Cue the Eternal Emergency (updated 8aug2010)

George Rebane

The $787B, or was it really $868B, stimulus called ARRA has not worked.  No matter the trumpeting from the front door, this is apparent now even to the White House which is conducting backdoor discussions on how to ‘double down’ on the next stimulus that is being cooked up.  We have quietly entered into the age of planned ‘eternal emergency’ during which a never-ending stream of Keynesian dollars are borrowed or printed, and then carefully ‘invested’ with correctly voting constituencies.

We all recall the cry that went out to the sheeple in February 2009.  The inherited Bush economy was in such a dump that $787B had to be rushed through Congress that very same weekend so it could be poured over a land of upturned faces waiting for help from Washington.  Perhaps the biggest selling point was that if we didn’t do this immediately, then we would be laying off police, firefighters, and teachers across the country, and quickly turning America into a land of free-ranging criminals, unattended conflagrations, and young people even dumber than public education has managed to make them in the last thirty years.

President Obama went on record at least six times to assure us that ARRA monies would be rushed to these critical job categories to keep our civilization from collapsing.   So what happened?  Well, today $451B or over 57% of the ARRA monies remain unallocated (see Nevada County’s reflection of this above).  And now, before the November elections, the transformational trio of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are calling an extraordinary session of Congress to ram through an additional $26B that is suddenly necessary to guarantee (fasten seatbelts) that teachers!! will not be laid off in the coming school year.

In the meantime the country continues with legions of staffers at all levels of jurisdictions and non-profits (and even for-profits) spending millions of man-hours researching, writing, and evaluating ARRA proposals to get their hands on this promised largesse.  Only your imagination can tell what all these people could have done for the economy had they spent these hours in productive pursuits.  Generating and exchanging kilotons of paper and terabytes of pdf files to chase after created cash is a true and enduring example of how government creates and ‘saves’ jobs.

[8aug2010 update]  Wonder of wonders, even Democratic officials are beginning to doubt the effects of printing ever more money.  Robert Rubin, president Clinton's Sec Treasury, stated on CNN that more government stimulus would now be "counter productive".  I wonder how much past the 'productive boundary' we have actually come with all these trillions.

Comments

[Steve Enos]

George posts... "The inherited Bush economy"... seems Geogre at last nails the reason we are in this mess!... 8 years of Bush.

One just needs to review the "numbers" from when Bush took office and compare them to when Bush left office. He ran our country and most of the world economy over a cliff.

Yes.. it is "The inherited Bush economy".

[George Rebane]

Good pick up SteveE. The 'inherited' part is, of course, from the lyrics of Obama's Alynski Anthem that grounds our rush to socialism. Bush was not a practicing conservative, and the then resident Democratic Congress worked in concert with his progressive inclinations. You can see what forces "ran the world economy over a cliff" by just looking for the correctives for Freddy and Fannie that have been built into the current financial reform law. Enlarging the scope of blame to world status requires an extraordinary ignorance of what has been going on for decades in Europe, South America, and Japan. None of this will change perceptions, and therefore we proceed undeterred toward the Great Divide.

[Steve Enos]

I was glad to see George at last admit the situation we are in is a result of... "The inherited Bush economy".

[Michael Anderson]

Ah yes, once again the Great Divide.

I would like to offer you a trip to the Great Basin in the coming weeks. I can show you a version of the Great Divide that I think you will find most interesting.

Minimal investment, maximum return. I'll give you more info. off the air.

M.

[Bob H]

Steve you are a blind partisan.

[Steven Frisch]

Yeah and George has 20/20 vision in his fair and rational discussion of public policy.

By the way, the George number on ARAA are wrong, he knows they are wrong, and he continues to post them.

[George Rebane]

SteveF, your constant and specious accusations without back-up have been a pile of crap and will be omitted from all future postings of the ARRA graph. All RR readers, including you, know exactly from where I take my Nevada County's ARRA data - the start page of Nevada County government's official website. If you have any problems with that data, then contact county CEO Rick Haffey, or county CFO Joe Christoffel and get it settled with the source. I will even publish what you find out. In the meantime, cut your pissing and moaning. I will continue publishing this government furnished data so that everyone here can see how the feds dispense their 'got to get it done this weekend' emergency stimulus funds.

