This is freaking awesome. As part of the stimulus plan, the Savannah River Sites decided to knock off one of their massive cooling towers which was no longer in use and would cost money to secure every year otherwise. It’s pretty awesome to watch really freaking thick concrete fall to the ground like this, in a Roland Emmerich/Michael Bay way.
I don’t want to beat up on my Republican colleagues, but I think it’s kind of politics rather than thinking about only one thing, and this is, how do we support the president? How do we support him and do everything we can in order to stimulate the economy?
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger • Discussing the stimulus plan and Republicans’ reaction to it. The comments, which he made on “This Week” yesterday, also agreed with Obama on GOP members’ handling of the stimulus plan. “I find it interesting that you have a lot of the Republicans running around and pushing back on the stimulus money and saying this doesn’t create any new jobs,” he notes, while noting they’re the ones handing out the checks. “It doesn’t match up.” He says they should support the president. source
The program has had its flaws. But the attention they have received is wildly disproportionate to their importance. To hark back to another big government program, it’s almost as if the lasting image of the lunar space program was Apollo 6, an unmanned 1968 mission that had engine problems, and not Apollo 11, the moon landing.
New York Times journalist David Leonhardt • In an analysis piece describing why the stimulus program actually worked. The numbers are somewhat inconsistent, but he points out in his article that yes, the stimulus has actually improved the job picture. People disagree on the details and Republicans will use it as a good excuse to trash Obama, but the numbers, Leonhardt argues, favor Obama. One point worth noting: In most worldwide financial crises this century, it generally takes five years for jobs to bounce back to normal numbers. Obama’s already doing better than that, Leonhardt says. source