posted July 20, 2009 11:23 AM         

$2,531,600 FOR 'HAM, WATER ADDED, COOKED, FROZEN, SLICED, 2-LB'... http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/contracts-recipient-summary&id=12-AG3J14120297210&mode=details&primeid=4

$1,191,200 FOR '2 POUND FROZEN HAM SLICED'... http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/contracts-recipient-summary&id=12-AG3J14120297196&mode=details&primeid=27

$351,807 FOR 'REPLACE AND UPGRADE THE DUMBWAITER'... http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/contracts-recipient-summary&id=36-VA243RA0565&primeid=545

$1,562,568 FOR 'MOZZARELLA CHEESE'... http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/contracts-recipient-summary&id=12-AGDPDVVDOC02503&primeid=36

$5,708,260 FOR 'PROCESS CHEESE'... http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/contracts-recipient-summary&id=12-AGDPDVVDOC02502&mode=details&primeid=35

$16,784,272 FOR 'CANNED PORK'... http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/contracts-recipient-summary&id=12-AG3J14120297195&mode=details&primeid=30

$1,444,100 FOR 'REPAIR DOOR BLDG 5112'... http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/contracts-recipient-summary&id=57-FA466106D0006&primeid=1400

I thought 16.7 mil for "canned pork" was an especially appropriate way to spend "Porkulus" funds.

posted July 21, 2009 02:45 PM         

If that's not the intent, then the stimulus/Porkulus project is a dismal failure.

I recall O'Bomber saying the need for economic stimulus was immediate and pressing. The sky was going to fall if Congress didn't pass this loser legislation immediately.

Now...O'Bomber is saying it was not intended for immediate stimulus but was rather designed to kick in over a period of years.

O'Bomber and his Marxist Socialist buds in Congress were only doing their Chicken Little act to stampede America into wasting $787 Billion Dollars on government boondoggles which will not stimulate the economy but will rather stimulate government spending for "special interest groups"...demoscat supporters in other words, all of whom have their hands in the pockets of US taxpayers.

Obama Stimulus Spending Includes Rental Cars, Outhouses, and ‘Sediment Removal’
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
By Matt Cover

CNSNews.com) –

posted July 29, 2009 11:48 AM         

It's really all spin, smoke and mirrors.

SPIN METER: 'Help Wanted' counting stimulus jobs
By RYAN KOST (AP) – 1 day ago

PORTLAND, Ore. — How much are politicians straining to convince people that the government is stimulating the economy? In Oregon, where lawmakers are spending $176 million to supplement the federal stimulus, Democrats are taking credit for a remarkable feat: creating 3,236 new jobs in the program's first three months.

But those jobs lasted on average only 35 hours, or about one work week. After that, those workers were effectively back unemployed, according to an Associated Press analysis of state spending and hiring data. By the state's accounting, a job is a job, whether it lasts three hours, three days, three months, or a lifetime.

"Sometimes some work for an individual is better than no work," said Oregon's Senate president, Peter Courtney.

With the economy in tatters and unemployment rising, Oregon's inventive math underscores the urgency for politicians across the country to show that spending programs designed to stimulate the economy are working — even if that means stretching the facts.

At the federal level, President Barack Obama has said the federal stimulus has created 150,000 jobs, a number based on a misused formula and which is so murky it can't be verified.

At least 10 other states have launched their own miniature stimulus plans and nine others have proposed one, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Many of them, like Oregon, have promised job creation as a result of the public spending.

Ohio, for instance, passed a nearly $1.6 billion stimulus package even before Congress was looking at a federal program. When Gov. Ted Strickland first pitched the idea last year, he estimated the program could create some 80,000 jobs.

In North Carolina, a panel authorized hundreds of millions of dollars in new debt to speed up $740 million in government building projects. According to one estimate, the move could hurry the creation of 25,000 jobs.

As the bills for these programs mount, so will the pressure to show results. But, as Oregon illustrates, job estimates can very wildly.

"At best you can say it's ambiguous, at worst you can say it's intentional deception," said economist Bruce Blonigen of the University of Oregon. "You have to normalize it into a benchmark that everybody can understand."

