Sunday, January 31, 2010

stimulus bill allocation of resources

President Obama’s stimulus project has endured a great deal of controversy since the bill was pushed through congress eleven months ago. One main purpose of the bill was to maintain and establish jobs to counteract America’s high unemployment rate. Just minutes after the bill was signed, the allocated funds to Missouri went into use. In the rural town of Tuscumbia, just three hours from Missouri’s biggest city, St. Louis, a $9 million bridge over the Osage River has been under construction. State and federal officials estimated that the bridge would not only create thirty new jobs, but the project would indirectly benefit another 220 jobs. While this all seems reasonable and beneficial, Missouri officials are calling the rural project an insult. Unfortunately, these state officials see more social gain coming from urban projects because a highly populated area could result in increased indirect assistance to workers in many industries. Since this was the first project to break ground under the new stimulus bill, the job has received national media coverage from day one in March 2009. Resentment toward where the project should have been located has settled, which now leads to the question of just how many jobs have been saved. The Missouri Recovery government, through time sheets, has determined that actually 24.69 jobs have been saved. This may be a misleading number due to the number of jobs created does not account for the number of jobs that have merely been transferred from another project. A plus is that at least people are able to keep working and stay of the unemployment line. Unfortunately, not everyone is benefiting from the stimulus job. The local restaurant near the bridge has seen little economic boost. Hopefully, when the bridge is completed in the summer a financial boost will occur on the small business. Small towns too need any economic activity occurring to battle through the poor economy. The University of Missouri agricultural economist said, “…the 240 spinoff jobs estimated at Tuscumbia are "nowhere near" the jobs that would have been indirectly created, even in a busy area like St. Louis” (Fitzpatrick 2010). While the new bridge was unquestionably necessary, the location and allocation of funds remains skeptical. I question whether the state or the national government should be able to decide how to use the stimulus bill most effectively.

Works Cited

Fitzpatrick, David. "First stimulus project nears completion, job questions remain." The Stimulus Package. CNN Politics. 29 Jan. 2010. Web. 31 Jan. 2010. .

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

China overtakes US as worlds biggest C02 emitter

According to the article on CULearn ,"The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency found, China's recorded emissions for 2006 are beyond those from the US already. It says China produced 6,200m tonnes of CO2 last year, compared with 5,800m tonnes from the US." I believe that CO2 emissions and the green efforts are a good thing, and that pollution is ruining our beautiful world. I also think that China is doing a good job at combatting there large pollution problems. They have built the largest solar plants in the world and have begun to take over with the largest GREEN movement. I feel that It is the rest of the world that is being somewhat hypocritical. The efforts of globalization have moved companies and industries into Chinas market. We have taken large factories and just thrown them into China for cheap labor and now China is the leader of pollution. I think the problem of China begins on our own soil, and they should not be blamed completely for there large pollution numb