Where are those "shovel ready" jobs?

The Virginian ^ | 11/8/2009 | Moneyrunner

[moneyrunner]

When the Obama administration put together it stimulus package all the talk was about building roads, fixing bridges, building schools … you know, the kind of jobs that people envision when they think of jobs that the government should encourage while improving our infrastructure. That’s why we heard incessant references to “shovel ready jobs.” It brought to mind images of people actually working, wielding shovels, running construction equipment, widening roads to fix traffic congestion, replacing dilapidated schools. In other words, building things.

So how’s that working out in your neighborhood, city, country or state? In Oregon, those "shovel ready jobs" aren't. They borrowed $175 million to create 3,000 jobs. Here's the report. A state report released Friday shows that of 499 projects, 73 have started. The number of "retained" jobs, 270. The number of new jobs to date, 16. That's not much bang for the buck.

In Virginia, wherever you go the talk is about building roads and how to pay for them. When the talk turns to funding that road building the answer is always to be found in Richmond, Virginia’s capital. Yet the Federal Government passed a stimulus package funded with $787 billion dollars of our tax money with the promise that it would be spent on projects just like this to create jobs that would employ the unemployed. So why are we talking tax increases instead of that stimulus money?

We were told that if the stimulus was not passed, unemployment would exceed 9%; with the stimulus it would only reach 8%. The “official” unemployment rate is 10.2%

[Oatka]

I’m only 45 and not quite shovel ready yet. Friends of Obama hay have other ideas about it though.

Hell, I'm 76 and I ain't ready, but as you say . . .

[UpInArms]

Shovel ready.

[eaglestar]

I sometimes wonder where exactly the stimulus money is going and all I can come up with is most of it is being funneled and laundered into Democratic constituency groups, special interest groups and into their own secret accounts or even in their homes.

As for shovel ready jobs, the only work I see being done in Miami is the narrowing of I-95 by 2 lanes in order to create 2 toll lanes further congesting the traffic. Even that project has seemed to have stopped in it’s track because no new progress has been made for the last couple of moths since the work started.

[Schnucki]

Well, based on the house votes for health care, they're all set for granny.

[Freddd]

Shovel Ready?

Ft. Hood.

Obama’s plan all along.

[Freddd]

Shovel Ready?

Ft. Hood.

Obama’s plan all along.

[RetSignman]

["shovel ready" jobs?] So far this is it.

[rintense]

Answer: DC. There’s enough bullsh!t to shovel there to end welfare as we know it.

[watusa1775]

I elect you Bullsh*t Czar and elect the FREE REPUBLIC the Cleanup Committee.

Nostradumbass predicts:

1) Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and Harry Reid discovered to be aliens, with little machines inside a la Men in Black, hence the loose facial skin.
2) Goldman execs getting swine flu vaccine causes spontaneous combustion, since they are pigs
3) Hovel Ready: Prepare Central Park for another Great Depression “tent city”.
4) Iran fires a missle at Israel who fires back, and during this time China, Pakistan and India get into it. The resulting cloud results in a mini ice age. Todd & Sarah Palin begins teaching wild game hunting and survivalist techniques in a former Seattle yoga studio.
5) Honduras accumulates a massive budget surplus during the ice age, as the sole exporter of textiles and fruit to North America and Europe, rivaling Switzerland in its stockpile of pure gold bullion.