Oh Boy that’s $1.8 million well spent.

Cartoon; By Ramirez.

Texas has received millions of federal dollars from the economic stimulus package to help poor people cut their energy bills, by weatherization of their homes. The idea is to make their homes more energy efficient by insulating them, sealing areas where air-flow carries away heat and so on.

Out of $163 million allocated for the purpose four months ago around 1.8 million has so far been spent. There has been some criticism of the slow start but the authorities say they're trying to ensure they do it carefully enough to avoid wasting money and prevent fraud. This seems a laudable enough aim and some care is needed to ensure that the Feds get the best bang possible for their, oops I mean your bucks. Careful management will also ensure that more people are employed.

So lets look at the results so far. Employment has definitely increased, the state reported to the federal government that three jobs had been created – all of them state positions. State officials said they plan to track how federal stimulus funds for weatherization are spent, by doubling their energy assistance section from 15 to 30 employees, using federal dollars for payroll costs. So hell that’s 18 more people put to work or will be.

Well lets look a bit further and see just what sort of impressive results have been achieved out there where the rubber hits the road, how many homes have been weatherized for an outlay of $1.8 mil. Big drum roll here, and the number is, oh hell why keep you all in suspense, the figure is Seven. So that’s around $257,000 each which would appear to me, to be about what would be needed to ‘weatherize’ them from bare dirt up to 3 bedroom brick.

That’s probably the reason why Americans don’t get the government to build their cars for them. Oh right, I forgot about that.