Stimulus

Horror stories about “Cash for Clunkers” have consumer advocates worried the fallout will continue for months.

This week Minnesota’s members of Congress went back to work after the July 4 break, except for Sen. Al Franken who was showing up — finally — for the first time. Rep. Keith Ellison put forward a credit reform bill, Rep. Betty McCollum announced her plan to expand the Peace Corps, and Republicans criticized the Democrats’ energy and stimulus policies. Here’s how the week shook down…

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin faced a dilemma. Should she keep the federal stimulus funding her state is due or give it up? One rival for the helm of the Republican Party, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, chose to keep it. Another, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, first was going to give up $700 million, then decided to keep all [...]

False political smears involving Las Vegas? You’d think U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen wouldn’t want to go there after being on the receiving end of a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ad last year that took a tortured, six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon route to link him to a Vegas strip club.
Yet in a new report titled “GOP Stimulus Myths,“ FactCheck.org singles out Paulsen [...]

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak finally got a big public payback for his early backing of Barack Obama as candidate for president when Obama gave the city a shout-out in his address before Congress tonight. Speaking about the beneficial effects of the federal stimulus package, the president said:
There are 57 police officers who are still on [...]

“The DCCC is after me again!” read a fund-raising e-mail Rep. Michele Bachmann sent to supporters Monday afternoon. It’s the first time Bachmann has acknowledged — at least implicitly — the uproar her comments on KTLK two weeks ago caused among progressive, and even a few conservative, blogs and media outlets.
Her statements on the rich, [...]

MSNBC must stand for Minnesotans Speak Nightly By Cable. For the fourth straight night, the TV news channel carried a segment featuring a prominent elected official from the state. Thursday it was again Gov. Tim Pawlenty, this time on “Hardball” representing Republican governors who opposed the federal stimulus bill but will accept the money (a [...]

The federal economic stimulus plan is on a fast track to implementation, but take a moment to stop and smell this irony: In Minnesota, the stimulus will benefit most congressional districts that elected Republicans in November — none of whom voted for the bill. Districts held by Democrats fared the worst in the proportion of the 66,000 jobs the White House predicts the plan will create or save.

So says MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. He spent seven minutes fact-checking Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s recent interview with KTLK’s Chris Baker. Olbermann pulls in Chris Hayes from The Nation to add some analysis to the critique of Minnesota’s most conservative member of Congress.

And on the fourth day they rested? Minnesota’s top two elected officials spent the last three days talking economic stimulus on the airwaves and cable lines of two supposed bastions of liberal media, MSNBC and National Public Radio. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Gov. Tim Pawlenty appeared on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” on successive nights, [...]