My Stint As An Obama Apologist

Mickey Kaus and Andrew Malcolm have fun with Obama's "emergency" weatherization program meant to create jobs now.  Over to Mickey:

Unions vs. stimulation: The home "weatherization" jobs in the stimulus bill were subjected to Davis-Bacon wage regulations--a favorite of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department--under which federal Labor Department officials establish "prevailing wage" rates that must be paid. Why do unions like this system? Because the "prevailing wages" are determined in a way that guarantees they are usually more than the actual market wage, sometimes by large margins.  All that finagling takes a certain amount of bureaucracy, however--and time. ABC's Jonathan Karl: 

According to the GAO report, the Department of Labor spent most of last year trying to determine the prevailing wage is for weatherization work, a determination that had to be made for each of the more than 3,000 counties in the United States. [E.A.]

As a result, the Department of Energy apparently weatherized only 22,000 homes under the program. Another pre-existing program, which doesn't have to comply with Davis-Bacon, appears to have weatherized about 100,000 homes, if my math is right.

That's OK. It's not as if speed was important last year in terms of putting people to work. ... Oh wait, it was. [Insert now-embarrassing Obama quote here]

Well, yes, but - into the valley of pork rode the six hundred, or at least, President Bush.  George Bush fought the good fight over Davis-Bacon in order to hasten reconstruction after Katrina in the fall of 2005, back when men were men and Republicans still controlled the Congress.  Bush suspended Davis-Bacon on Sept. 9 but caved in to Democratic pressure and a mini-revolt by Republican moderates and reversed course in late October.

If Bush couldn't win this fight in 2005, should anyone have expected Obama to undertake this scuffle in 2009?

Now, the "prevailing wage" calculation for weatherization seems to have taken forever, which apparently was not the case for the Katrina area, and I don't know why that is. Is the Department of Labor having trouble figuring a prevailing wage for construction type projects when no one is hiring and everyone is laying off construction workers?  Or is weatherization a skill so subtle that other seemingly comparable wages are not helpful?  And let's note that per the GAO report (see below) the Davis-Bacon requirement was a new imposition by Team Obama, which gives it different flavor than the suspension by Bush.

Since Democrats forgot to repeal the law of Unintended Consequences when Obama was inaugurated, I can't say that a Dept of Labor meltdown over calculating prevailing wages strikes me as an utter surprise.  But I don't think it is realistic to have expected Obama to lead a charge up Davis-Bacon Hill after Bush was so soundly routed there only a few years earlier.

All that said, a day may come when Obama supporters tire of offering the "Bush did it too" defense.  But this is not that day!

FROM THE GAO:

For example, the Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program became subject to the Davis-Bacon requirements for the first time after having been previously exempt from those requirements. Thus, the Department of Labor had to determine the prevailing wages for weatherization workers in each county in the United States, a task it completed on September 3, 2009. Seven out of 16 states and the District of Columbia that GAO has been reviewing said that they had waited to begin weatherizing homes until the Department of Labor had determined county-by-county prevailing wage rates for their state. States used only a small percentage of their available funds in 2009, mostly because state and local agencies needed time to develop the infrastructures required for managing the significant increase in weatherization funding and for ensuring compliance with Recovery Act requirements, including Davis-Bacon requirements. As of December 31, 2009, according to data available to the Department of Energy, about 9,100 homes had been weatherized out of a planned 593,000.

Comments

[Janet]

Speaking of Obama apologists LUN is the One's minions preparing the group talking points.

[anduril]

I was reading Kaus earlier today, and it was the weirdest experience--for a moment I thought I was reading a Rush Limbaugh monologue and had to scroll back up to the top to be sure of where I was. I was going to link it here but then got distracted trying to figure out what my Fatah is.

[Buford Gooch]

Well, Anduril, your Fatah isn't a hole in the ground, nor your elbow. (I've heard you have trouble telling certain things apart.)

[matt]

$50,000+/house weatherized. We're in the best of hands....

[RSweeney]

Let's just stuff $100 bills under the window sashes for draft control and call it even.

[bgates]

If Bush couldn't win this fight in 2005, should anyone have expected Obama to undertake this scuffle in 2009?

Surely Teh One is not limited to what a mortal President could accomplish. This sounds like it would have been a nice opportunity to triangulate against Congress if he had realized the value of doing so in 2009. Get a little evidence behind the "pragmatic not partisan" schtick; point out how helpful it would have been if Evil Bush had stood up to the moneyed interests (yes, in the unions; don't stop hypothetical Obama, he's rolling) and done the same after Katrina.

On the question of why the wage calculation took longer now than then, Katrina was pretty much confined to LA, MS, and AL, yes? As a national program, the weatherization would apply to 54 more states than that.

[Army of Davids]

The Marxist rot.....House of Kennedy 1962

SEIU,Change to Win, NEA, AFL-CIO, AFSCME,

Take down the public sector (Soviet) unions and the country will thrive again.

[Rick Ballard]

Definitely a B+ effort. I wonder how the arm wrestling between the Painters and Allied Trades (caulkers and glaziers), Insulation Workers and Laborers worked out. Knowing Team BOzo, I'd bet that a composite crew of three is going to be necessary for every job (with strict adherence to restrictions on who does what, of course).

Matt,

Wanna bet that $50K will be on the low side to "weatherize" tear downs in Detroit that can be purchased for $5K?

