conservative Democrats. The capstone of the campaign was the delivery of 214,000 signatures to Capitol Hill, which swayed few, if any, members of Congress, according to legislative aides from both parties.

Continue reading The sputtering of the Obama machine.

Obama contacts DNC about Sanford request before contacting Sanford.

I had to have Protein Wisdom point out this fairly significant, and frankly insulting, thing that happened to Governor Sanford:

Last week I reached out to the president, asking for a federal waiver from restrictions on stimulus money. I got a most unusual response. Before I even received an acknowledgment of the request from the White House, I got word that the Democratic National Committee was launching campaign-style TV attack-ads against me for making it.

Just in case nobody’s ever mentioned it to the President of the United States, let me: you are a government official first, a Democrat second. That means that you take care of the former’s business before you attend to the latter’s. Doing it the other way around is inappropriate.

I can use ruder words and still be perfectly accurate, by the way.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Witness the power of this fully armed and operational Debt Star.

A Republican Senate leadership aide responded: ‘It really is a silly campaign. What are we saying ‘no’ to? Trillions in new spending? An unpopular, earmark-laden bill that the President himself was embarrassed to sign? A new national energy tax? Releasing Gitmo terrorists into the U.S.? We’d like to thank them for reminding the American people that we are saying ‘no’ to those things.’

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

I have officially run out of alternative ways to express the concept that irony is dead, so I will simply say: “Irony is dead:”

Beginning Sunday, the White House will harness every part of the Democratic Party’s machinery to defend President Obama’s budget and portray Republicans as reflexively political, according to party strategists.

A participant in the planning meetings described the push as a successor to Democrats’ message that Rush Limbaugh is the Republican Party leader. “We have exhausted the use of Rush as an attention-getter,” the official said.

David Plouffe, manager of Obama’s presidential race, helped design the strategy, which includes the most extensive activation since November of the campaign’s grassroots network. The database—which includes information for at least 10 million donors, supporters and volunteers—will now be used as a unique tool for governing, with former canvassers now being enlisted to mobilize support for the president’s legislative agenda.

(Via Hot Air Headlines)

And this is why you don’t run candidates as if they were demigods come down to earth. You end up being critically short of people who aren’t afraid to tell you when you’re singing off-key. Continue reading Witness the power of this fully armed and operational Debt Star.