At the fair, Cantor told reporters that the stimulus has been an “utter failure.” But as the Washington Post has noted, nearly half of the “30 organizations participating” in Cantor’s event “were recipients of the stimulus.”

ThinkProgress attended the event, which attracted more than 600 people. Victor Zapanta produced a video report on Cantor’s stimulus-fueled job fair. Watch it:

So far, the stimulus has injected over $5 billion into Virginia, creating or saving at least 5,900 jobs. The money has helped local governments avoid budget cuts and layoffs, while spurring private investment by funding infrastructure and other critical projects. Many of the employers at Cantor’s job fair were a clear demonstration of the success of the stimulus:

– The Culpeper County School system will have a total of $4.1 million in stimulus funding to work with for the fiscal year 2010. The school system is hiring 7 people and the stimulus is helping to retain the over 700 people employed by the system. In March the Culpeper School Board, which is not authorized to levy taxes, approved a $70.6 million budget. As the Culpeper Star-Exponent reported, “the school budget includes $2.2 million in recently approved stimulus money.”

– Higher education institutions at the fair were encouraging job-seekers to go back to school. Many of universities, like Grand Canyon University, touts federal TEACH and Pell grants as a way to attend. The stimulus provided $14 million in Pell Grants.

– The Orange County Public Schools received at least $340,000 from the stimulus and is hiring 7 people.

It’s worth noting that among the job fair participants, more than half were from the public sector, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, the CIA, FBI, Army and the FAA –- even though Cantor previously has criticized the stimulus plan for placing too great an emphasis on “preserving jobs in the public sector.” In Virginia alone, the Department of Defense has 83 projects totaling $75.7 million in stimulus money. It’s no wonder Cantor would feature the Culpeper Army recruiting center at his fair, especially since the Army in Virginia has received $61 million in stimulus money.

As the Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen observed, “the job fair at which Cantor trashed the stimulus wouldn’t have been possible were it not for the stimulus.”

– Phoenix: “Donations aren’t meeting demand this year” at St. Mary’s food bank. They’re hoping to receive 26,000 donated turkeys, but by Monday they were only halfway there. “A lot of people who used to give as donors are now coming to us and asking for food,” said St. Mary’s Jerry Brown. “These 3 days are going to be make-or-break whether or not we’re going to be able to feed everybody this year,” Brown added.

– Mississippi: The Mississippi Food Network, which supplies non-profits throughout the state, has decided that it cannot provide turkeys this year “for the first time ever.” It expects to feed nearly double the number of people as it did last year and the cost of turkey has gone up.

– Houston: Organizers are expecting 25,000 needy people to show up at the convention center on Thursday, but they are almost “in the panic mode” as “more than a dozen companies that financially supported the dinner in years past have pulled out, and 60 percent of the remaining donors have scaled back their donations.” As of Saturday, they had fewer than a third of the number of turkeys they need and lacked “the traditional Thanksgiving Day vegetables.”

– Boston: The Greater Boston Food Bank gave out 38,000 turkeys last year. This year, a ticker on their website shows they have collected just 4,200 so far.

Hunger relief agency Feeding America found that 99 percent of food banks reported increases in demand for emergency food aid. But due to weak donations, 78 percent have had to reduce the amount of food provided and 55 percent have had to turn people away.

We’re never going to decrease the deficit until we create jobs, bring revenue into the Treasury, stimulate the economy so we have growth. We have to shed any weakness that anybody may have about not wanting to be confrontational on this subject for fear that we’d be labeled not sensitive to the deficit. … The American people have an anger about the growth of the deficit because they’re not getting anything for it. … So if somebody has the idea that the percentage of GDP of what or national debt is will go up a bit, but they will now — and their neighbors and their children — will have jobs, I think they could absorb that. … If we pull our punch, as they did in the mid-30’s, we shouldn’t be surprised if history repeats itself.