[Todd Juvinall]

This fellow SF is in denial George. His story on Prop 23 in the Union (the paper he derides all the time along with his pal Pelline) was a bunch of crap.

[Michael Anderson]

Todd,

The Gropinator, and maybe even Meg, love Steve's numbers. This is a tangled web indeed.

M.

[Steven Frisch]

George you can cut all you want but the figures are wrong. I have posted several other sources and you have continued to ignore them. One is right here.

http://www.recovery.ca.gov/viewCountyTable.do?county=Nevada

In short our ARRA funding is not $2,000,000 it is closer to $28,000,000, and that does not count REGIONAL awards that serve several counties that we access some portion of the funds from.

You are using the county figure to illustrate the ineffectiveness of ARRA--if that is the case you have a responsibility to post real numbers.

[George Rebane]

SteveF – I am using county published ARRA figures to illustrate what is obvious to anyone with eyes living in Nevada County. No one here has any idea of how $28M could have been so ineffectively spent in the county. One way collectivists may be able to cite such sums if, say, a work crew from Sacramento County came up here, used ARRA funds to erect a $28M statue to Barack Obama on some street corner and then left. The state’s accountants and other administration acolytes (you?) would dutifully start singing that Nevada County had received $28M of economic stimulus.

The county’s unemployment rate is still well north of 12% and stores are shutting down on a regular schedule. Hereabouts we volubly celebrate the addition of jobs in the twos and threes, and get absolutely giddy when a company promises to move in and bring 30 new jobs. Any stimulus monies spent in the county would fund normal projects the budgets of which would have labor costs in the 50-75% range. At, say, $60K per job, that $28M would then have created about 300 new jobs. And the multiplier effect of spending all these new millions here would have been noticeable to everyone. There are no such new jobs in the county.

Perhaps you can make a case for all the benefits that NC has received from this administration that are invisible to the rest of us. Until that time I will continue reporting the official ARRA figures that are published by the county administration, the same figures against which no one, save you on RR, has made a peep in the local media. And I invite you to contend with the county as to either the accuracy or the financial benefit of their reports of ARRA monies stimulating our local economy. I will also publish any extended and civil rebuttal you care to submit that omits your weekly diatribe which includes calling me a liar.

[Brad Croul]

Isn't the fact that 57% of the ARRA monies remains unallocated a good thing? That would mean that they are not just blowing through it as fast as they can. Isn't that called being conservative with our tax dollars?
I clicked on the Recovery.org website map and found that more money is being spent on Nevada County projects than is shown on the chart above. Just the Washington Rd. project is almost $4,700,000. Other moneys have gone to school districts as grants. Nevada Union School District received over $2.2 million dollars.
Maybe we are not creating new industries with the money but roads are getting paved and schools can stay open.

[Steven Frisch]

The point that people are not making a peep is just evidence that they are not checking your figures, and your claims. I am. I think it would be a damn good series of articles for our local paper to do an analysis of ARRA funding coming in to the region. I also don't think we are getting enough--for other reasons.

Here is just one project--the $4,696,000 Teichert Company was awarded on 5/4/09, and has billed $4,472,5000 of, to rebuild Washington Road. That one project is 2 times what you graph is reporting.

Which of the following projects would you have turned down? How many people were employed in these tasks? What evidence do you have that the recession would not have been a full blown depression if these investments had not been made?

You are very good at pointing out the incompetence of government so perhaps ypu could go through the ACTUAL lists and report the real numbers accurately instead of just getting a number from a bureaucrat, who you say regularly you don't trust, and reporting it as though it is the word of the lord.

How about these --$485,000 for residential energy efficiency retrofits through weatherizing
$74,171 to keep the support staff for the Nevada County Anti-Drug Enforcement Task Force
$234,000 to support the Cap a day clinic?

