Free Republic

After much delay, senators finally unveiled a $1trillion infrastructure package Sunday night that includes historic funding for railways, clean water and electric car charging stations. Of the $1trillion package, $66billion is earmarked for railways - the largest spending since the creation of Amtrak in the 1970s - $55billion will fund the replacement of every lead pipe in the country and $7.5billion will go towards building the first-ever network of charging stations for electric vehicles. The bill also includes an additional $65billion to expand broadband Internet access across the country, and senators are pursuing for upwards of $25billion to repair major...

Conversation Kevin McCarthy @GOPLeader Democrats just scheduled a vote for 2am tonight. They are so embarrassed by all the non-COVID waste in their bill that they are jamming it through in the dead of night.

While leaders on Capitol Hill thrash about on replenishing their own program to protect small-business workers, a bipartisan group in the Senate have begun work on Phase 4 of COVID-19 pandemic relief. The new focus for federal cash will fall on state and local governments that have seen revenue streams dry up as businesses shut down. Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) have crafted a $500 billion bailout package that attempts to provide baseline cash while adjusting for both population and outbreak size. Perhaps we should be surprised that the price tag is as low as it is....

New economics research suggests that President Obama's stimulus plan may have destroyed or forestalled employment, including more than 1 million private-sector jobs. Economists Timothy Conley, University of Western Ontario, and Bill Dupor of Ohio State University found that the stimulus resulted in a net loss of 595,000 jobs from April 2009 to September 2010. That counters research by the Congressional Budget Office, the Council of Economic Advisors, and many other economists.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A $3.2 million center where people will learn about climate change and the threat of sea level rise is slated to be built in the Lower 9th Ward with federal and private dollars.

BOYNTON, OK -- Residents of a small town in rural Muskogee County say they've discovered a big problem -- tax dollars being wasted on useless construction. But what some see as waste, others say is necessity. The Oklahoma Department of Transportation is spending $13 million in stimulus funding to build sidewalks in dozens of rural Oklahoma communities in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. ODOT said the program saves the towns the expense of doing the work themselves, and paves the way for other improvements down the road. Under U.S. law, the state can't use federal dollars to make...

OKLAHOMA CITY -- The authors of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act must have figured one way to improve child nutrition would be to improve the kitchens that prepare and serve meals to so many of them - school kitchens. That is, presumably, the reason the legislation included a $100 million school foodservice equipment grant. Through a formula allocation, Oklahoma received 1.5 percent of that, or $1.5 million, to go to the purchase of everything from convection ovens to walk-in freezers, milk boxes to steamers. At Roy Clark Elementary School in the Union Public School District, the kitchen feeds about...

STILLWATER, OK -- A professor at OSU received $1.1 million in stimulus to study Alaskan grandparents. The National Science Foundation made the grant possible through their pot of stimulus money. But some Oklahomans say this is just one more example of stimulus waste. For more than ten years Oklahoma State University professor Tammy Henderson has been researching grandparents. She studies their relationships and responsibilities within their families. "This is an opportunity for us to really build a body of research that people will be using far beyond our age," said OSU Associate Professor Tammy Henderson, PhD. Henderson is now continuing...

For Alternative And Advanced Vehicles Printable PDF of Map Printable PDF of Summaries listed below North Central Texas Council of Governments’ North Central Texas Alternative Fuel and Advanced Technology. The project will deploy refueling stations and alternative fuel vehicles in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The project includes a portfolio of different technologies and fuels, including B20 (three stations), ethanol E85 (three stations), compressed natural gas (three stations and 97 vehicles), electricity (four recharging sites and 34 vehicles), and 251 hybrid electric vehicles. In addition to the city fleets, high mileage and high visibility fleets are included, such as Coca-Cola, Sysco,...

Today’s edition identifies millions of dollars in wasteful Washington spending Federal stimulus funds will ensure there will be a San Jose Jazz Festival in 2010 click here to read more California Lawyers for the Arts, a San Francisco film festival, and the Monterey Jazz Festival among the other recipients of stimulus funds in California click here to read more Small airports getting big payouts from stimulus program while safety violations at major national airports receiving little attention click here to read more The American Museum of Ceramic Art to receive a $50,000 grant from the federal economic stimulus recovery package...