Listen here:

During the Depression, President Roosevelt’s policies brought the unemployment rate down to 14 percent, from 24 percent, by 1937. But then, as Paul Krugman explained, Roosevelt “mistakenly heeded the advice of his own era’s deficit worriers. He sharply reduced government spending, among other things cutting the Works Progress Administration in half, and also raised taxes. The result was a severe recession, and a steep fall in private investment.” The Wonk Room has more.

Later in her chat, Fiorina demonstrated one of the values that she shares with Palin, which is flip-flopping on last fall’s bank bailout. Fiorina told the reporters at the Spectator breakfast that she opposed bailouts:

Fiorina said that she was opposed to bailouts and President Obama’s economic stimulus package. Instead, she said, she supports low taxes and spending, and described the nation’s debt as “unsustainable.”

But in 2008, Fiorina defended the bailout, calling it “necessary”:

– FIORINA: And, finally, if you cannot get a loan for anything that you need to do, keep your small business running — in other words, the bank bailout was, unfortunately, necessary because credit is tight for hardworking Americans and small businesses. And John McCain has very specific proposals to help them get through this. [Fox News, 10/14/08]

– FIORINA: I think there are many people who are uncomfortable with the government bailout. And I think many people, including Senator McCain, supported that a bailout for the very simple reason, and only one reason, and that is credit was being cut off to small businesses, to companies, and to families in America.

So something had to be done to loosen the credit freeze. And, in fact, it appears to be working thus far. While the stock market plummeted today on fears of an economic slowdown or recession, fundamentally, we can see the credit is loosening. That is a bit of good news. [Fox News, 10/22/08]

Palin and Fiorina aren’t the only conservatives whose “values” have changed regarding the bailout. Both Mitt Romney and Glenn Beck supported the financial rescue, but now rail against it.

In order to combat the issue, the Senate Finance Committee has included sections in S.1631, the Customs Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Reauthorization Act of 2009, that would ban the importation of goods made “with convict labor, forced labor, or indentured labor under penal sanctions.” Such a measure by the world’s largest importer would strike a crucial blow against the use of child and slave labor.

Business groups and their lobbyists, however, are not taking kindly to the measures. The D.C.-based business newsletter “Inside U.S. Trade” reports that business groups are “worried” about the effects of such a provision, and they expect to see industry lobbyists and foreign governments profiting from child labor to form an “ad hoc” coalition to oppose it:

Business groups are worried by the potential effects of provisions banning the import of all goods made with convict labor, forced labor, or forced or indentured child labor that were included in a customs bill sponsored by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and Ranking Member Charles Grassley (R-IA)

Business sources say this reporting requirement could cause DHS to more actively seek out imported products made with child labor, forced labor or convict labor. [...]

Sources conceded that this was a sensitive issue because industry groups do not want to be seen as opposing strict measures guarding against human rights abuses. However, one source did expect a push from lobbyists closer to the finance committee mark-up of the bill, and speculated that U.S. industry groups and foreign governments could form ad hoc coalitions to help send a united message.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow covered the story last night. Addressing the business interests opposing the measure directly, she said, “You think that child labor and slave labor and forced convict labor are cheap and therefore cool with you? Go ahead, make your case. I would love to hear it …. you child labor-endorsing, pro-slavery freaks.” Watch it:

(HT: Openleft)

Blankfein dismisses any suggestion that Goldman needed to be bailed out, and, by extension, rejects any notion that the firm is now profiting from public support. Sure, he took $10 billion from Washington’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp). But the bank has since repaid the cash, with healthy interest — 23%. Goldman also benefited from the federal bail-out of the huge US insurance firm AIG. Goldman had bought $20 billion worth of insurance from AIG and received billions of dollars — perhaps as much as $13 billion — when Washington pumped $90 billion into the stricken giant. But Blankfein insists Goldman was “hedged” against any AIG losses, in the best possible way — with cash.

