The Obama administration is patting itself on the back for saving the jobs of thousands of educators by doling out stimulus funds earlier in the year.
But should we all cheer just because Ms. Frizzle didn’t get the boot? Teachers, like all professionals, have no right to employment. In the private market people who are good at their jobs are in demand and courted with money. People who are bad either work for less money or have to find a different…

Read the full story

$1,562,568 of stimulus money went to subsidize mozzarella cheese in Rep. Marcia Fudge’s district.

Hat tip to Evan Banks.

Read the full story

Electricity consumers beware! The so-called-stimulus bill includes provision for something called “decoupling.” E&E Daily reports:

Also included in the final version is a requirement that governors who want additional state energy efficiency grants ensure that their state regulators guarantee revenue to utilities to support efficiency programs.

State regulators and consumer advocates strongly opposed the provision, saying it ties regulators’ hands and is not the best tool to promote efficiency.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners said many regulators cannot assure that “decoupling”…

Read the full story

You’ll never see Bill Gates using an iPhone or see General Motors CEO Richard Wagoner driving a Ford. So, naturally, when Novartis pharmaceuticals’ CEO Daniel Vasella revealed last year that he takes the Pfizer statin drug Lipitor to treat his high cholesterol instead of Novartis’s Lescol, it raised more than a few eyebrows.

It’s well known among doctors that people respond differently to different medications that treat the same condition. Vasella says he had some unpleasant side-effects when taking Lescol. And plenty…

Read the full story

Included in the massive stimulus bill that passed in the House of Representatives are several line items appropriations to renovate federal buildings in Washington.  Included is $150 million to renovate a Smithsonian museum, $500 million for a new National Institutes of Health building, and $400 million for renovating a Social Security Administration building.  For the renovation of the Social Security building, the agency estimates that the renovation will create 400 jobs.  In other words, it will cost $1 million dollars…

Read the full story

The porcine stimulus bill passed by the House contains $15 billion in capital investments and loan guarantees for renewable energy projects and new electric transmission lines.  But the billions of dollars targeted toward renewable energy aren’t likely to generate many “green collar” jobs anytime soon.  That’s because the environmental and permitting regulations for these types of projects typically take years.  This is particularly true for new transmission lines.  And without the new transmission lines, new solar or wind power stations…

Read the full story

The appropriations portion of the House stimulus bill is not the only legislation with bad ideas.  The House Energy and Commerce Committee has also marked up their portion of the stimulus package.  During the Committee markup, Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) inserted a provision that would “decouple” utility rates from the amount of electricity or natural gas that the utilities sell.  According to the “decoupling” provision, states that accept federal energy efficiency grants from the economic stimulus package will have to…

Read the full story

In addition to tens of billions of dollars in the House stimulus bill for infrastructure and other projects to create jobs, there are also funding items that appear to do the exact opposite.  For example, the House stimulus bill contains $175 million dollars for Natural Resource Conservation Service to purchase conservation easements in floodplains.  Funding for the program would effectively be spending tax dollars to pay farmers to stop farming.  Not only would such conservation easements not be creating any…

Read the full story

The U.S. Senate voted to confirm Timothy F. Geithner tonight, but the vote was closer than expected with more “nays” than any previous nominee of President Barack Obama. The 60-34 confirmation was also the first nomination vote of the Obama administration with any Democrat voting no.

Because of the nagging questions remaining about Geithner’s failure to pay four years worth of self-employment taxes and his role in designing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, four members of the Democratic caucus joined…

Read the full story

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4  Tucked in the massive stimulus bill passed by the House Appropriation Committee is a $4.5 billion appropriation for the Army Corps of Engineers. While the vast majority of the appropriation is for the construction of new water resource projects and for the backlog of maintenance of existing water resource projects, there is also a $25 million appropriation for the Corps of Engineers regulatory program. The Corps regulatory program is the cadre of bureaucrats responsible for processing…

Read the full story

Not all stimulus programs are created equal. If the goal of the latest economic bailout package that Congress is considering is as President Elect Obama has declared, job creation, there is a significant disparity between many of the programs.  While only 39 of the variously appropriated federal programs even attempt to quantify the number of jobs that they would create, there is a huge disparity in how effective various programs are at job creation — ranging from $1,000,000 per job…

Read the full story

Over in the UK, their own financial mess is reaching genuine crisis levels. With a trillion dollar national debt, a currency crisis and their own bank bailout (the model Paulson followed) having conclusively failed, Britain is on the edge of bankruptcy:

The country stands on the precipice. We are at risk of utter humiliation, of London becoming a Reykjavik on Thames and Britain going under. Thanks to the arrogance, hubristic strutting and serial incompetence of the Government and a group of…

Read the full story