Oregon's accounting practices would not be allowed as part of the $787 billion federal stimulus. While the White House has made the unverifiable promise that 3.5 million jobs will be saved or created by the end of next year, when accountants actually begin taking head counts this fall, there are rules intended to guard against exactly what Oregon is doing.

The White House requires states to report numbers in terms of full-time, yearlong jobs. That means a part-time mechanic counts as half a job. A full-time construction worker who has a three-month paving contract counts as one-fourth of a job.

Using that method, the AP's analysis of figures in Oregon shows the program so far has created the equivalent of 215 full-time jobs that will last three months. Oregon's House speaker, Dave Hunt, called that measurement unfair, though nearly every other state that has passed a stimulus package already uses or plans to use it.

"This stimulus plan was intentionally designed for short-term projects to pump needed jobs and income into families, businesses and communities struggling to get by," Hunt said in a statement. "No one ever said these would be full-time jobs for months at a time."

Still, critics say counting jobs, without any consideration of their duration, isn't good enough.

"You can't let them say, 'Well, we never said it was going to be full-time,'" said Steve Buckstein, a policy analyst for the Cascade Policy Institute, a free-market think tank. For the price of Oregon's $176 million, lawmakers could have provided all 3 million state residents with a one-hour job paying about $60, he said.

"By their definition, that's 3 million jobs," Buckstein said. "Is anybody gonna buy that?"

Oregon's 12.4 percent unemployment rate surpasses the national average of 9.4 percent. To supplement the federal stimulus, the state sold bonds to pay for everything from replacing light bulbs to installing carpet and finishing construction of a school in the farming community of Tillamook.

The "Go Oregon" program is still new. According to its latest progress report, 8 percent of the money has been spent and hundreds of projects have yet to be completed. More paychecks are bound to be written as construction continues.

If Oregon's dollars-to-jobs ratio remains steady, the program will create about 688 full-time, yearlong jobs. So far, it's generated only enough hours to employ 54 people full-time for a year.

Still, contractor Deborah Matthews of Pacificmark Construction, based in Milwaukie, Ore., is happy for any work. Her company picked up three contracts for painting, installing a water filter system and refurbishing a maintenance building. Prior to those contracts, which lasted about six weeks, she had laid off nearly all her construction workers. She brought back three full-time and hired a part-time worker.

"It was a little bit," she said, "to just keep us going."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ifn5cIQggxKMBZdAwWc0ej79EQLgD99NA4VO3

Gee, even if it works exactly as planned...and it won't...that's only $176,000,000 to create 688 jobs.

posted July 31, 2009 07:59 PM         

Stimulus Bill Funds Go to Art Houses Showing 'Pervert' Revues, Underground Pornography
Friday, July 31, 2009
By Joseph Abrams

A dancer performs a nude routine for 'The Symmetry Project' as part of a San Francisco dance group that has received emergency funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Talk about a stimulus package.

The National Endowment for the Arts may be spending some of the money it received from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund nude simulated-sex dances, Saturday night "pervert" revues and the airing of pornographic horror films at art houses in San Francisco.

The NEA was given $80 million of the government's $787 billion economic stimulus bill to spread around to needy artists nationwide, and most of the money is being spent to help preserve jobs in museums, orchestras, theaters and dance troupes that have been hit hard by the recession.

But some of the NEA's grants are spicing up more than the economy. A few of their more risque choices have some taxpayer advocates hot under the collar, including a $50,000 infusion for the Frameline film house, which recently screened Thundercrack, "the world's only underground kinky art porno horror film, complete with four men, three women and a gorilla."

"When you spend so much money in a short amount of time ... you're going to have nonsense like this, and that's why the stimulus should never have been done in the first place," said David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste.

Click here for a full list of all of the NEA's Recovery Act grants.

Williams said such support for the arts is a luxury at a time when the president and Congress have been telling the public to make sacrifices to manage the recession.

"When taxpayers see this, they realize that's just a bunch of hot air," he told FOXNews.com.

Some members of Congress raised alarms as the stimulus bill was being drafted and approved, but President Obama, while admitting there were problems with the $787 billion legislation, stressed the need for immediate action to resuscitate the economy.

