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Rossi Tours Company that Got $800,000 in Stimulus Money

2010 Election, Politics, That Washington, This Washington   September 16, 2010 at 8:10 pm Josh Feit

Republican U.S. senate candidate Dino Rossi toured the Nichols Brothers Boat Buliders in Freeland, Washington today.

We’re not sure if Rossi used the campaign stop to bash the the $787 billion stimulus package—one of his regular campaign trail messages aimed at U.S. Sen. Patty Murray’s “reckless” voting record. (Murray voted for President Obama’s stimulus bill.) But trashing the stimulus bill might not have gone over too well in Freeland if he had.

The Nichols Brothers Boat Builders got over $800,000 in stimulus money last year as part of $98,000,000 in maritime funds secured by Sen. Murray.

The South Whidbey Record reported on the Nichols Brothers stimulus grant last year.

Nichols Brothers Boat Builders will get nearly a million dollars in federal stimulus funds as one of 10 small shipyards in the state to receive grants.

The Freeland firm will get $841,077 from the Maritime Administration to use for improvements at the yard, Len York, Nichols Brothers chief executive, said Thursday.

The money, from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is part of nearly $7.4 million awarded to shipyards in the state, and $98 million awarded to 70 shipyards nationally by the federal Maritime Administration.

York said the money would be used to upgrade equipment and to build portable coverings under which anticipated future projects can be built.

…

[Sen. Murray] included $100 million in the Recovery Act to improve small shipyards and create jobs. The bill was signed into law by President Obama on Feb. 17.

The grants will be distributed through the Maritime Administration’s Supplemental Grants for Assistance to Small Shipyards program.

“Our small shipyards are a critical piece of our domestic maritime industry, and of Washington state’s economy,” Murray said.

Washington received the most stimulus grants of any state.

“Dino Rossi has bashed the stimulus for months,” says Sadie Weiner, spokeswoman for the Democrats, “and now he is visiting a shipyard in Freeland that used stimulus money to upgrade their facility. Looks like Dino really missed the boat on this one.”

Footnote: While Murray did vote for the stimulus, and while as chairwoman of the appropriations committee that oversees maritime spending, Murray did direct the Obama administration to allocate $98 million to maritime projects for small shipyards like the Nichols Brothers, she recently told King 5′s Robert Mak that the individual stim projects themselves were “picked by the administration not by any of us [senators].”

I have a call in to the Nichols Brother Boat Builders to get their take on Obama’s stimulus bill and Murray’s role in supporting the maritime industry.

Rossi’s spokeswoman Jennifer Morris’ take: “I’ll say what Dino has said numerous times. If it’s worth doing, it should be done in the normal budgeting process.”




  • http://twitter.com/RossifarianSpy Rossifarian Spy

    #1. Whomever this spokesperson is for Rossi got it right.

    #2. In the State of Heather @Newsbrooke Brooke, let’s stop this crapola of “spokesperson said”. Not your fault Josh, just bad habit many, many journos pull. Watch http://youtu.be/6YiY50dGoZQ for a good briefing.

  • Josh Feit

    Rossifarian, the spokeswoman’s name is Jennifer Morris. It’s in the piece.

  • http://twitter.com/RossifarianSpy Rossifarian Spy

    Sorry Josh I meant to reply to your earlier comment. Thanks.

  • http://twitter.com/RossifarianSpy Rossifarian Spy

    Good change :-) . I like Jenn Morris.

  • Douggie

    The stimulus plan was $787 billion not $757 billion. Get your Boeing planes right!

  • Douggie

    Also a typo in paragraph 2. Dude, do you have an editor, Josh?

  • Douggie

    Dino is comletely off base. No earmarks? Should only be done through the legitimate budgeting process? What exactly does that mean? Do you know what earmarks are? They are items added in by elected representatives of the people during open public debate, which are then voted on by the Senate and the House, and signed by the President.

    I suppose he must mean by saying ‘the legitimate budget process’ that only if it’s in the President’s budget proposal can it be allowed. Total crap. If the president doesn’t like a certain program – say for instance arts funding or abstinence education…take your partisan pick – Congress should be unallowed to add it back in? No way. It’s part of the Democratic process.

    Dino is being irresponsible by saying no earmarks. He’s simply trying to capitalize on voter sentiment and frankly…until they reform the system entirely, he is basically promising to not represent us to the fullest degree possible.

    It’s pathetic.