Of course, Goldman’s profits have been driven in large part by its access to cheap federal dollars, and the firm may have gone under were it not for its status as a “too big to fail” firm. But Blankfein told the Times that he is just a banker “doing God’s work.” And evidently God’s work — bonuses and all — cannot be questioned.

CRIST: We’ve had to cut about $7 billion the past two years and we haven’t raised taxes and we’re still in balance. But to be candid, it’s getting harder every day. It’s getting harder every day and we know that it’s important that we pass this stimulus package. It is important that we do so to help education, to help our infrastructure, and to help health care for those who need it the most — the most vulnerable among us.

As The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack notes, Crist explained that he was breaking from his own party to back the stimulus “because Florida needs it frankly.” In May, Crist said he would have made the “pragmatic” decision to vote for the stimulus had he been in the Senate.

But because he is currently engaged in a tight Senate campaign against fervent anti-Obama, anti-stimulus right-wing candidate Marco Rubio, Crist is conveniently forgetting his prior statements. Yesterday on CNN, Crist claimed that he never “endorsed” the stimulus package. “I didn’t endorse it, I didn’t even have a vote on the darn thing,” he said. Watch it:

The irony, of course, is that Crist is distancing himself from the Recovery Act at a time when the bill is beginning to bear fruit. Nearly $7 billion has flowed from the stimulus into the state of Florida, helping to create or save approximately 29,000 jobs. (State officials put the number closer to 47,000.)

The Crist administration has set up a website to specifically tout the benefits of the stimulus program. “I’m grateful for the federal dollars coming to our state for economic recovery,” Crist states in a video posted on that website. Some examples of its impact:

– More than 3,000 teaching jobs were saved and more than 500 coaching and support jobs created in Broward and Palm Beach County schools.

– Construction worker Leon Barron of Ft. Piece, FL, said he was “facing the prospect” of being laid off prior to the stimulus. “We appreciate the stimulus and the president,” said Barron, who works for Range Construction Industries.

– Ranger Construction Industries Vice President Bob Schafer said a stimulus contract allowed him to save the jobs of 25 to 30 people he otherwise would have laid off.

– Pasco County officials say they seriously underestimated the demand for federal stimulus money intended to prevent homelessness, and they are being overwhelmed with calls for help.

Sadly, Crist has taken to deceiving the public, rather than defending a proud record of saving and creating jobs in Florida.

The AP’s Calvin Woodward was not fooled, and today released a piece telling readers to “beware the math” coming from the Republicans and calling it “satisfyingly simple but highly misleading”:

First, the naysayers’ calculations ignore the value of the work produced. Any cost-per-job figure pays not just for the worker, but for material, supplies and that worker’s output — a portion of a road paved, patients treated in a health clinic, goods shipped from a factory floor, railroad tracks laid. Second, critics are counting the total cost of contracts that will fuel work for months or years and dividing that by the number of jobs produced only to date.

As Woodward wrote, “dividing apples by oranges won’t settle” whether or not the stimulus package has been a success.

ASQC is a pro-reform coalition primarily composed of health care interest groups that are in favor of reform — including the American Medical Association and PhRMA.

The New York-based investment bank Goldman Sachs has “set aside $16.7 billion for compensation and benefits in the first nine months of 2009,” which is a 46 percent increase from last year. But according to a Goldman adviser, Wall Street’s record pay is necessary “to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all”:

A Goldman Sachs International adviser defended compensation in the finance industry as his company plans a near-record year for pay, saying the spending will help boost the economy. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” Brian Griffiths, who was a special adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, said yesterday at a panel discussion hosted by St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

At the same time that Wall Street’s pay has skyrocketed, pay cuts in other sectors “are occurring more frequently than at any time since the Great Depression.”

