Who Made the $10,000 Stimulus Sign?
On August 6, President Barack Obama touted his stimulus package at Washington, D.C., sign company Gelberg Signs. According to the Associated Press, Obama noted the fact that Gelberg was taking on new contracts and hiring workers. Somewhat ironically, at the time Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) were pressing forward with an inspector general investigation into the use of “stimulus” funds to purchase signage touting the use of … stimulus funds.
Particularly egregious to Issa and Schock was a sign at Dulles International Airport which reportedly cost $10,000. PJM began investigating the sign issue back in June and began looking into the Dulles sign shortly after the president’s speech at Gelberg.
I spoke to Gelberg Signs to see if they were the company which in fact had made the $10,000 sign.
Gelberg Signs spokeswoman Carrie Fox said Gelberg did not make the Dulles sign and that while the company had indeed added new contracts and begun hiring, the majority of their work was not stimulus related:
We have had some government contracts, but the majority of the growth has come from private contracts.
I then contacted both the Department of Transportation and the Washington Airports Authority, and was directed to Lane Construction. Lane Construction is a national construction company based in Connecticut. It has the contract for the Dulles runway expansion project. I made repeated calls to Lane and left messages asking for the name of the sign contractor which made the $10,000 sign. Those calls have not been returned.
I made a few phone calls shortly after I began investigating this issue. Most states have their own in-house sign shops, and I called several. In no case did they suggest the signs should cost more than $1,350, and most estimates were in the $500 range.
Since Obama’s speech in early August, the inspectors general reports have come back to Issa’s office and been provided to PJM. They clearly show a pattern of either requiring signage or encouraging it in such a way as to make it indistinguishable from a requirement. Issa and Schock continue to push the issue, to the point of asking people to send pictures of stimulus signs in their area to stimulussigns@gmail.com.
The administration needs to come clean on the total cost to taxpayers of signs being used to tell people the government is spending taxpayer money. They also need to come clean on who got the sweetheart deal to make one sign for the price of 20.
Further, the administration needs to back off the language “encouraging” the use of the signs. The American people are waking up to these sorts of abuses, and November is less than two months away.
Let’s hope they see a few of the signs on the way to the polls.
There were 3 stimulus signs in prominent locations on my route to the gym and to work. After awhile, I had become somewhat oblivious to them, but I still noticed them and had acknowledged them recently. I heard about stimulussigns@gmail.com on American Spectator two days ago so I decided to take pictures of the signs and note their locations. And guess what? They all have been taken down. I thought that was very coincidental.
OMG!!!!
For $10,000 I’d have gotten out my paint can and turned out a couple of dozen for our self righteous leader to tout what our money had done for us.
Americans had lots of signs, beginning during the campaign leading to the placement of “what’s his name” in the White House. Over 50% of the voters ignored them. I suspect many of the folks who voted might have trouble even reading the $10,000 sign aloud. May God Help Us.
Mr. Richardson:
“Particularly egregious to Issa and Schock was a sign at Dulles International Airport which reportedly cost $10,000.”
Ahhh, but have you actually seen the sign in question?
It’s a hell of a sign…Michelangelo would be proud to have painted such a sign.
Whole gangs of people drive down to Dulles to stand on the side of the road and gaze up at the sign, basking in the warmth of its message:
http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/signpost.jpg
As a matter of fact, I’m heading down there right now.
We are all Chicagoans now.
At least we don’t have to look at his visage yet everywhere. But like any totalitarian, Dear Leader will have his face everywhere if he retains congress and especially if he runs for re-election in 2012. Much like Saddam Hussein, hmmm.
And those elections will run in exactly the same way as those Saddam ran in Iraq or Kim Jong Il runs in the DPRK.
So he WILL retain power, in fact he will likely expand it.
A sign like this should be posted at the entrance to the Treasury Bulding:
“This debt is in part a product of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama Producers”
Great job, P. Richardson, keep digging, we love this…I really don’t care who is in office.
Who made the sign? Let me guess . . . Blackwater?
What a hysterical little troll seeking attention with another irrelevant little leftie talking point. I swear – Ill bet Betty is about 6 or 7 years old. It just astounds me that someone could be this clueless and still remember to breathe. Lets just review some recent wisdom from little Miss Betty. We will start with this one:
The topic is the use of stimulus money to buy propaganda promoting the stimulus. Miss Boop’s input? She randomly and irrelevantly drops the name of a defense contractor. Wow Betty – you have us there. We should drop the whole propaganda sign issue.
Betty’s answer to the planned Koran burning? Betty is going to have her mom drive her right down there and she is going to toss some bibles in the fire! That will show ‘em Betty!
When lil Miss Boop here REALLY wants to make a point she jumps right in and makes a random little post and gives it increased credibility with her own brand of creative punctuation. Anyone remember this little ditty?
Conservatives overreact to EV.RY.THING!
Wow! That is indeed profound. You win!