At least $55 billion of U.S. stimulus funds that President Barack Obama promised would jumpstart the economy and put Americans back to work will likely be lost to waste, fraud and abuse, according to an investigation that reviewed thousands of programs nationwide. Already, at least $5.5 billion of the administration’s massive $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act have gone to wasteful projects across the country, including a $3 million turtle crossing in northern Florida, the $10 million renovation of an abandoned train station that has been shut for three decades and 10,000 dead people getting Social Security stimulus checks....

WALKER, LOUISIANA - The Livingston Business & Career Solutions Center is holding its first Summer Youth Work Program. The program was made possible by federal stimulus money to help 36 youths between ages 14-24 with low income obtain employment. Along with nine other parishes, Livingston is participating in this experiment. "The goal of this program is to help children become self-sufficient," said Case Manager Virginia Dauzat. "The students work a typical 40 hour week and are paid $7.25 per hour. The jobs they have been given are mainly with the schools and in the parish libraries where they do primarily...

Vice President Joe Biden said on a Monday conference call with reporters that it was “above [his] pay grade” to explain in detail the methodology the White House uses to estimate the number of jobs created or saved by the economic stimulus legislation, but stressed that there had been no “reasonable” challenges to the estimates. **** “I’m sorry I’m not an economist,” Biden said as he was describing the methodology. “My background is foreign policy and the constitution. “

It is high time Americans heard an argument that might turn a vague national uneasiness into a vivid awareness of something going very wrong. The argument is that the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) is unconstitutional. By enacting it, Congress did not in any meaningful sense make a law. Rather, it made executive branch officials into legislators. Congress said to the executive branch, in effect: "Here is $700 billion. You say you will use some of it to buy up banks' 'troubled assets.' But if you prefer to do anything else with the money -- even, say, subsidize...

HotlineTo report fraud, waste, or abuse: OIG Fraud Line 1 (800) 767-0385 OIGHotline@sba.gov Mailing address for Complaints or Fraud: Small Business Administration Office of Inspector General Investigations Division Mail Code: 4113 409 Third Street, S.W. Washington, DC 20416 To suggest an investigation or audit: Investigations Division: Headquarters: 202-205-6220 Eastern Region: 202-205-6226 Central Region: 312-353-4467 Southern Region: 504-589-6685 x2843 Western Region: 818-552-3236 Auditing Division; (202) 205-7203 Referrals for investigations should be as specific as possible as to who and what is involved. Confidentiality may be requested, and the referrer's identity will not be disclosed unless it becomes unavoidable during an ensuing...

So...how many of you out there STILL have a lot of friends, family or coworkers that are still drinking the "Kool aid"?? One would think--that after the way that the "Bamster's" "help" has been received by the stock mkt, and such--that thinking people would NOT still be "going for it", where his lies are concerned. But where I work--my boss and her WHOLE family are STILL enamored by "the one". And no matter WHAT happens--it is ALL "Bush's fault and of course..the republicans..I hear it EVERY day. And nothing I can say makes any difference to her. She even refuses...

As we dig into the President's budget, more emerges: 1) Remember the President stating his budget "identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade?" It actually increases spending by $1 trillion. But he classifies as "savings" $1.4 trillion in tax increases (apparently savings for the government, not for you) and $1.5 trillion "saved" in Iraq relative to a fantasy baseline that otherwise assumes current spending levels forever. The Iraq gimmick is the equivalent of a family deciding to "save" $10,000 by first assuming an expensive vacation and then not taking it. 2) Real federal spending per household — $24,000...

For those of you who haven't seen Michelle Malkin's recent blog post, she has posted an absolutely brilliant adaptation by Arlo Guthrie of "I'm changing my name to Chrysler"... it has now become "I'm changing my name to Fannie Mae" <-- link to the song on youtube

Just linked. Had not seen this posted yet. If so, please remove.....

WASHINGTON - President Obama must wish governors could vote in Congress: While just three of the 219 Republican lawmakers backed the $787 billion economic recovery plan that he is signing into law on Tuesday, that trifling total would have been several times greater if support among the 22 Republican state executives counted. The contrast reflects the two faces of the Republican Party these days. Leaderless after losing the White House, the party is mostly defined by its Congressional wing, which flaunted its anti-spending ideology in opposing the stimulus package. That militancy drew the mockery of late-night television comics, but the...