This is where the stimulus money actually is being spent… on new curbs and sidewalks here in Chicago. In the modern version of “ditch digging” these are the transformational projects that seem to have been chosen. On virtually every street in my neighborhood they are breaking up the sidewalks and installing ramps or fixing curbs in the corner. And I was told that they were going to use these funds to fix the US transmission grid for electricity, but apparently that’s “too hard”.
Note also the mandatory “Green” label on the side of the cement mixer. Right…
Cross posted at LITGM
My local bike path, in disrepair for years, has just been patched and paved. I was wondering if it was stimulus money. Also, the county is suddenly spending $7 million to remove some “non-native” trees from the local beach. There’s all kinds of activity in the public sector.
Yeah, it’s bad enough we are spending that kind of dough, but they don’t even pick the good kind of projects.
There’s this British show, Absolutely Fabulous, from the 90s and early 200s, where the main character is an absolute scream. She’s in fashion, promotes things, is vain and vapid. While she promoting these atrocious plastic glasses called ‘Pop Specs” and explaining the things to her daugher, she mentions that they are GREEN.
Her daughter, suspicious, says, well how?
“Well, they ain’t made of wood, that’s how.” (the glasses are plastic)
Somehow, that scene always makes me think of the way bureaucrats look at greening. A Sign you put on the side of a truck to show that, hey, we get it!
Hilarious and sad.
Carl, I was just talking to my former colleagues; they said there is still no new projects coming in (architectural office specializing in Justice Design), since municipalities got their budgets slashed. With one exception: they’ve got a Courthouse renovation project in Honolulu. They call it “Obama legacy”.
Well, these ARE a waste of money, but I’m afraid that (1) this work is largely coming out of local taxpayer pockets rather than national taxpayers, and (2) A $140 million reconstruction program is required as part of a legal settlement with the disability lobby because the old handicap-friendly curb cuts were ever-so-slightly too steep.
Read up here:
http://chicago.straightdope.com/sdc20090917.php
Chicago, being one of the most handicap-friendly big cities in the country if not the planet… most places in the US barely even have any sidewalks or bus transit networks, let alone wide ones with curb cuts and crosswalks… and yet we get stuck with this bill. No good deed goes unpunished, eh?
Well, I’m a Construction Engineer with my State DOT. At the begining of the summer we had a bunch of Stimulus Money projects in the pipeline but that was before all the feminist groups started whining that not enough money was going towards them. So most of those project got cut and from what I have seen that money has not actualy gone anywhere yet, odd are they will start spending it sometime around the 2010 elections. Not that I’m implying they will be trying to influence the vote or anything….