While record bonuses may indeed spur spending on million dollar apartments in New York City, the growth in Wall Street pay — and the growing share of national income that is going to the richest Americans — has not translated into shared prosperity. Consider, “back in 1985, the average annual salary for all workers across the country was actually a bit higher than the average [Wall Street] bonus ($19,000 to $13,970),” but “while the average bonus soared almost 14 times higher (by 2006), the average salary has essentially been stagnant since the mid-1980s.”

Goldman Sachs is able to make its current profits ($3.19 billion last quarter) — and thus pay huge bonuses — because of government programs aimed at reviving the economy, which allow the company to make “big bets using cheap dollars.” As Simon Nixon wrote, the profits “aren’t the due rewards for exceptional skill but gifts from taxpayers.”

Now, the Hickory Daily Record reports that the latest senator to engage in stimulus hypocrisy is Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC). Last week, Burr appeared in Bethlehem, North Carolina, to deliver ARRA funds for a fire station there:

This summer, the department applied for and won a $2,008,515 federal grant that will pay for a new 19,000-square-foot fire station.

On Friday, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr was in Bethlehem to present the grant to the department.

“This is a great thing for this county,” he said. “We’re not accustomed to federal dollars in that magnitude finding their way to North Carolina.”

“This will serve a huge need for us,” said Chief Shannon Lowrance of the Bethlehem Community Volunteer Fire Department. “This is a very fast-growing community. We’re building for the next 50 years.” [...]

Having the plans ready to go helped the department win three American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Assistance to Firefighters Station Construction Grants issued this year from the Federal Emergency Management Agency / Department of Homeland Security, Lowrance said.

Last winter, Burr slammed the stimulus on Fox News, telling one of their anchors, “This isn’t a stimulus package, this is a spending package.” The senator even delivered the official Republican response to President Obama’s weekly address on the stimulus, warning ominously that “the federal government is obligating the American people to a similar fate” as that of a family choking under credit card debt. He ended up voting against the funds he is now happy to tout.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that not a single Georgian GOP legislator who voted against ARRA has turned down stimulus funds for their district. The paper notes one congressman, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), has managed to get away with this hypocrisy by hiding the source of the funds he is doling out:

On July 28, Kingston’s office issued news releases announcing $245,187 combined in funding through the federal Office of Community Oriented Policing Services for the Alma and Jesup police departments. The money will pay the salary and benefits for one entry-level police officer for each department for three years, according to Kingston’s news releases, which did not mention the funding was made possible by the federal stimulus program.

“We’ve seen from experience that local initiatives go a lot further toward solving local problems than policies set in Washington,” Kingston said in his release about the funding for Jesup. “This funding will provide tax relief by saving local tax dollars.”

In February, Kingston said the recovery act is “fundamentally flawed and doesn’t represent the change we deserve or the stimulus we need.” His spokesman said Kingston, who remains opposed to the stimulus, routinely announces all types of federal funding for his district without identifying the legislation that created it.

“We are very cautious not to take credit for it in those releases,” Kingston spokesman Chris Crawford said.

Last week, ThinkProgress noted that Kingston’s colleague Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) — another ardent opponent of the stimulus — handed a giant, stimulus-funded check to the city of Cedartown, Georgia to help fund community development projects.

Gingrey — who remains opposed to the Recovery Act — was forced to release this statement explaining his hypocrisy: “If the Democrats are hellbent on spending an astronomical sum of money, it is my job as a member of Congress to see that the communities I represent receive consideration for the federal funds that the Democrats are spending, whether I agreed with its allocation or not.”

On Fox News Sunday today, the “All-Stars” jumped to Limbaugh’s defense. NPR’s Juan Williams set up a false comparison, claiming that people don’t complain about MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann announcing football games even though he makes “divisive” statements about conservatives. The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol used the NFL player’s union’s opposition to Limbaugh to attack unions in general, saying “thank God most of the workforce isn’t unionized”:

KRISTOL: Thank God most of business isn’t a monopoly. Thank God most of the workforce isn’t unionized. Why could this happen? This could happen because all the NFL players are in one union. Because all the NFL owners are in one club and pressure can be put on them. Thank God there’s more diversity in this country in terms of different industries and different businesses. And people can be controversial and can still find places that are willing to have them.

