LA V.I.P. yacht ‘renovated’ with stimulus money

posted at 12:52 pm on February 13, 2012 by Howard Portnoy

Curse those wealthy Americans with their corporate jets and million-dollar yachts.

Well, actually, it’s not just the big-business types who own million-dollar yachts. The port of Los Angeles is the proud owner of a 73-foot luxury craft, which it purchased in 1988 and uses for public relations tours of the harbor.

You might think with the city in dire financial straits that they might sell off the yacht (which Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa insists on calling “a boat”). Instead, L.A. is “investing” $489,000 in federal taxpayer stimulus money to install new engines. Not that there is anything wrong with the old engines. Rather, it is that they run on diesel fuel (and hence fail to meet California emissions standards) and so are being swapped out for low-emission “green” hybrid motors.

The Blaze.com quotes Tom Schatz of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), who grumbles:

It’s not helping to create any real jobs. It’s a big waste of money both for taxpayers across the country and for Los Angeles residents, who clearly aren’t all going to benefit from this and are spending money at a time when the city is more than $70 million in the red.

Apparently Schatz hasn’t heard that EPA regulations do create jobs.

With the release last month of a 57-page memo marked “Sensitive & Confidential,” written in December of 2008 by Team Obama member and economist Larry Summers, the greening of the Angelena (the yacht’s—I mean, boat’s—name) does seem a tad cynical. Among the revelations brought to light by the memo’s publication was that the stimulus was about implementing the Obama agenda and satisfying campaign promises—like the promise to advance green energy.

Byron York of the Washington Examiner appeared last week on FOX News Channel’s On the Record, where he told Greta Van Susteren that Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Darrell Issa is investigating. A video clip of the spot is here.

Related Articles

• Another Obama-backed green company goes belly up
• Obama arranging deck chairs on the Titanic: Says ‘EPA regs create jobs’
• Obama’s car czar: ‘We never said taxpayers would get auto bailout money back’
• Obama’s Agriculture Secretary: Food Stamps create jobs (Video)
• Jay Carney claims unemployment checks create jobs
• American Jobs Act will create 1.9 million new jobs (at $235K apiece)
• Poll: 62% of Americans say Obama’s stimulus created more debt
• Study: Americans’ incomes have fallen more during recovery than during recession

Follow me on Twitter or join me at Facebook. You can reach me at howard.portnoy@gmail.com or by posting a comment below.

Blowback