The Liberal Democrats are best experienced during times of hardship – where decisions and priorities actually count. When things are rosy and we have money to invest their fantasies seem quaint, and who can argue about absolutes like ‘protecting the environment’, even though clichés are really just lazy ways to deal with tough challenges and problems by glossing over the hard parts.

But when it comes down to tough decisions, when resources are tight and priorities must be defined to determine who will survive and who might have their lives seriously impacted, when things are to the point it will happen, just a question of where, that’s when liberal platitudes really implode and show their uselessness.

Take for example, the priorities being demonstrated in CA right now with some of the nation’s highest unemployment, which is still on the rise. Where $16 million dollars could provide 320 people a $50K per year job for a year. What does Congress do in this time of dire personal strife? They give the money to a mouse:

The Washington Times reported that 16.1 million in stimulus funds will go to save the San Francisco Bay Area habitat of the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse.

 

The mouse has been an accurate representation of the massive wasteful spending of the so-called ‘stimulus’ package.

And what does a leading CA paper do? It just makes up some lame excuse why this is not a waste, while listing all the failures and delays built into the ‘stimulus’ package:

The record-breaking $787 billion fiscal stimulus package that Congress passed in February is not breaking records on the job front. In California, with 11.5 percent unemployment, it has done little more than prevent layoffs of state workers.

Politicians and state workers first, the rest of us get in line behind those mice.

And House Republicans, who voted unanimously against the stimulus, have again ridiculed funding to save San Francisco Bay’s salt marsh harvest mouse as an example of waste by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, although the mouse lives outside her San Francisco district.

Is this reporter implying the 3rd most powerful person in DC was unable to make sure job creating tax payer money could only go to creating jobs? Pullleeaase. Let’s get onto the rest of the problems with the ‘shovel ready’ stimulus bill, which we now see as a union workers only political payback bill:

None of this should be a surprise. Only a small fraction of the stimulus has even been spent, so it is not shocking that it has yet to show results. By the end of this year, less than a quarter of the money will be out the door. As was widely noted in February, the bulk of the $787 billion will arrive next year.

What a crock! Look once again at the Obama administration chart on unemployment impacts from this pork bill and note when it was going to start kicking in:

It is a bold faced lie it was widely noted that the unemployment picture in this nation would NOT BE impacted until the end of this year. It was widely noted by the opposition of the bill that it was too heavy on spending which would come too late. That did happen, but it came from people like me who knew the stimulus was a bunch of snake oil being sold by hucksters. But now we find out this was the plan all along!

Of the $2.6 billion awarded to California highway projects, $1.6 billion for 383 projects has been approved by the federal government; 49 of those, worth nearly $1 billion, were “on the street” or put out to contract as of Thursday, said Caltrans Director Will Kempton.

Another 24 projects worth $745 million will be awarded by the end of the summer.

Let me translate for those not used to government contracting processes and milestones. 61% of the budgeted $2.6 billion have finally been assigned to projects coming on 6 months after the time critical stimulus bill full of shovel ready jobs was passed. That just means the state has provided the feds sufficient reporting to start the bidding process – not the work. Just the bidding process. 40% are now out for bid – which will take months to award (and they can only go to union-based companies!).

But how much has been spent? Nearly zero. They throw these numbers out to give the impression they have done something, but they haven’t. And these jobs will take months and years to finish. 

Go back to the ‘widely reported’ fine print. By the end of the year only a quarter at most will be spent. that means on $650 million at most will be spent all year in CA on jobs. with state deficits 100 times this amount in CA right now, this will just be a drop in the pond.

The liberal dems lied to us when they claimed this stimulus bill would fix the jobs, and had to be rushed so it could start fixing right away. Now they are trying to claim they made no such promises. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. We will not be fooled again.

 

Tags: California, Marsh Mouse, Stimulus Bill, Unemployment