Nevada Gets Another $7M In Stimulus To Weatherize Homes

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Fox 5 News in Las Vegas reports that Nevada will receive an additional $7 Million in Federal Stimulus to expand a home weatherization program.

Gov. Jim Gibbons announced the award Tuesday that will be administered by the state Housing Division.

Gibbons said Recovery Act grants have helped the state weatherize more than 5,300 homes owned by low-income residents.

Officials said the new grant money will be used to install in-home energy monitors, photovoltaic systems, solar water heaters, heat pumps, residential wind turbines, and perform deep-efficiency retrofits.

House Committee: Stimulus creates more jobs in June

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According to a report released today by a House of Representatives committee, the number of jobs created or saved by infrastructure projects funded by the U.S. economic stimulus plan more than doubled in June from May.

At the end of June, 49,377 jobs had been "created or sustained" by water, highway and public transportation projects, compared to slightly more than 21,000 jobs at the end of May.
The Pacific Northwestern state of Washington accounted for the most jobs of any state or territory at 3,481, with the bulk of those concentrated in highway repairs.

According to the Transportation Department, Washington has also been obligated some $627.8 million out of the $22.7 billion the states have requested from the federal government under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

President Barack Obama pushed to dedicate $48 billion in the two-year, $787 billion recovery act to transportation projects, in the hopes of allaying painfully high unemployment levels in construction and related work.

A few states and territories, such as Georgia and Guam, have not reported any jobs created or saved by the increased infrastructure spending. Capital works projects have begun everywhere except the territories.

Only 142 capital works have been completed, however, the committee said.
The House committee regularly tracks how stimulus money is distributed to clean water revolving funds, highway infrastructure projects and transit capital assistance and will have a hearing on spending on Friday. Most states have used most of the stimulus money for highway repairs, according to the committee.

A total of 5,079 highway and transit projects have been put out to bid in all 50 states, four territories and the District of Columbia, totaling $16.7 billion, the committee said.
A job counts as created if it did not exist before a stimulus grant was given to a project. A sustained or saved job would have been eliminated if not for stimulus money. The committee does not distinguish between jobs created and saved in its report.

Beck, Sanford allege Obama taking over state governments

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Beck, Sanford allege Obama taking over state governments

Posted Jun 9, 2009, 9:54 AM PT by Jed Lewison • First broadcast: Jun 9, 2009
Yesterday, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford officially applied for stimulus funds as he had been ordered to do by the state’s supreme court in a decision upholding a vote by the state legislature requiring Sanford to use the funds.
After requesting the funds — as ordered by both the state court and state legislature — Sanford did the only natural thing for a guy in his position: he went on Glenn Beck’s show to complain that President Obama was engineering a federal takeover of his state.
"I mean, why have a state legislative body, why have a governor," Sanford asked, "if Washington is deciding it all?"

WATCH VIDEO


The thing neither Beck nor Sanford mentioned was that it wasn’t the federal government that forced Sanford to spend the money — it was the state legislature, whose decision was enforced by the state supreme court.
Beck and Sanford make it seem like this was a dispute between South Carolina and the federal government. Wrong. It was dispute between Mark Sanford and his state’s legislature.
Far from supporting the paranoid conspiracy theory pushed by Beck and Sanford, it actually debunks it. The federal government didn’t force Sanford to do anything — it was his own state that did. The real question here is why Beck and Sanford are acting like conspiracy trolls.

John King Pitches Softballs To McCain On The Stimulus

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John McCain tries his level best to look concerned for the plight of the average American while he bemoans that gosh, golly gee, the stimulus bill just wasn't bipartisan. That is why, of course, despite his home state of Arizona nearly topping the lists of foreclosures for the country, McCain couldn't bring himself to support the stimulus bill. But what makes his plaintive wailings all that much more amusing is that McCain actually whines about the....wait for it...tax cuts, that he admits have not worked in the past. You know, those tax cuts added to gain bipartisan support?
They weren't bipartisan, according to Grumpy McSame.

But the point is, this bill was not bipartisan. It was -- it is incredibly expensive. It has hundreds of billions of dollars in projects which will not yield in jobs. Now, if you think we need to improve education, spend money for it, fine. But this was supposed to be a package that was going to create jobs. A lot of this package will not create jobs. A lot of the tax cuts we've tried before of just giving people some money, it hasn't changed the way that savings have been conducted by Americans. So I'm not happy--and most of us aren’t-- at the lack of true bipartisanship in approaching this legislation.

Are you kidding me? The utter hypocrisy is mind-blowing...and yet, McCain has the audacity to sit there with a look of deep regret and sincerity on his face as he spews complete tripe. But host John King is not about to let McCain feel alone in his regret, so he launches what has to be the biggest softball concern troll framing I've heard this morning:


KING: Let's go to the process a little bit more. It’s a thousand pages. It’s eight pounds. We had it fedexed out to us. We’re contributing to the economy just having it shipped out here. Some of the changes were literally hand-scribbled on the side of the page. This happens all the time, unfortunately…


McCAIN: It’s the old business as usual…


KING: Well, if it’s the old business as usual, didn’t President Obama promise a new way of doing things in Washington? You say it was a terrible start. Are you sitting in your office these days saying, "I told you so"?

This from the man who warned Obama about being too liberal.