"We can't afford to make perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary," Obama said at the time.

But he presumably didn't intend to have stimulus money help fund the weekly production of "Perverts Put Out" at San Francisco's CounterPULSE, whose "long-running pansexual performance series" invites guests to "join your fellow pervs for some explicit, twisted fun."

CounterPULSE received a $25,000 grant in the "Dance" category; a staffer there said they were pleased to receive the grant, "which over the next year will be used to preserve jobs at our small non-profit."

Similarly, the director of Frameline, the gay and lesbian film house, told FOXNews.com in an e-mail that their $50,000 grant was not to support any program in particular.

"The grant is not intended for a specific program; it's to be used for the preservation of jobs at our media arts nonprofit organization over the next year during the economic downturn," wrote K.C. Price, who listed four other NEA grants his organization has received.

An NEA spokeswoman defended the agency's choices and said its grants would help "preserve jobs in danger of going away or that had gone away because of the economic downturn."

"Our review process is very comprehensive — we take great care with applicants and with grantees," said NEA spokeswoman Victoria Hutter. "It's a thorough, rigorous process that they all go through, and we're proud of the projects that we've been able to support."

Though the process was sped up, the NEA's 109 panelist reviewers handled the compressed schedule by giving their $50 million in direct grants only to individuals and groups that have received funding in the past and have already passed muster. An additional $30 million was given to state agencies to parcel out to local artists during this year.

One project that has received past NEA funding and stands to get an additional boost from a $25,000 stimulus grant is "The Symmetry Project," a dance piece by choreographer Jess Curtis.

The show depicts "the sharing of a central axis, [as] spine, mouth, genitals, face, and anus reveal their interconnectedness and centrality in embodied experience," according to a description offered on Curtis' Web site.

In the flesh — and there's a lot of it — it amounts to two people writhing naked on the floor, a government-funded tango in the altogether.

Curtis said that diminished support from regular funders like San Francisco Grants for the Arts "would mean lots less work and less ability to organize ... to get the work out in front of people." He said the NEA funding will help keep his art afloat.

"I think art is an incredibly important part of our culture and our life and ... that it's very much appropriate that our government should be supporting it," he told FOXNews.com.

San Francisco's economy is driven by the arts, which provided nearly 30,000 jobs in the city last year, according to Luis R. Cancel, director of cultural affairs for the San Francisco Arts Council.

"The city's non-profit arts and cultural sector generates $1.03 billion in local economic activity annually and, therefore, it will play a critical role in our recovery," Cancel said in a statement.

"With these stimulus funds San Francisco arts organizations will be able to weather the storm and continue to provide jobs and to generate revenue while enriching people's lives through innovative, high quality programming."

Williams, the taxpayer advocate, allowed that the $100,000 granted to the three groups "isn't going to make or break the country financially," but he said arts institutions should try to raise money by raising ticket prices — not by taxing individuals.

posted October 17, 2009 01:49 PM         

So, how's that program working out? O'Bomber and his Marxist clowns wouldn't make a pimple on the ass of a decent President and Presidential administration.

Somehow, I don't think this is what America had in mind for spending the Porkulus/Stimulus money.

October 17, 2009
The $450.00 purse
By Laird Jenkins

"Four-hundred and fifty dollars!" Shaqueenda purred as she paraded the pretentious brown leather purse past her friends. The summer stimulus students, earning $8.00 an hour to attend school, had gathered in the atrium showing off their purchases.

"My whole wardrobe isn't worth that!" I blurted out. She iced my comment with a bone chilling glare. I backed away and watched as Vonisha and Soltaire matched her gasconade with the hundreds they disbursed on acrylic fingernails, coral reef hair sets, and skin tight ensembles. These young ladies, learning the arts of ground-beautification left empty pop cans, chip bags, and candy-bar wrappers littering their benches when they moseyed away to their instructional assignment.

"Girls," I interrupted, pointing at the litter. Sullenly they turned and picked up their trash. Carlson's critique still resonated in my thoughts.