You know – I really enjoy engaging the trolls who come around here. But Betty just spouts reused talking points that she herself doesn’t understand. You would think her parents would try to keep her from embarrassing her self.
‘Betty’, under his many posting personnas, has been banned from posting in most of the PJM blogs. His MO is to respond in the oppositional way of an obstinate 4 year old to the point of any PJM article. In order to assign some credibility to his flights of fancy, he has variously claimed:
a) to be muslim,
b) a grandfather,
c) a young man still in college,
d) a middle-aged man with a son in Iraq,
e) a young man who left college because he was too smart for them
f) someone with many GBLT friends,
g) someone who has confronted muggers on several occasions with just his intelligence and courage (no firearm required),
h) someone who has started and sold multiple successful businesses,
i) reference h), someone who has no need to work,
j) reference h), someone who has bought houses for family members
k) he rebuilt a classic car when he was 14,
l) he intimately knows and is visited by prominent NASCAR figures
m) he and his friends spend weekends on a boat with prostitutes (that one was particularly rich)
n) and ex-marine
o) has many liberal uncles and cousins also ex or serving marines
The list goes on and on. What falls out of all this is that this pitiable caricature is young, has almost no life experience, has no real life of any sort in the future and knows it, and is an inveterate liar,.
Your dossier is impressive, Agent Through. Much time and energy spent gathering its fictions. And so neatly bound. Kinkos? With a bagel shop next door? But I digest. The dopplegang you describe is not I. No one being could be accomplished at that level in so many things. Well, Todd Palin maybe. Or Tucker Carlson. No, that amalgam of manhood you created in some fugue state, some OCDgasm, the existence of which doesn’t bode well for your assertions.
What I’m trying to say here, Agent Through, is that your fired. Whatever value you offered along the way is appreciated. And, of course, full severance. I also took the liberty of resubmitting your psychographic scan package for a CTA, career transition analysis. It’s part of your benefits plan, which by the way ends today. Sorry. Now, the results of that scan, they’re good. Very good. It seems you rated a “whole self candidate” for two jobs. And with a brain like yours, I’m sure you could land either one.
The first is Friction Arrestor on the Tilt-A-Whirl on Coney Island. That comes with a lifetime bus pass. Now the second job, I saved the best for last. Are you ready? You’re gonna be very impressed. You ready? Wait, I have to go make a call . . . Nah! Just messing with you, man! The second job is Livestock Services Tech. It’s not a field job unfortunately. You’ll be making and testing calf birthing mitts.
Now hold on, hold on I know you want to thank me. No need. Just leave your gun on the table and your keys in the bowl.
There’s a poster who actually does have cut and pastes of your various phantasmagorical claims made under all your conflicting personal histories. Perhaps he’ll chime in.
PJM readers are much, much smarter than you. The same old shtick played out under different names is immediately recognizable. You can’t mask it while remaining the utterly obtuse jack&$$ that you are and that isn’t going to change. I’d think you’d have realized that by now.
But, HEY, someone payed a little attention to you. Little or none of that in your life so you’ll take what you can get, even if it is derisive laughter.
Suffice to say at this point, is that you are an inveterate liar and an ankle biting troll and your IP is banned by many PJM author blogs as a result. You’re limited too an ever decreasing numbers of PJM blogs. Calling yourself a new name doesn’t help with that does it?
“We have had some government contracts, but the majority of the growth has come from private contracts.”
Doesn’t necessarily mean that they didn’t make the signs; in general, the government doesn’t buy pieces of these larger projects directly, the contractor does. You asked the wrong question. The right question is, how many signs are being made for stimulus advertisement?
I wouldn’t trust Gelberg in anything they say but that comes from personal experience with them. I find it strange that while many area sign companies are not hiring any one new or letting employees go yet the company that Obama visited is expanding and hiring. Most sign companies don’t get work directly from the feds indeed. It is contracted out to them. When I make ADA compliant signs for schools the money doesn’t come from the schools, or any government sector. It always comes from a general contracting company.
You may well be right where Gelberg’s trustworthiness is concerned Phranc, however I will say that all the information I have been able to gather indicates they are not the ones who made that sign.
If you have information to the contrary please let me know.
Regardless, someone made a killing on that sign, and it would seem no one wants to own up — perhaps fearing fraud charges, as it is hard to comprehend any way in which that sign could legitimately cost $10,000.
Patrick
I don’t think they made that sign but I also don’t think they are expanding because of non-stim money.
I’ve been checking and no one knows who made that sign that I’ve talked to yet. Which is really odd.
The most visible sign of the stimulus’ package’s impact is the glut of signs around the country announcing the stimulus package’s impact.
Welcome to the Potemkin Economy.
Giant one on SR-99 Northbound west of Starbucks headquarters in Seattle.
There are about a dozen on my way to work (Detroit Metro area), announcing the replacement of perfectly good curbs with even better double-plus-good curbs.
