THE SHOVELS ARE READY AND THE MANURE NEEDS SPREADING:

Shovel Ready (John P. Gregg, 8/06/09, Valley News)

There's good news for all those artists and arts groups who seem to spend a good deal of time writing grant applications and otherwise soliciting modern-day Medici, which increasingly seems to include the ordinary taxpayer.

Republican Gov. Jim Douglas yesterday announced that 42 arts organizations around Vermont will share in $606,000 in stimulus funding. [...]

[E]xpect skeptics of stimulus funding -- aka the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- to go to town on this one.

Lyme resident Mark Steyn, better known globally as a best-selling conservative writer and columnist at National Review, earlier this summer already had a field day with a newspaper ad from Southeastern Vermont Community Action (SEVCA) posting bureaucratic jobs funded with stimulus money, including a SEVCA listing for an “ARRA Projects Coordinator.”

“Gotcha,” Steyn wrote. “So the first new job created by the stimulus is a job ‘coordinating' other programs funded by the stimulus. What's next?”

Not all is lost with the stimulus funding -- another part of the stimulus package has trickled down to the Southern Windsor County Regional Planning Commission to address “brownfields” sites.