Watch it:

Kristol’s attack on unionization ignores the fact that unions are good for the American economy since unions help workers secure higher wages and greater benefits. Additionally, the collective bargaining of unions give workers the ability to shape the conditions of their employment, as the NFL players union successfully demonstrated.

According to Dan Lebowitz, executive director of the Center for Sports and Society at Northeastern University, the NFL has 78 percent African-American players. Because the player’s union has leverage, that means the players won’t have to work for someone who said just two years ago, “the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”

Thus far, Fox contributor Juan Williams seems to be the only one acknowledging the truth, saying that Fox consists of “conservative audience-oriented programming. And I don’t think anybody is going to debate that.” The Wonk Room has more.

When asked about the surging markets, House Minority Leader John Boehner grumbled at the news. “[You're] certainly not talking to the American people,” if you’re placing any significance on the 10,000 mark, Boehner contended:

“The American people understand that unemployment is almost at 10 percent, they understand that they might be next so there are concerns about the economy,” Boehner said. [...]

Boehner said the stock market’s rebound is a reaction to the extreme shock from earlier this year, but it says little more than that.

“At the end of the day, the American people aren’t looking at the stock market in terms of putting food on the table,” Boehner said. “They want jobs, and they want them now.”

But Boehner hasn’t always been so dismissive of the stock market’s significance. In search of an attack line on the newly-inaugurated President Obama back in March, the GOP leader thought that the dismal numbers coming from Wall Street represented the public’s dissatisfaction with Obama’s policies:

“The president certainly remains popular, but his policies are becoming less and less popular,” Boehner said, citing the continuing slide in the financial markets. “Certainly the stock market hasn’t acted very well” since Obama’s inauguration.

As the markets continue to falter, Republicans are becoming more confident in their criticisms of the president — some have already taken to using the phrase “the Obama economy.”

But Boehner has also used the markets to tout the leadership of the Republican Party. At a rally just before the GOP got its “thumpin’” in the 2006 mid-term elections, then Majority Leader Boehner argued that his party would best handle the economy reportedly by “point[ing] to a hot stock market.”

HUCKABEE: What has to happen is that Republicans have to start acting like real Republicans. The reason Republicans got defeated in 2006 and 2008 is because people couldn’t tell the difference between them and the Democrats. In fact, the Democrats weren’t spending any more. What has to happen is Republicans who get elected have to show that they actually believe in something and mean it when they get there. You can’t have phony Republicans, people that don’t have any convictions and, these guys who say they’re conservatives but they went out and supported a TARP bill last year? There isn’t anything conservative about that. There were a lot of Republicans who were wringing their hands saying ‘oh, TARP, it’s terrible but we’ve got to do it.’ No you don’t. You don’t ever have to do something that’s stupid. And that was stupid.

Huckabee, a longtime critic of the bailout, has been making this argument for a long time. For instance, in a Nov. 17. 2008 talk at the Hudson Union Society, Huckabee called the rescue “the dumbest thing Congress has done in a long time.” “I was most distressed that people who claim to be hardcore Republicans and conservatives and free market thinkers, were out there wringing their hands and saying, ‘well we have to do this.’”

The latest member of Congress to engage in this hypocrisy is Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA). Earlier this month, Gingrey appeared in the city of Cedartown, Georgia, to present a giant check of $625,000 in stimulus funds to the city commission to help fund the the city’s Streetscape project, which will install new sidewalks and infrastructure:

The money comes from federal stimulus funds and will fund the second phase of Cedartown’s Streetscape project, with new sidewalks, landscaping and other improvements to the downtown area. [...]

Believing that the project qualified for federal stimulus funds as a “shovel-ready” project, Gingrey presented the proposal at the federal level, his spokesperson, Linda Liles, explained. [..]