  • Douggie

    Actually she got it completely wrong. The constitution specifically gives the power to spend $ to Congress. Whether they are doing it right or not is one argument (and I vote they are mostly doing it wrong) but so-called earmarks are completely legitimate and in line with the constitution. She is an idiot and Dino is promising to hose us in the Senate by not fighting for our share.

  • Josh Feit

    It’s actually $1.2 trillion (with interest) say the Republicans and CNNMoney.com http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/27/news/economy/stimulus_spending/index.htm.

    Sorry about typos. Erica is out of town on assignment. She usually edits me. (Also, it’s damn late to be at work. Cut me some slack.)

  • David Sucher

    Well, Josh, this piece is closer to the mark if you want to attack Rossi as a hypocrite though once again it’s possible for a guy to think that the stimulus is bad public policy but if the majority (in Congress) votes for it, then it isn’t being anything but sensible to take advantage of it. I am sure you can get the distinction.

    But I’d still like some help on what Rossi actually said about Fannie Mae. (see previous post.) Again, thanks in advance. I am genuinely curious to find out exactly what he has said — maybe it’s worse (stupider) than I thought.

  • http://twitter.com/RossifarianSpy Rossifarian Spy

    The normal budgeting process is a request in the open via a bill with a committee vote in full transparency, not in a backroom in some reconciliation committee. Until earmark disclosure became normal (and remember Congress not got FOIA) we didn’t even know who earmarked what.

    Jenn Morris an idiot? Give me a break.

  • Derrick Anderson

    So the federal government gave this private business $800,000 to build boats. Absolutely ignored is whether or not this grant is in the public interest. Do they make Coast Guard boats? (and are those boats needed by the Coast Guard?) Do they make kayaks for urban yuppies? Megayachts for urban tech billionaires?

    Spending money isn’t good in and of itself. It has to serve a purpose. the goal with the stimulus/debt bill was just to shovel out as much cash as they could as quickly as they could. They said we needed the stimulus and debt or the unemployment would go above 8%. We got the stimulus and debt and these boat builders got a huge chunk of cash. What did taxpayers get?

  • http://peacetreefarm.org N in Seattle

    Of course, you’d rather crack wise and parrot the GOP line than simply click on the link to the Nichols Bros. website.

    Where you’d see that they build tugboats, car ferries, fireboats, dredges, and even military boats. Oh, they also do catamarans, dinner-cruise and excursion boats, even a cool-looking three-masted schooner. Another click or two, and you’d see that one of their current projects is a WSF boat for the Keystone-Port Townsend route.

    Sounds like an awfully good investment in Washington business, Washington labor, and Washington infrastructure to me.

  • http://peacetreefarm.org N in Seattle

    My other comment in this thread was supposed to be in this spot, as a reply to Derrick Anderson.

  • BigBob

    I missed the part where Rossi demanded Nichols Brothers Boat Builders return the money they stole from hard working tax payers. Rossi did that right?
    Because if he did not, he can’t be trusted to change big government spending our money if he gets to DC.

    Did Rossi angrily demand the money be returned??

  • Anonymous

    whoa! can’t send money to support family wage jobs!

  • clodhopper

    Red meat for the Murray campaign; they’ll need the pictures of him posing with stimulous-refurbished structures in the background.

    Dino’s poll numbers are sinking like an anchor.

  • NorthBiker

    Ride your bikes around and see how many lawns now have dino rossi signs. I dont think well know anything until the vote. You guys think that Rossi is a fink becuase he toured a ocmpany that had money shovelsd to them by Obama and Pelosi? Good luck with that.

  • Perfect Voter

    Betcha there are shipyards in China that could build all these boats for a lot less, thereby saving taxpayer dollars. (Oh, and never mind the crashed economy we’re still digging out way out of…)

  • Perfect Voter

    Betcha there are shipyards in China that could build all these boats for a lot less, thereby saving taxpayer dollars. (Oh, and never mind the crashed economy we’re still digging out way out of…)

  • Derrick Anderson

    If you want to help a boat company build tugboats or military ships, you, um… buy them. You don’t just shovel cash in their direction for the purpose of hiring people.

    I could put 20 unemployed people to work cleaning up my house if the federal government gave me $800,000. And I’d make sure those would be generous wages with healthcare and benefits. I’d let them take super long breaks and at least an hour for lunch, too! Fantastic for everyone! Oh, except wait, I probably don’t have the political connections that are normally required for securing such a budget line-item and something like that is NOT in the public interest.

    Aren’t liberals against corporate welfare? Or shoveling cash to corporations is good so long as the businesses hire workers? And are these ships carbon neutral?