What would you turn back and why? Would you turn away the millions to pave the Washington Road? which taxpayers would have paid for anyway?

Readers, go look at the database and decide, are there real projects out there with real jobs?

Dude, I am calling you on the mis-information.

[Steven Frisch]

Good God, thank you Brad. I love it when people actually look at the data. That is what creates accountability for people comments.

[Steven Frisch]

By the way--that should be Chapa-de up above--I was typing too fast.

[Account Deleted]

The link Steven provided is interesting. The town of Winters is now in Nevada County. That must have cost a pretty penny and I'm sure provided a lot of temporary jobs! Over all, the chart is fairly useless since there is no way of knowing what the money was spent on. A lot of it went to govt entities and could have been used to fund existing services and jobs. One project touted in the local press that was using money we don't have, was the bike path in Penn Valley. This is basically a toy for the upper class and not of any use in long term economic benefit to the community. The idea that we should be happy about the fact that most of the money is not spent because it's "conservative" is ridiculous. There is nothing "conservative" about any of it. We were informed by the Obama admin that we didn't have any time to debate this - not even one day. It had to be passed right now, so we can save the country. But the funds are being slowly parcelled out as a Democrat-controlled slush fund to pay back supporters. We already have paid money to the state and local govts to pave the roads and run the schools. They blew it on other programs and now the feds come in to back-stop them with money we don't have to help continue their wasteful ways. What happens next year? No production of useful goods for here and export, no jobs, and the roads and schools will still need to be funded. Where will that money come from? Hey - print more money! Wheee! When it all crashes, the left will blame the banks, the "rich", Bush, anybody but the real cause of it all. As a nation, both individually and in our govts, we have lived far beyond our means. It all went on the credit card for decades and now the bill is due. Most of the nation is ignorant beyond belief and have no real skills in coping with what is coming. Our community organizer-in-chief is coming up hard against the laws of nature. Let's see him "figure it out" with an arrogant, dismissive wave of his hand as he did in the interview when he was running for office.

[Brad Croul]

Scott, if you go to the federal website, http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/RecipientReportedData/Pages/RecipientReportedDataMap.aspx , you can zoom in and click on various projects or grants and see what they received.

From your post I sense a lot of anger at the present administration but I found this link, https://www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb-0308-16.pdf, that talks about what the Bush administration was doing not long after he was elected.

[Steve Enos]

But the real news is... George at last admitted the situation we are in is a result of and is now on record stating:

"The inherited Bush economy".

Than God, George has seen the light at last!

[Steven Frisch]

The real point is that if George is going to claim the federal government is a worthless crock it is his responsibility to bring the real data to the table, by aggregating the information available form multiple sources, (local, regional,, state, agency, federal register) which would take a couple of hours and a simple spread sheet.

In lieu of that he is cherry picking data to support his prejudice, and we have a responsibility to hold him to a higher standard. He is the host of a blog, not a gossip columnist. If not, this blog is just a bunch of windbags in a circle j___k.

[Barry Pruett]

Quote from Frisch's site:

"This representation does not satisfy federal reporting requirements and is not the state's official, comprehensive reporting mechanism for Recovery Act funding. It has been created and displayed as a service to the citizens of California."

Thanks for the wonderful, cherry picked source. You liberals are something else.

[Steven Frisch]

Boy Barry, what part of the post immediately above yours did you not understand? I am not representing the state site as a full accounting of ARRA, I am saying multiple sources need to be used if one is going to draw conclusions. If you really want to prove government is incompetent do the work.

[Account Deleted]

Wow, Brad - last time I checked, Bush was out of office. I liked very little of what he and the solons did while he was in office as well. At least his Supremes understood the Constitution and why it's important to follow, even if I didn't always agree with every decision. When it came to deficit spending, he was over the speed limit, but at least he knew where wealth comes from and didn't bad mouth those who produce it. Anger? I have to pay taxes to support greedy morons who bought homes they knew they couldn't afford as well as all the other incompetent investment bankers and union stooges that Obama showers with our money. Then he brags about how I now have to help folks that have a higher income than I buy their Ecars that I can never afford. All of the "stimulus funds" are not going to start any kind of stable long-range job creation. It didn't work in the 30's and it's not working now. And all you of you lib-clowns are still in the blame Bush for everything mode. Bush wasn't that great, but Obama is on track to destroy our country.