[Dave (in MA)]

I love how The Globe http://www.boston.com/news/local/gallery/02_15_10_bishop?pg=13chose a picture that just happened to include a Republican Governor to accompany its page on how Norfolk County DA Bill Delahunt whitewashed Amy Bishop's 1986 fratricide, when the Governor at the time of the murder was Mike Dukakis (D-Tank) of Willie Horton fame.

[Janet]

James Lewis has a good article at Am. Thinker on racial socialism.LUN
Related -
A front page article today in the WaPo is..."1.25 billion settlement reached with black farmers" and the sub-head "Congress must approve agreement resolving discrimination charges"

Congress must? I'm also reminded of Barney Frank's ex-boyfriend Herb Moses at Fannie Mae - "Moses was the assistant director for product initiatives at Fannie Mae and had been at the forefront of relaxing lending restrictions at the company for rural customers, according to the Feb. 23, 1998, issue of National Mortgage News (NMN)."

[Janet]

LUN is the quoted article about Herb Moses.

[Jeff]

since O-6bama invoked the Bacon Act in the Stimulus he never had to change it, he just didn't have to invite it to the party.

[Pagar]

Janet, That's a great LUN on Moses. I wonder if it would ever be possible to figure out how much money having Barney Frank in our government has cost this nation.

[Janet]

Yeah Pagar...the fact that Barney Frank and the whole Fannie/Freddie feeding trough have never been held to account tells me that fixing corruption is a joke.
Herb Moses worked at USDA before moving over to Fannie. He thought up "creative" loans for rural properties. Like the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) rot.

[clarice]

Speaking of nitwits, I can never get enough of the story of grizzly man and Fontova tells it with such a deft touch LUN

[Janet]

LUN is the WaPo story on settlement with black farmers.

I apologize for my scatterbrain posts...the Lewis article on Libs using race,gender,sex envy to redistribute wealth...then the WaPo article on a discrimination settlement for black farmers....then Herb Moses inventing "creative" loans for rural areas.

When I first type it, it all makes sense.

I have to wonder what the definition of "farm" is. In Texas lots of people with a few acres in the country would allow a neighbor to graze his cattle on your property so you could get the Agriculture exemption on taxes. You weren't really a farmer, but on the tax rolls your property was a farm.

[Janet]

So the Drudge headline is 1.5 billion for housing help...
and the WaPo article is 1.25 billion for a settlement with black farmers...

This spending cannot go on. Like hit and run said awhile back, "I don't know about you, but they've run out of my money."

My Grandfather lost valuable land in the Madison, Wisconsin area during the great depression....who do I see about getting a reimbursement?

[Captain Hate]

Surely Teh One is not limited to what a mortal President could accomplish. This sounds like it would have been a nice opportunity to triangulate against Congress if he had realized the value of doing so in 2009.

LUN for a good prescription on how the Commiecrats could stave off a disaster. Anybody believe they'd do it? Anybody?

[Captain Hate]

Sorry the link disappeared

[Janet]

Captain Hate - I will never vote for a Democrat again in my life. never. I am afraid of their base...so any vote for a Democrat, even if they are kinda okay, will give their base power.

[MayBee]

I can never get enough of the story of grizzly man

You are so in my head.

[Pagar]

Janet, that is the way I see it. If the candidate declares them self as a Democrat than the leaders of the Democrats are going to be empowered by his support. If the race is for a House seat and you don't like Barney Franks and Pelosi, than don't vote for someone who is going to support them.

[clarice]

That's a mighty fine head to be in, MayBee!

[Captain Hate]

Janet, I won't vote for one unless there's a complete purging of all the idiots from their ranks. I kept waiting for it to happen after Weird Al lost, but it didn't. Then I thought for sure when Reporting for Doody lost by a majority of the popular vote that they'd do it, but again it didn't happen. Now it looks like it's started to happen under the idiocy of Il Douche but unless they get rid of the likes of Schmucky Sleaze, Bawney, Durbin (D-ILL), Carl "Do these glasses make me look dorky?" Levin, the Chimney Sweep, Kucinich, the Baltimore Mafia skeezer and a few others whose names mercifully escape me now, I'm not voting for any Donkeycrat.

[Elliott]

Happy possible birthday, MayBee!

[MayBee]

Oh, is it that time of the month?

[Bill Peschel]

"Now, the "prevailing wage" calculation for weatherization seems to have taken forever, which apparently was not the case for the Katrina area, and I don't know why that is."

If you read the story again, you'll realize that the bureaucrats are trying to determine the prevailing wage for all 6,000 counties in the U.S., versus the (much smaller) area hit by Katrina. That's why.

[MayBee]

I would love to know how they calculate the "prevailing wage" in illegal immigrant-laden LA.

[clarice]

Hi, Elliott! MayBee if this is your birthday, Cheers!

[MayBee]

It's almost always my birthday, clarice. You know that by now. ;-)

[clarice]

It's almost always NOT my birthday. What kind of coincidence is that? ;-)

[MayBee]

You got the brains, and I got the birthdays.

[Elliott]

Hello, Clarice. I put the chance that it is MayBee's birthday at 3.5%. Since the ISI refuses to disclose actionable intelligence on the matter, it would be irresponsible to limit our celebrations to a mere day.

[clarice]

Too too generous MayBee. And Elliott "it would be irresponsible to linit our celebrations to a mere day."

*tossing confetti and searching for the flutes*