This digest includes these highlights:

• Stimulus Dollars Pay for 139 Monterey County Jobs.
• Ground to be Broken on 91 Freeway Widening Project.
• California Leads Stimulus Job Count with More Than 100,000.
• Big Money Comes in For Water Projects in Redwoods.
• SMUD Receives $128M in Smart-Grid Funds.
• San Diego Region Nets $154 Million for Clean Energy.
• Modesto Irrigation District Given $1.49M Grant.
• SDG&E to get Federal Smart-Grid Funding.
• UC Davis MIND Institute gets $12M Grant.
• CSUF to Reinstate 264 Courses this Spring.
• Whittier Plans $2.6 Million Worth of Road Projects.
• Trinity County Uses Stimulus Money to Add Bus Service to Redding.

Along with THIS editorial:

Why Stimulus Jobs aren’t Built to Last: Stimulus may have created or saved 640,000 jobs so far, but many of those positions were never intended to last.The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was designed to put millions of people to work, mainly for shovel-ready” projects. By their very nature, most of those projects last only until the work is completed or the funding runs out. That means millions of workers hired with stimulus funding are left looking for a job after the stimulus-funded program is completed. The bottom line is these are meant to be stop-gap measures,” said Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist at Channel-CapitalResearch.com. “This is fairly typical in stimulus plans. It’s the same as it was in the 1930s: to put people back to work, the government looks at all of the stuff that was on its to-do list.” Roberts said the idea behind temporary, “shovelready” stimulus jobs, is to help the labor market ride out the storm: When the money runs out, hopefully the economy will have bounced back, and those temporary workers will be able to find full-time employment.

Stimulus News Digest Issue 9

The Small Business Administration has raised the limits for 504 and 7a programs, along with relaxing some requirements. Since the SBA doesn’t actually make the loans (banks do) and doesn’t have to service them or carry them on their books (banks do), it remains to be seen if this will launch a renaissance in small business lending or is just another feel good photo op.

Read Article.

I was cleaning out my medicine cabinet and found a lot of old expired drugs. Since none were resellable (just kidding), I wondered what to do with them. My first instinct was to flush them, but according to the California Integrated Waste Management Board:

The U.S. Geological Survey in 2002 sampled streams in 30 states. Of the 139 streams tested, 80 percent had measurable concentrations of prescription and nonprescription drugs, steroids, and reproductive hormones.

Exposure to even low levels of drugs has negative effects on fish and other aquatic species, and also may negatively affect human health.

The best way to get rid of old medications is to take them to a pick up center that can take household hazardous waste. If you live in California, this link will help you find the location closest to you.

If you live too far from a collection point, the Board of Pharmacy has this little ditty called, ‘Don’t Flush Meds’ for you do-it-yourselfers out there.