[Brad Croul]

Steve, when you refer to me as a lib-clown it doesn't really make your comments more respectable.

[Steven Frisch]

Brad you must have meant Scott right?

[Account Deleted]

Hey Brad - I made a general statement about folks of a particular nature. You apparently decided you fit the description. But I didn't call you anything. Were you really going to listen to my arguments and make a reasoned response anyway? And since when do folks on the left start linking to the Cato Institute as a authoritative source? That is just too rich.

[Steven Frisch]

Yeah and now the CATO link is down. They must have figured out a liberal linked to them and broke the link.

Do you really think liberals do not look at CATO, CEI, AEI, Heartland, Reason et. al. on a regular basis. Its basic opposition research? But as I am discovering the standards for research are kind of low around here.

[Todd Juvinall]

If the libertarian CATO Institute is opposition research for liberals, then that says it all about their philosophy. I will o longer listen to the phony protestations of liberals about bi-partisanship. We always knew liberals were disingenuous about the claim.

[Account Deleted]

Steve - I'm glad to see you do look at other sites, but that's not the point. I visit Slate, Kos, New Republic et al. But I wouldn't cite them as authoritative. The main deal here was the waste of funds and the total joke of Obama's plans to "rescue" our economy. Everything he does makes it worse and he knows it. He promised his plan would keep unemployment below 8%. It's getting worse and he just keeps doing more of the same. As George was pointing out, all you have to do is look around the county. Home prices are still falling, despite a massive ongoing bailout for Fannie and Freddie. Gee, didn't Obama just promise no more bailouts? And all the "stimulus funds" that don't. And they have big tax increases on the horizon. That will sure be a stimulative. Free enterprise built this country, not printed paper.

[Steve Enos]

No, the issue is George using bad data to try and make his point. George should use the best and most correct data available.

[Todd Juvinall]

He does.

[Steve Enos]

Thanks Todd. George did get it right at last when he admitted the economic situation we are in is a result of Bush.

George stated... it's "The inherited Bush economy".

Than God, George has seen the light at last!

[Barry Pruett]

Wait...wait...wait...I smell a liberal trick. Data is only bad when it does not support the liberal agenda. All other data is fine.

[Sarah]

Bush WAS reckless with spending, Obama IS reckless on spending (with spending steroids and spending crack in his veins).

Mr. Enos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5yxFtTwDcc

[Account Deleted]

Steve - George said no such thing. The mess we are NOW in and getting deeper is because of Obama. Obama inherited the situation from Bush as did Bush from Clinton. The reason this country is in serious trouble is because we live on financial bubbles and funny money. Bush did try to reform SS, and was savaged by the left and the MSM with a non-stop tirade of lies and personal attacks. If he had tried to stop the Fannie and Freddie disaster he would have been called worse. He must have noticed what happened to those Rs that did try to do something. They were called racist and crazy. He should have tried to stop it anyway. I will fault him for that. But there is far greater fault in the Dems that openly fought to continue the coming disaster. Now Obama is going for total bankruptcy - just keep the pedal to the metal and we'll all have a great time on the way down with a printed money bubble. The "stimulus" is great for Obama's wealthy buddies and no one else. We can not borrow our way to financial health. We need free market capitalism, but I don't think there are enough folks in Washington of any political stripe to make it happen. And I don't think there are enough Americans left that know what to do with a free market. Freedom first needs responsibility and this country has shown very little of that in the last few decades.

[Todd Juvinall]

Our government is special because it flows from one administration to the next and the country comes first rather than the last party and their policies. Obama defeated McCain with the promise of fixing things, just like every previous administration. He was elected because he said things were bad, elect me and I will fix them. Well, rather than fixing things, he whines that it was Bush. Leadership by a community activist is an oxymoron.

