shovel ready jobs

What Happened to Those Shovel-Ready Jobs?

Obama first made “shovel-ready” a cool, keeping-it-rustic catchphrase in an interview with Tom Brokaw on “Meet the Press” in December 2008. “When I met with the governors, all of them have projects that are shovel-ready,” he said.

And on that day, a talking point was born.

The President referred to “shovel-ready” jobs whenever he could. In that same month, Obama announce his energy and environment teams and said, “We've got shovel-ready projects all across the country that governors and mayors are pleading to fund. And the minute we can get those investments to the state level, jobs are going to be created.”

When Obama announced his choice for secretary of Education, also in December of ’08, he said, “My economic team … is helping to shape what is going to be a bold agenda to create 2.5 million new jobs, to start helping states and local governments with shovel-ready projects.”


In March 2009, Biden spoke about the global economic crisis at the Progressive Governance Conference in Chile. He said, “The Recovery Act … provides a necessary jolt to our economy to implement what we refer [to] as ‘shovel-ready’ projects.”

Three months later, Biden told Californians that the administration wants “to get shovel-ready projects out the door as quickly as we can.”

In January 2009, Senate Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, “[Creating] projects that are felt to be shovel ready ... is the objective of the administration and ourselves.”

And in February of 2009, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said, “With wise investments in shovel-ready conservation projects across the country, we can immediately put people back to work.”

10/13/10 OBAMA, "there's no such thing as shovel-ready projects."


http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20019468-503544.html
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39407

Originally posted by utherpendragon
[b]What Happened to Those Shovel-Ready Jobs?


[quote][i]Obama first made “shovel-ready” a cool, keeping-it-rustic catchphrase in an interview with Tom Brokaw on “Meet the Press” in December 2008. “When I met with the governors, all of them have projects that are shovel-ready,” he said.

And on that day, a talking point was born.

Th ...[text shortened]... ws.com/8301-503544_162-20019468-503544.html
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39407[/b]

Rec'd.

pwned

Originally posted by utherpendragon
[b]What Happened to Those Shovel-Ready Jobs?


[quote][i]Obama first made “shovel-ready” a cool, keeping-it-rustic catchphrase in an interview with Tom Brokaw on “Meet the Press” in December 2008. “When I met with the governors, all of them have projects that are shovel-ready,” he said.

And on that day, a talking point was born.

Th ...[text shortened]... ws.com/8301-503544_162-20019468-503544.html
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39407[/b]

...

With unemployment hovering near 10 percent nearly two years after President Obama signed his economic stimulus package, Mr. Obama is acknowledging that, despite his campaign promises, "there's no such thing as shovel-ready projects."

The president gave that remark in an hour-long interview with the New York Times.

Mr. Obama also told the Times that he should have "let the Republicans insist on the tax cuts" in the stimulus, rather than including them himself, so the package would have seemed more like a compromise. The stimulus package, which the Congressional Budget Office said this year will cost $862 billion, included $236 billion in tax cuts. Nevertheless, the president said in the interview that he comes across as "the same old tax-and-spend Democrat."

When the president campaigned for the stimulus package at the start of his presidency, he and others in his administration repeatedly insisted the investments would go to "shovel-ready" projects -- projects that would put people to work right away. As recently as August, however, local governments were still facing delays spending the money they were allocated from the stimulus, CBS News Correspondent Nancy Cordes reported.

...

nice how the Dems take a talking point and run with it and the media just seem to go along. adding it to their own playbooks.

to me, "shovel-ready" means the design, including environmental impact and permit process, was already done on these projects and they were just waiting around for money to come along and complete them.

otherwise what's the use of calling them shovel-ready?

in reality the design/impact analysis/permits/etc/etc/etc costs a lot of money. doubt there were a lot of these sitting around. why go through the initial phase if there's no money allocated for completion?

how did the press permit Biden et al (or OMB?) to say there was no fraud in the stimulus?

isn't paving over perfectly good road because new funds are available a kind of fraud?

The "shovel" reminds me of quip by Milton Freedman.

He went to some central American country, and was shown by the incumbent politicians some men digging a trench with shovels.

Milton ask why they weren't using automated diggers, which were in principle available.

He was informed that the point of jobs was not only to dig a trench, but to create jobs.

Milton retorted that, if that were the main point, the men should perhaps be provided with spoons, not shovels, as that would create a lot more jobs.

His quip condenses a cloud of specious anti-capitalist argumentation into a droplet of patent nonsense.

Originally posted by IshDaGegg
The "shovel" reminds me of quip by Milton Freedman.

He went to some central American country, and was shown by the incumbent politicians some men digging a trench with shovels.

Milton ask why they weren't using automated diggers, which were in principle available.

He was informed that the point of jobs was not only to dig a trench, but to create j ...[text shortened]... ondenses a cloud of specious anti-capitalist argumentation into a droplet of patent nonsense.

it's an executive and management failure. they should be able to find something better to do with cheap labor than digging trenches with shovels.