My favorite part is the subtle expression of attitude in the language “Putting Americans to Work”, not “Getting America back to Work” or “Providing Jobs to Americans” almost as if they were forcing us to work (the work-camps are scheduled for a later opening I guess), or “putting the dog out” (oops, did I make a dog reference?). There is a sense (scent) of forcedness to it.
They should read something like; “Funds provided by your now tax-enslaved grandchildren” or “Putting America in Debt”.
I wonder how many unemployed CAD designers and Finance majors are working on these job-sites. From what I have overheard while eating lunch next to them at the local greasy-spoons the workers (who are doing a very good job BTW) seem to speak Spanish exclusively.
LOl…y’know, I ALWAYS judge a town by the condition of it’s curbstones…
I’m glad Detroit is getting new ones, that’s just what the old town needed, huh?
DEAR PATRICK
You may be the editor of a small town newspaper in Kansas, but the number of small papers runs in the thousands and for a guy like you to have his email address so difficult to find speaks a lot about a guy like you. If you really want to know why ELF and ALF exist, just send me you email address and i will be happy to send you all of the reasons. Just to open a big mouth without allowing anyone to retort is not just unfair, but absolutely dumb. Why would anyone publish in Pajamas if they didn’t want to get an answer. Forget small town newspaper. You are a small man and a stupid one at that.
*chuckles*
Manny, if you’d like to speak to me, please feel free to email the editors here at PJM and ask them to pass on your address, I’ll be happy to respond.
Not sure why you have to bring my height into it but hey, I’ve been short all my life and skinny as well. So I guess I am a small man.
As for not allowing anyone to retort, well, you just did — on the wrong article. This one is about stimulus signs. The one about the ALF is back a couple weeks.
Oh, by the way? Your buddy Dr. Vlasak of the North American Animal Liberation Press Office has my email. You could ask him for it as well.
As for my intelligence, well, I, at least, am capable of avoiding redundancy in a sentence.
Patrick
One of the essential qualities of a civilized society is spending money to tell ourselves that we are, indeed, spending our money on stuff. How else would we know? Man you people are rubes.
You know the sorry part of this is that the Obama regime and a whole bunch of other people – not limited to just his apologists and fans – believe that any government spending is good spending. They think that they wrestled that $10,000 out of some rich person’s bank account and got it into circulation where it will reverberate on and on to the butcher the baker and the candlestick maker. It doesn’t matter to them if no one wants or needs that sign or if it was contracted out to a crony or a supporter. This – based in Keynesian economics – is one of the most insidiously false and harmful economic “theories” that there is.
That money would be put to much better use much more permanently by the free choices of the market place. And since our collective standard of living is determined by the total “useful” goods and services that we produce, you can say that these signs were a net detractor. The more such “stimulus” we have the worse off we will be in the long run.
And borrowing to pay for these signs makes it worse because – uh oh – we have to pay it back. And with interest. Mark Steyn recently pointed out that given the path we are on, in the not too distant future the annual debt interest that we pay to China will be greater than their total annual military budget. So in effect, the American taxpayer will be paying 100% of the cost of the Chinese Army, Navy and Air Force. We then had better start making our own signs to lay on our roof tops – featuring large arrows that say “To Washington DC”.
Good one. Allow me to paraphrase . . . “I’m smarter than you aaaarrre. I’m smarter than you aaaarrre.”
Well Manny, or Betty or whatever your name is, I’m certainly smart enough not to complain about not being allowed to retort, while retorting about the wrong piece.
Never claimed to be a genius, just smarter than your average liberal.
Patrick
Thank God the NAACP, ACORN, The Southern Poverty Law Center, NPR, ACLU, Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett, any university professors, the White House Coucil on Enviromental Quality, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, Teachers Unions, any of the Pravda America press (CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC, CBS…..), SEIU, Rosie ODonnell, the Weathermen, the Earth Liberation Front, the Black Panthers, Newsvine, Mexican President Calderon, Maxine Waters, Joy Behar, La Raza, Hugo Chavez, Henry Waxman, any California, New York, or Chicago politicians, Bill Press, Barney Frank, Alan Grayson, anyone from Hollywierd, and God help us – Bill Mayer are not involved in designing, manufacturing, or distributing these high-tech objects that are employing -what? thousands of Americans?
We have a overpass intersection that is being constructed outside Towson, MD and the work is being done by union workers. The signs are the only thing moving most days and that is only if there is a stiff wind.
I don’t know how union contractors get paid but in this case it appears to be by the month. More months on the job before completion, more money paid. It must be the Chicago style of construction. Most of the workers are over sixty and only appear to work when the polls are open.
Ha Ha! My husband is a teamster. I will use those lines the next time he talks about how hard they work! I have some stories to tell about the great union. They at one time were a great help to workers. Now they are just a blood sucking, money grubbing lying bunch of power grabbing thugs….