[Steve Enos]

Sorry Scott... facts are facts and George stated above... it's "The inherited Bush economy" Obama has to deal with. Just read George's comment above... it's "The inherited Bush economy".

[Todd Juvinall]

Since you are so outraged at behavior you conside bad by others, why do you stalk people and call them names under the moniker of NC_GUY Steve?

[Steve Enos]

Sorry Todd... I'm not NC-Guy. Plus I live in GV.

Todd you seem to be wrong a lot for a guy that claims to be Always Right.

[Todd Juvinall]

What is alwaysright? BTW, you are NC_GUY, just admit it. You even follow me to the CABPRO blog to spew.

[Steve Enos]

Todd.. you are so Wise and Just too.

[Account Deleted]

Sorry back at you, Steve. You need to read what you write. QUOTE: "he admitted the economic situation we are in is a result of Bush". That is not what he said or meant. The economic mess we are IN is Obama's mess. Go back and read the entire article and focus on the 2 sentences "We all recall the cry that went out to the sheeple in February 2009. The inherited Bush economy was in such a dump that $787B had to be rushed through Congress that very same weekend so it could be poured over a land of upturned faces waiting for help from Washington." That was clearly a sarcastic synopsis of what the Obama admin was telling the nation. Yes, Bush did leave office with more debt than when he came in, but the mess we are now in is far, far worse than anything Bush left us with and Obama and the Dems are planning to do even more damage. The good citizens of this country did themselves in with their own stupidity and greed. Then they elected a con artist who soothed them with tales of how it was all Bush's fault. Obama promised to fix it all, but it's getting worse and all we get is whining about Bush.

[George Rebane]

Scott, your efforts with SteveE are appreciated. You may succeed where I have utterly failed. I'm not sure where his deficit lies, but it is a deep one. Once he gets his needle into a groove, it stays there, sometimes for weeks. The last one he was in (and still might be) was reminding everyone everywhere of Barry Pruett's loss margin - the man was simply besides himself with glee. He seems to be there again.

I have advised him, to no profit, that RR is probably not his cup of tea, since I have never been able to say it clearly enough for him to understand.

[Brad Croul]

Scott, one part of your post that I found, as you say, “reasoned”, or at least reasonable, was the following sentence: “As a nation, both individually and in our govts, we have lived far beyond our means. It all went on the credit card for decades and now the bill is due.”

The rest of your post is a rant primarily directed at the Obama administration. The claim that, “We were informed by the Obama admin that we didn't have any time to debate this - not even one day. It had to be passed right now, so we can save the country.”, is a lot like the statement Hank Paulson made to Bush when he asked Bush for the first $700 Billion. Bush was in office during this time. My intent was to remind you that most of what you accuse the Obama administration and lib-clowns of creating was started during the Bush administration, and earlier.

Since the post in which you refer to “all of you lib-clowns” was addressed to me, I can assume that you were referring to me.

I don’t care which sources you find acceptable but get the facts straight. The facts are out there. That is what Steven Frisch was trying to explain to Mr. Rebane. All the "Obama blaming" on this page by the blog locals won’t change the fact that Obama is being used as a scapegoat for what started a long time ago. Go ahead, throw Obama out. It won’t change a thing.

[RL Crabb]

The Obama Administration made major mistakes when they came into office. The first order of business (in political terms) should have been to neutralize the opposition. By securing the border and leaving the other questions of immigration for later, he could quelled much of the criticism from that end. The healthcare debate, which consumed nearly a year, was another mistake. The Dems would have done better with an incremental approach. As it now stands, businesses are still grappling with the new mandates, doctors are preparing to either downsize or eliminate Medicare and MediCal patients, and many will choose early retirement. In the meantime, small businesses are still waiting to find out how their taxes will be affected by the expiration of Bush's cuts. Not many are ready to do any major expansion.