"If I catch them sitting on their fat butts eating chips one more time, I'm bootin' ‘em out of my program too!" The diligent custodian cursed after hauling them to my office. The disgust on his face told me their charms had worn thin. To earn their $64.00 a day, these three, eighteen to twenty-four year old girls were scheduled to clean for five hours and study Math, English, and Life Skills for three hours. After only a few weeks they had parlayed their lunch into an hour and fifteen minute feast, and turned their breaks into thirty-minute romantic interludes with the candy machines.

Theirs weren't the only spending shocks, when the Obama stimulus checks arrived. Students, who had attended every day of the first two weeks and had filled out their daily timesheets, and placed correct addresses on their W-2 forms, received a check for $640.00. Cash in hand, one-hundred and twenty-five low income, low achieving, adult high school students went on a government furnished spending spree.

Two Polynesian girls rewarded themselves with tribal tattoos. On other anatomies, Obama money was magically transformed into interlocking hearts, mystical unicorns, ferocious tigers, hollow skulls, tongue licking dragons, and momentarily cherished names. Ronisha, a mother of two children, spent her money on a baroque neck tattoo displaying her babies' names. Armando took all of his money and applied it towards his $800.00 speeding ticket, received for meritorious conduct while flying across an overpass at a hundred miles an hour. Jason put a down payment on a car, unperturbed that he had no insurance, no high school diploma, was not in line to receive one, and the car payments extended thirty-four months past his final summer stimulus check.

Hernandez prided himself on investing his entire check with his mother's ex-boyfriend. Joseph cashed his check, got drunk, and passed out, a roll of bills spilling out of his pocket. He woke up, hours later, the party over, his bankroll missing. Two girls proudly funded their boyfriends' weekend bacchanal at local strip joints and Stevy Vaughn, a once stimulated student, was overcome with remorse after experiencing a financially devastating familial tryst. Having been caught sleeping with the sister of his baby's mother, he found himself booted from the apartment, the day before his check arrived. His irate former paramour retrieved his mail, opened his check, forged his name and cashed it. Not only wouldn't she let him have any of his money, but she vowed she was keeping his next three checks as well. The district required a minimum of thirty days to change a mailing address.

Part of the program was financial training. Knowing most of these young adults never had a steady source of legal income, part of the grant was teaching them wise money management. An hour each day was devoted to understanding banking, setting up budgets, value shopping, deciding between needs and wants, making dollars stretch, and starting savings accounts.

Theory didn't transfer to practice. Dress codes be damned, the boys arrived in oversized gang ornamented t-shirts, expensive flat billed ball caps, shin length pants with tigers decorating the back pockets, and hundred dollar tennis shoes. They followed Obama's orders implicitly and spent, spent, spent, rather than the school's counsel to save. The girls were worse; they arrived at school in a truckload of tight fitting bosom popper tops, with slinky, tourniquet tight, plumber-butt-shorts, while teetering on stiletto heels. Overnight we took on the appearance of a bordello.

As the money dwindled, and the spending fix stopped, angry words filled the circle of students around the cafeteria tables. "I got $640.00," One would say.

"I only got $580.00." Another countered.

"I got $610.00! I worked just as hard as you! They're cheatin' me!"

"Find Jenkins!" The lynch mob smelled blood. Often records showed students signed in but never signed out. To be cute many had autographed their timesheets in pink, which showed transparent on a copier, and the payroll clerk put them down as absent. On other occasions their foggy minds cleared when staring at a blank timecard and realized they really weren't in school that day. Once a girl signed in with a different last name, her romance the night before had been so profound she was sure it would result in marriage. A couple times the clerk made mistakes but usually errors were attributed to the student. Apologies for the unfounded tribunals were non existent.

Following each payday, nefarious characters in a dark Cadillac skirted the parking lot, giving rise to the clouds of happy smoke the restrooms belched. One skinny, sickly white girl who worked in the cafeteria attended faithfully for the first month. Her attendance fell off dramatically over the final weeks. Upon inquiry, friends told a sad tale of hard drugs and harder parties followed by a delirium of time, place, and bedmates. Lorna showed up one day with a giant purple bruise on her face, where, with the help of a fist sized rock, her roommate had administered fidelity training, because Lorna had seduced her boyfriend.

