Every Obama Promise Has A Shelf Life: The Shovel Ready Edition

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Every Obama Promise Has A Shelf Life: The Shovel Ready Edition

Written By : John Hawkins

The image is positively retro.

Picture a sweaty brow, rolled-up sleeves, knotty forearms, calloused hands. Picture virgin land, just waiting to be transformed.

Shovel-ready land.

This is America on the eve of the Obama era.

Shovel-ready.

He keeps telling us so. On “Meet the Press,” fill-in host Tom Brokaw wants to know how quickly Barack Obama can create jobs, and the president-elect promises to move fast. After all, he says, he’s met with a bunch of governors “and all of them have projects that are shovel-ready.”

Announcing his energy team, Obama beams about “shovel-ready projects all across the country.” Unveiling his choice for education secretary, Obama plugs his plans “to start helping states and local governments with shovel-ready projects.” — Manuel Roig-Franzia, January 8, 2009 in the Washington Post

There’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects. — Barack Obama, Oct 13, 2010 in the New York Times

Good Ol Boy

In the interest of honesty, I’ll ask: Was that recent quote taken out of context?
If not… my response is: Un-frickin-believable!

Anonymous

It’s a partial quote, but is still essentially a mea culpa about his regrets over the Porkulus bill.

It’s just an illustration of how utterly misguided and out of touch he is. He and the Democrats seemed to think that there were construction projects all over the country that were designed and ready to go but were languishing for lack of cash. He never stopped to think that cities and states actually *plan* their projects based on work schedules and cash flow instead of the hopes of messianic bags of money falling from the sky.

He never began to think that building something like a major highway interchange or bridge can take years to properly study and design. There’s only so many potholes that can be filled, but he though he would prance around leaving suitcases of cash on the desks of county commissioners and that they would immediately run out the door and hire scores of construction workers.

It’s all a plain illustration of the general executive ignorance and nativity of Obama, Biden, Reid, Pelosi, and the rest of the Dems. They really are just making sh*t up as they go along, and every blunder they make costs us billions of dollars. It has to stop.

Good Ol Boy

Ah… it makes perfect sense now. Thanks for the explanation, sir, you’re an excellent writer.

http://conservativebootcamp.com Martin Hale

GOB – here’s a paragraph from an article posted at the NYT Blog section which teases an extensive interview with Mr. Obama coming out in the New York Times Magazine:

In the magazine article, Mr. Obama reflects on his presidency, admitting that he let himself look too much like “the same old tax-and-spend Democrat,” realized too late that “there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects” and perhaps should have “let the Republicans insist on the tax cuts” in the stimulus.

Methinks that to read the whole interview, you’ll have to flash some cash (or the digital equivalent) to slide behind the NYT paywall.

That blog article is here:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/president-obama-looks-forward-and-back/

Good Ol Boy

Thank you, Mr. Hale.

StanW

So what else has Obama lied about?

Come on Liberals. You could not even mention George Bush’s name without saying he had lied about something.

So, what say you NOW?

Don_cos

So what else has Obama lied about?

Come on now Stan. Nobody has the time available to answer that.

http://conservativebootcamp.com Martin Hale

I recall clearly that a number of people (at this site and others) made the point during the run-up to the Porkulus vote that “shovel-ready” was antithetical to standard government operating procedure. They said that government process grinds slowly and has well-defined steps which must be accomplished. Environmental impact studies must be conducted, bids must be solicited, due diligence on the bidders performed, contracts awarded and labour forces assembled – all of which take time, and, since they take time, negated any likelihood of projects being truly “shovel-ready”. Unless of course you’re talking about shoveling the copious BS spewed by politicians. Now a year and change down the page and even Mr. Obama is willing to admit that.

Good on him.

It doesn’t change my mind about his competence in the least, but at least he’s admitting it.

Anonymous

Well gee. Obama rounds up a bunch of governors and says “hey, if you have projects ready to go, I’ve got billions of dollars to hand out!”

There were probably governors redesigning suspension bridges on cocktail napkins and showing them to Obama as examples of shovel-ready projects.

Shame on the governors, who undoubtedly lied, shame on Obama for believing them with no verification, and shame on Congress for funding the whole farce. It would be funny if it hadn’t led to borrowing $2500 in the name of every US citizen to fund it.
Anonymous

Bribes have to be secured, polls must be taken among key voter groups, everyone from the top to bottom has to receive their cut of the loot, etc.
Anonymous

Bribes have to be secured, polls must be taken among key voter groups, everyone from the top to bottom has to receive their cut of the loot, etc.

Anonymous

I’m glad he caught on.

I hope he kept the receipt for all that shovel-ready stimulus spending, sure would be a shame if we couldn’t get our money back.
http://www.wordaroundthenet.com Christopher Taylor

Frankly I’m surprised the Obama administration would even admit they might have possibly been wrong.
Anonymous

Well, I guess it’s good that he’s finally acknowledging it.

That said, I might take that acknowledgement a little more seriously if he wasn’t acknowledging that at the same time he’s pushing for another $50 billion for “infrastructure repair”. I’m starting to wonder if the addiction model might not be the best paradigm to view Mr. Obama’s attitude toward government spending.
gfchicago

I think Obama is playing a very cynical political game, we’ll tell the unwashed masses what they want to hear just 3 weeks before the mid-terms in order for the dems not to get slaughtered to badly.

I rather think that it will back fire on him and the rest of the dems. It’s a little late to come out with something like this. He should have done something like this 6 months ago and quit asking for more excessively large spending bills.

It’s too little, too late.

Anonymous

THE MINERS AND YOUR GUT
When you saw all the rescue success the past day in Chile did you feel you missed that national pride, that positiveness, that simple leadership?
You can bet that millions of Americans had a small sense of jealousy as that nation prevailed. Some rescued even had the nerve to mention God or praying and such outlandish extreme proclamations frowned upon so often in liberal America. How did that hit your gut?
Mostly you will not hear that American companies played a huge tech role and even the rescue hole was by some guy from Colorado.
The fact you will hear little praise or pride about that aspect also hits your gut…or should.
http://conservablogs.com/theconservativecrawfish
Anonymous

THE MINERS AND YOUR GUT
When you saw all the rescue success the past day in Chile did you feel you missed that national pride, that positiveness, that simple leadership?
You can bet that millions of Americans had a small sense of jealousy as that nation prevailed. Some rescued even had the nerve to mention God or praying and such outlandish extreme proclamations frowned upon so often in liberal America. How did that hit your gut?
Mostly you will not hear that American companies played a huge tech role and even the rescue hole was by some guy from Colorado.
The fact you will hear little praise or pride about that aspect also hits your gut…or should.
http://conservablogs.com/theconservativecrawfish

gfchicago

When you saw all the rescue success the past day in Chile did you feel you missed that national pride, that positiveness, that simple leadership?

Absolutely I miss the national pride, the positiveness, that simple leadership.

I’m really proud of those U.S. corporations going down there and helping out and getting those guys out before Christmas. I believe I heard a report when this first happened that they would not be able to get the miners out until at least December.

The fact you will hear little praise or pride about that aspect also hits your gut…or should.

Yes in fact it does, it really hurts me to see this country sink in to an abyss because of the leftard policies. Obamamau has made us the laughing stock of the world.

The leftist bitched and moaned for years the world didn’t love us, that they hated us, that might very well be true, however they respected us and didn’t laugh.

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