The stage is set for the Repubs to make huge gains in November. They may be hindered somewhat by extremist candidates and third party runs by Tea Party candidates, so it's unclear how the numbers will play out. Still, the current majority will be diminished if not defeated.

If the Repubs take the House, look forward to two years of investigations and gridlock. Ironically, that may be the moment when business breathes a sigh of relief...when Washington does nothing at all.

[George Rebane]

Bob, I think your assessment and prognostication is pretty much what I see. I hope we don't see any/many candidates running under the Tea Party label in an attempt to make a political party with that name.

BradC - I've found it difficult to communicate to progressives that 1)Bush received some sort of carte blanche on RR. The man was a progressive and made many of the usual mistakes. Count his vetoes after Dems took Congress in 2006. And 2) the common and constant strain from liberals is that it's no fair to critique Obama tripling down on Bush's stupidity because Bush and other presidents were also stupid. Obama has put collectivism in America on steroids and socialism is only the first stop. Rebuking his critics and excusing his policies because of his predecessors is a bit cynical. Following that policy, there would never be a reversal of direction in public policy, and that is what conservatives of the capitalist bent want. The conversation would be better served if we heard your arguments on how we can borrow and print our way out of the current recession while the public employment (i.e. wealth consuming) sector is growing without bounds.

[Steve Enos]

Oh the 8 years of Bush... just look at the facts. What were the numbers when Bush took office and what were the numbers when he left office... it's "The inherited Bush economy" Obama was stuck with.

No screaming by the Twa Party clan for Bush's 8 years? Go figure!

[Barry Pruett]

Enos...see Sarah's video posted above.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5yxFtTwDcc

Bush was increasing debt at "60mph" while Obama is at "174mph". If you watched you would know why people are concerned genuinely about the ever increasing debt.

FYI...your facts are rarely ever facts.

[Steve Enos]

Still you fail to understand the issue Barry... just check the "numbers" the day Bush took office and the day Bush left office. The numbers are what we call FACTS.

And why can't you grasp that one can be concerned about our growing debt today and at the dame time look at the history of Bush that drove our economy off the cliff?

Where were you Barry for the 8 years of Bush, no ranting from you and most of the right for those 8 years and almost no mention of them now.

As George Rebane stated... it's "The inherited Bush economy" Obama was stuck with.

[Paul Emery]

Barry

Based on you're concerns about the deficit you must be a big supporter of Bill Clinton. The budget has been balanced only five times in the last 50 years. Nixon in 69, three years under Clinton and one year under Bush, the year Clinton left office and Bush inherited his budget. Reagan never balanced the budget nor did Bush Senior. How about credit where it is due.

[Account Deleted]

My "rant" - facts about the Obama admin is because - wait for it- is because he is currently the president. And he is a far left, lying socialist doing his best to install his brand of euro-socialism that he firmly believes is in our best interest. Bush did some damage, but he put in far better supremes than most all the previous presidents I can think of. Obama openly has stated that he considers the Constitution to be a "fatally flawed document". He has openly voiced contempt for the democratic process. He put self-declared communists and socialists in the White House in high positions of power with no Congressional oversight. He considers our constitutional rights to be "negative" rights. Google it folks - face reality. I wasn't happy with Bush and I voiced my anger at some of the betrayals of the folks that voted for him. But Obama is running the country - full power - right onto the rocks. I fear for what is ahead. Obama promised to lower the debt and instead he is pushing it through the roof. We desperately need to return to the wisdom of a strict adherence to the Constitution and fiscal discipline, but I wonder if the nation has lost it's way for so long, that it no longer knows the way.

[Account Deleted]

Oh - and Brad, yes I looked and the first part of that post was addressed to you, but the other part wasn't. But I should have separated the two. So, sorry didn't mean it that way.

[George Rebane]

Gentlemen (is there also a lady in this comment thread?) - It seems that many of you still embrace the quaint notion that it is solely the President who determines the financial fortunes of the country from inauguration to inauguration. Is there no one who will credit Congress, or at least the President and Congress when they do work in congress? or perhaps even the Lady Fortuna?