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Oregon Stimulus plan miserable failure

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  • Oregon Stimulus plan miserable failure

    I didn't even know we had a stimulus plan, and I am a business owner in Portland.

    Just saw this on last night's news.
    State officials boast more than 7,500 jobs have been "created or retained" by the 2009 Legislature's trumpeted economic stimulus package, a feat just shy of the 8,000-plus jobs reported for Oregon under the far bigger federal stimulus program.

    Yet Oregon reports spending about $93 million so far compared with $1.3 billion -- yes, with a "b" -- in federal stimulus spending in the state.

    The state makes an eye-opening claim, and raises an obvious question: How did the "Go Oregon" package, as it is called, outperform the federal program by such a huge margin?

    The short answer: It didn't.

    An analysis by The Oregonian shows that, on average, Go Oregon jobs lasted about two weeks and did little or nothing to dent the state's bleak employment outlook. It also shows the state counted anyone working on a stimulus-related project as a job, regardless of whether the worker was already employed and in no danger of being laid off.

    Furthermore, one in four workers employed in Go Oregon jobs was not a resident of the state. The analysis also shows a disproportionately high amount of the stimulus money was spent in Marion and Polk counties -- two areas of the state favored by Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, who championed the measure.

    Courtney and other Democratic leaders pushed for the spending as a desperately needed jobs bill, saying it would put thousands to work quickly at a time when Oregon's unemployment rate was among the highest in the nation. The plan was to borrow $172 million, then spend the money on hundreds of long-neglected maintenance projects, from mossy roofs to peeling paint.

    Senate Bill 338 was put on a fast track and zipped through both legislative chambers. Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed the bill just hours after it emerged from the House, saying it would "help families and get our economy moving."

    But contractors say the program, which will cost Oregon's general fund more than $300 million over 20 years because of interest rates, has done little to cushion their industry's free fall.

    "It's been a huge disappointment," said John Killin, president of Associated Builders and Contractors, whose members are scraping for every bit of work they can find. Since 2007, the number of construction workers in Oregon has fallen from a peak of 114,000 to fewer than 68,000, he said.

    <snip>

    Under the Go Oregon stimulus rules, any new hire is a job "created," whether for two days or two months. If the worker was already on staff, that's a "retained" job.

    Here are two representative examples of state stimulus projects, taken from the progress report:

    Workers upgraded the heating and air-conditioning system at a state Fish and Wildlife building in Douglas County. Nine people, who already had jobs, worked on the project for an average of 10 hours apiece. Total cost: $18,624.

    Of the workers who renovated a Clackamas Community College building, 12 were already employed and 21 were new hires. Only 13 of the 33 workers were Oregon residents. On average, each worker spent about a week on the job, which cost $294,808.

    University and community college campuses got the lion's share of the money, much to their delight. At Oregon State University, $500,000 in state stimulus money paid part of a $3.7 million renovation of Gill Coliseum, where the Beavers play basketball.

    Some of the financial headache already is being felt. Paying off money borrowed for the stimulus took $30.7 million out of the current general fund budget. An additional $32.8 million will come out of the 2011-13 budget -- already projected to be $2.5 billion out of balance.

    more:
    Oregon stimulus boast stretches facts on job creation, retention | Oregonlive.com
    "We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way." -President Barack Obama 11/25/2008

  • #2
    Wow! A government program that failed to do what it was supposed to do...what a shocker!
    "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by gunnut View Post
      Wow! A government program that failed to do what it was supposed to do...what a shocker!
      And uh, *cough* who's responsible?

      Courtney and other Democratic leaders pushed for the spending as a desperately needed jobs bill
      Did somebody just say "tax-and-spend"?
      “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

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      • #4
        hah, oregon is right in line with teh feds. UCA where I attend has gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars that ahve been put into new trash cans and sidewalks. The Trashcans are not domestically made and the sidewalk is being put in by Mexicans....

        Meanwhile Americans who will have to pick up the tab can't get new books for the library or other things related to actually educating.....

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        • #5
          Originally posted by zraver View Post
          hah, oregon is right in line with teh feds. UCA where I attend has gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars that ahve been put into new trash cans and sidewalks. The Trashcans are not domestically made and the sidewalk is being put in by Mexicans....

          Meanwhile Americans who will have to pick up the tab can't get new books for the library or other things related to actually educating.....
          Cmon now J. You know you love those new sidewalks.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Wirbelwind View Post
            Cmon now J. You know you love those new sidewalks.
            Not really, they still didn't fix the drainage...

            Thompson to Irby still floods out...

            Hey, did you watch the active shooter drill?

            And finally, Dr Craun's class on the Byzantines is fun, but holy writers cramp batman! 4-5 8 page papers and 1 20-30 page.... I am going to research and write on Justinian's Plague
            Last edited by zraver; 17 Mar 10,, 03:30.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by zraver View Post
              Not really, they still didn't fix the drainage...

              Thompson to Irby still floods out...

              Hey, did you watch the active shooter drill?

              And finally, Dr Craun's class on the Byzantines is fun, but holy writers cramp batman! 4-5 8 page papers and 1 20-30 page.... I am going to research and write on Justinian's Plague
              Yah I was being a little facetious. The sidewalks we had were just fine. Yes, actually my wife was one of the students in the shooting drill. She got to play a woman who went into a panic attack. She said the shooters assault rifle kept jamming and so he stayed with his side arm...realistic scenario at least as blanks can induce jamming more frequently. I downloaded the syllabus from Craun's class and lets just say senioritis got the best of me. I opted for the easier imperialism class. Hope to see you around sometime.

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              • #8
                Ya I knew his rifle jammed, I am friends with Lt. Swindle.

                hey have you seen my TT yet?

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