“These federal dollars will allow us to work both phases together and complete Streetscape by mid-2010,” [City Commissioner Scott] Tillery said. “This will be a big boost for the historic downtown area and for the whole city.

The Cedartown Standard snapped a picture of the congressman presenting stimulus funds which he once decried as the “trillion dollar debt” bill:

Gingrey joins numerous other conservatives in opposing the stimulus while touting its benefits and exploiting its funds. For example, following their votes against the stimulus, Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates to steer $50 million in stimulus funding into a bio-energy project they supported. Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA) boasted about securing funds for streetcar expansions that came from ARRA funds. And perhaps the biggest hypocrite of all, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), toured his state handing out jumbo-sized checks that were funded by the stimulus, despite his pledge that if he was still a member of Congress, he would’ve voted against the Recovery Act.

But now, both Hutchison and Cornyn are pressuring the Obama administration to give Texas $3 billion in stimulus funds. The co-signers on the letter are a bipartisan group of the Texas delegation in the House, including 19 Republicans, all of whom also voted against the funds for which they’re now begging. The letter was drafted and circulated by GOP Rep. Pete Olson. From the letter:

Therefore, to ensure the U.S. maintains its leadership in human space exploration, we respectfully ask that you include in your promised amended budget request for NASA’s Exploration Systems a request to Congress to reallocate the necessary funds for NASA from the funds that we anticipate will remain available from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). As of last month, less than 15 percent of ARRA funds had been expended.

Since the stated purpose of the stimulus package was to secure good jobs and stabilize our economy, there is no better investment that could be made than the addition of up to $3 billion to NASA in FY2010, and the projection of at least that level of increase, as recommended by your Committee, at a 2.4% rate of inflation in the out-year projections included in the initial FY2010 Request.

Cornyn said that while the stimulus funding “that has already been spent [is] clearly not working, it is my hope that the Administration will use a portion of the remaining, authorized, unspent stimulus dollars to safeguard our nation’s space program.”

Texas isn’t the only state showing this stimulus hypocrisy. Some other examples:

– Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) is now criticizing Gov. Tim Kaine (D) for being “slow” to spend the stimulus money allocated for Virginia — even though if Wolf and his Republican colleagues would have had their way, there would be no extra money for the state at all. “We could use that money desperately,” Wolf told reporters. “We’re in a critical situation.”

– Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) also voted against the Recovery Act and has since called it a failure. The stimulus, Grassley told the National Review last week, “is not working.” In June, he had harsher words, saying the stimulus had no positive impact on the economy, “none whatsoever.” But recently, Grassley announced two grants totaling $399,875 to Goodwill Industries of Central Iowa and Goodwill Industries of the Heartland through the Homeless Veterans Reintegration program. “These funds will give a hand up to our veterans who have fought bravely and selflessly for our country,” Grassley said. The funds were authorized by the Recovery Act. (UPDATE: These grants were from FY 2009.)

In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) continues to put his ideology over his state’s needs, refusing to listen to state officials’ requests for high-speed rail funding.

Jindal aides have said the administration is not applying because of concerns about the project’s ongoing costs. They said the state would incur an annual $18 million bill to run the rail system once it became operational. [...]

But U.S. Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao, R-New Orleans, on Friday called on Jindal to apply for the money. Since all U.S. taxpayers will foot the bill for the stimulus spending, Cao said, the state’s elected officials should see that Louisiana gets its fair share. “It’s our duty to obtain as much as we can to rebuild this region,” Cao said at a news conference at his city’s train station.

He acknowledged “a real concern” about the state’s responsibility for paying the annual costs, but said the overall project would be “an $180 million win for the state of Louisiana.”

Earlier on Friday, Cao had still been optimistic that Jindal would file application for the funding, which was all ready to go. “We’re counting on his leadership in this goal to go beyond any party lines and do what’s right for Louisiana,” Cao said.