A few saved money for school. One hard working girl from Somalia and another from Botswana guarded every dime, anxious to attend classes at the local community college. A couple boys saved for their tuition at a trade school, and one Chinese boy saved his money for a plane ticket to Hawaii, where, upon graduation, he was guaranteed a job in his uncle's restaurant. Sadly the majority of the money slipped through the students' hands like water and ended up in iPods, cell phones, candy machines, exchanged for alcohol at convenience stores, slipped into the garters of strippers, and piddled away on flashy clothes that now lay in piles on bedroom floors.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/the_45000_purse.html

posted November 03, 2009 05:14 PM         

After a flurry of stimulus spending, questionable projects pile up
By: Susan Ferrechio
Chief Congressional Correspondent
November 3, 2009

The $787 billion stimulus bill was passed in February and was promised as a job saver and economy booster. Here is where some of the money went:

- $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.

- $30 million for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.

- $11 million for Microsoft to build a bridge connecting its two headquarter campuses in Redmond, Wash., which are separated by a highway.

- $430,000 to repair a bridge in Iowa County, Wis., that carries 10 or fewer cars per day.

- $800,000 for the John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pa., serving about 20 passengers per day, to build a backup runway.

- $219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex lives of freshmen women.

- $2.3 million for the U.S. Forest Service to rear large numbers of arthropods, including the Asian longhorned beetle, the nun moth and the woolly adelgid.

- $3.4 million for a 13-foot tunnel for turtles and other wildlife attempting to cross U.S. 27 in Lake Jackson, Fla.

- $1.15 million to install a guardrail for a persistently dry lake bed in Guymon, Okla.

- $9.38 million to renovate a century-old train depot in Lancaster County, Pa., that has not been used for three decades.

- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.

- $6 million for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minn.

- $173,834 to weatherize eight pickup trucks in Madison County, Ill.

- $20,000 for a fish sperm freezer at the Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery in South Dakota.

- $380,000 to spay and neuter pets in Wichita, Kan.

- $300 apiece for thousands of signs at road construction sites across the country announcing that the projects are funded by stimulus money.

- $1.5 million for a fence to block would-be jumpers from leaping off the All-American Bridge in Akron, Ohio.

- $1 million to study the health effects of environmentally friendly public housing on 300 people in Chicago.

- $356,000 for Indiana University to study childhood comprehension of foreign accents compared with native speech.

- $983,952 for street beautification in Ann Arbor, Mich., including decorative lighting, trees, benches and bike paths.

- $148,438 for Washington State University to analyze the use of marijuana in conjunction with medications like morphine.

- $462,000 to purchase 22 concrete toilets for use in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri

- $3.1 million to transform a canal barge into a floating museum that will travel the Erie Canal in New York state.

- $1.3 million on government arts jobs in Maine, including $30,000 for basket makers, $20,000 for storytelling and $12,500 for a music festival.

- $71,000 for a hybrid car to be used by student drivers in Colchester, Vt., as well as a plug-in hybrid for town workers decked out with a sign touting the vehicle's energy efficiency.

- $1 million for Portland, Ore., to replace 100 aging bike lockers and build a garage that would house 250 bicycles.

posted November 03, 2009 05:22 PM         

The First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credit aimed at boosting home sales allows low- and middle-income earners to claim a credit of up to $8,000 for a first-time home purchase. The $13.8 billion plan was part of the stimulus package passed in February and so far the Internal Revenue Service has processed 1.5 million claims. Lawmakers are considering a plan to extend the program, set to expire at the end of the month, through March. An audit found widespread mistakes and outright fraud including:

- The First-Time Homebuyer Credit IRS form did not verify eligibility and no documentation was required to substantiate home purchase;

- $139 million in credits were awarded to people for more than 19,000 homes that were still on the market;

- Checks given to 582 taxpayers under 18 who claimed $4 million in first-time homebuyer credits. The youngest buyers were 4 years old;

- Through July 25, the audit identified 3,238 people claiming $21 million in First-Time Homebuyer Credits on returns filed with special tax identification numbers used mostly by resident aliens, who are not eligible for the benefit;

- Nearly 74,000 First-Time Homebuyer Credits totaling almost $504 million were claimed by taxpayers who had indications of prior home ownership within three years;