Subscribe to this BlogWho's the next stimulus watchdog? You are!
Here’s your chance to watch your tax dollars at work. Literally.
An ambitious project launched by ProPublica, a non-profit investigative journalism news organization, is asking the same folks footing the tab for the $787 billion stimulus bill — that would be us — to keep an eye on how our money is being spent by volunteering to be stimulus watchdogs.
The initial focus of the Adopt-a-Stimulus Project is the $27 billion destined for repairing roads and bridges. The idea is to have local Joes and Joannes file reports on the progress of specific projects. ProPublica’s Amanda Michel — who ran the Huffington Post’s OffTheBus citizen-reported initiative during the 2008 presidential campaign — summed up the goal on the AaSP website:
“The Obama administration says the stimulus will "jolt" our economy into recovery. The questions we must answer, as investigative journalists, are 1) is the stimulus working? and 2) is it being enacted responsibly — without abuse of public trust?
We'll start by breaking down these questions into manageable pieces. …What exactly is getting repaired? Are we entrusting public money to the right companies? Are the companies that profit from the stimulus following environmental and labor laws? Are projects generating the jobs projected?”
Care to get your watchdog on? The Adopt-a-Stimulus website currently has 5,000 projects listed with 1,000 already adopted. There are no set job requirements, and the ProPublica team will be offering guidance on the how/what/where of reporting out a project.
You can tackle projects small ($25,000 budget for the McLean County, Ill. construction of a Route 66 multi-use trail in Chenoa), midsize ($2.7 million pavement reconstruction and rehab in Charleston County, S.C.) and large ($250,000,000 to reconstruct some freeway, frontage roads and ramps at the DFW Connector on state highways 114 and 121 in Texas.) The website has a searchable state-by-state database you can cruise through.
This will be an interesting project to watch. Sure, it lacks the institutional analytic chops of the Government Accountability Office, but there’s something compelling about trying to amass a national picture of how the money is being spent through a network of local citizens. President Obama has made transparency a priority for his administration. The Adopt-a-Stimulus Project may just provide more transparency than even the president could imagine.
"Creating" jobs which have been lost due to the inevitable shut-down &/or re-location of business are a step in the right direction. However, what about what's really going on in the U.S. today? The Federal Government has exceedingly "bailed out" too many of the wrong people. Taxpayer dollars have been used to do this & it continues to widen the gap between the impoverished and those lucky enough to already have a plentitude of money. Credit card companies have really stuck it to citizens–who have already paid via "bail-out" monies–and continue to increase percentage rates and lower the amount of money on a person's credit line. The end result is, of course, poor credit. Much of what has taken place w/bail-out monies was begun w/good ol' George W. However, President Obama hasn't exactly helped out his constituents.
One radio commentator joked that the Federal Government should've given $1,000,000 to each family whose income is $100,000 or less, which would have stimulated the economy. Yes, it sounds ludicrous, but think about it for a moment. This would have cost FAR LESS than our current situation which has not yet helped the citizens here as a whole and especially not our economy; businesses would not have been forced to lay off, or even worse, shut their doors forever, etc., etc., etc.
Who or what is the next stimulus? WE THE PEOPLE are the best plan yet. We can pay mortgages, pay our taxes, feed our children, buy new cars, clothe our children (and send them to college), go on vacations–however "mini" they might be. $1,000,000 will not go that far, but it will definitely help. It will help so many. President Obama, please listen! Your people are asking you to step up to the plate!
I agree Tom from Dallas, more long-term projects that make a real impact are needed. In chicago, all the roads are terrible and the Daley mobster hasn't done a darn thing about them. They are some of the worst I have ever seen. New large transportation projects are needed. Repaving roads in rural areas or roads that are already in good shape do nothing!!!!
It will get politicized – "citizens" will pick through the data and find all the worst stuff, even if 99% of the money is spent appropriately.
The USA has an Unemplyment Emergancy!
Bond King Bill Gross admits up to 25MM
unemployed in a CNBC interview. The U6 figure tells the real truth.
We need a TARP for Main St.
All money repiad by banks should go to Direct hiring of the unemployed thru a new WPA 2.0 – Work Project Admistration. We need Giant projects like new water pipelines from the great lakes to drought stricken states in the south and southwest. Projects that will protect the bread basket states.Other work project sugestions,
Bury every telephone line & power line. Reinforce every levey and dam. Staff up FEMA by the 10 of thousands.
Retrofit all the empty Big Box stores as additional hospital & clinics.
So we are better prepared for any large disaster events. TARP for Main Street! WPA 2.0! Needed Now!
States like CA are using stimulus money to prop up failed bureaucracies instead of hiring unemployed workers.
A faster way to get the economy going would be for the government to set up a temporary, new agency (like the old Works Progress Administration) to hire 1 million workers from the unemployment lines. At current average market wages of $19 per hour plus benefits, this would cost $50 billion per year and make a HUGE dent in the unemployment rate.
We could start by getting bankers, homebuilders, and realtors doing useful work, such as trimming trees, shoveling gravel, raking leaves, and filling potholes. There's plenty of real work to be done.
The Republican and Democratic parties have been running the show for a very long time. And those who tired of the same old republican politics elected democrats to make a real difference? Now that's imaginative. It should be obvious by now that different doesn't necessarily mean better.
A few more years of this and we'll all be voting repulican again.
This site sucks! It just lists the state and county and how much the project is getting. It doesn't give exact locations or descriptions of what's involved so how is anyone supposed to know what they are monitoring? These boneheads need to do a much better job of setting up this website.
This may be a great idea. I recently read that signs that are being posted to mark projects being done through the stimulus package are going to cost $3.9 million (avg $800 per sign, 4,840 projects). Is it really necessary to advertise???? It may take the average "Joe or Joanne" who have to watch expenses in their own lives to pick up on something so ridiculous.
The Obama stimulus will not to anything to help the economy, and may end up hurting the economy. Asside from the money to fund it eventually coming out of your pocket, the bonds that the FED has to sell in order to pay for it in the short term lure investors away from investing in other businesses. Without investors investing in these companies, they are forced to lay people off or at the very least put a freeze on wages and hiring new people causing the economy to suffer more.
Obama campaigned furiously against the irresponsible spending habbits of the Bush Administration, and irresponsible they were. But as it turns out, the budget defecit that it took the Bush administration 6 years to create, the Obama Administration has more than doubled in 5 months. We got into this mess by people spending money they didn't have, how can anyone think the way to fix it is by the Federal Government spending money it doesn't have?
Betty…you have the right idea! I also have heard about giving people $1,000,000. I see no downside to this.70% of our economy is consumer driven and if we had to spend a percentage of it,the economy would grow.We love to spend money!The government bailed out the wrong group of people!