The Chicago Tribune's Mary Owens has a good piece on one consequence of the recession -- the lack of summer jobs for teenagers. Jobs that teens in Chicago, and elsewhere, used to get at fast food restaurants or retail stores either no longer exist or have been taken by ...

The Washington Post's Michael A. Fletcher and Dana Hedgpeth have a report on unemployment benefits that includes Arizona Sen. John Kyl doubting that the continual extension of these benefits helps the economy. The Post frustratingly doesn't point out that Kyl is probably wrong. Almost every economist agrees that these benefits do, indeed, stimulate the economy by putting money into the hands of people likely to spend that money immediately.

Pro Publica's Christopher Flavelle reports that only $309 billion of the $787 billion in stimulus bill money has been spent. The federal government has decided how to spend $153 billion of the remaining $478 billion. Meanwhile, state governments and federal agencies have yet to claim $237 billion of the ...

The New York Times' David Leonhardt has a pretty good column today that points out the success of the stimulus bill and calls for another, smaller stimulus package. But in praising the stimulus, Leonhardt makes a confusing distinction: Just look at the outside evaluations of the stimulus. Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative. Yet I’m guessing you don’t think of the stimulus bill as a big success. You’ve read columns (by me, for example) complaining that it should have spent money more quickly. Or you’ve heard about the phantom ZIP code scandal: the fact that a government Web site mistakenly reported money being spent in nonexistent ZIP codes. To be clear -- and Leonhardt is not clear about this -- saying the stimulus is a big success and then saying that the stimulus should have spent money more quickly aren't contradictory claims.

The Wall Street Journal's Louise Radnofksy reports: Democrats, stung by criticism of their $787 billion economic-stimulus plan, are targeting Republicans who have attacked the program and then lobbied to get money for their districts. More than a dozen Republican lawmakers supported stimulus-funding requests submitted to the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Forest Service, in letters obtained by The Wall Street Journal through the Freedom of Information Act... Mr. Obama warned Republicans last month at their annual retreat that Democrats were ready to spotlight representatives who touted stimulus funds in their districts. "Let's face it, some of you have been at the ribbon-cuttings for some of these important projects in your communities," Mr. Obama said. This seems dumb on the part of the Democrats.

As Ian Talley and Stephen Power report in the Wall Street Journal, the Energy Department has expended only 7% of stimulus funds the Department received in 2008 -- funds that are supposed to go to job creation and innovative energy projects.  The tension at Energy is between vetting proposals ...

ProPublica's Olga Pearce had a report yesterday on depleted unemployment insurance funds that also looked at how many employers have seen an increase in their payroll tax: "Business owners in 36 states face tax increases ranging from a few dollars to nearly $1,000 per worker." Here again is ...

The Chicago Current's Ben Meyerson flags an interesting report on what government spending on transit provides the most bang for the buck: Every billion dollars of investment nationwide from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act on public transportation created 16,419 total months of labor, while every billion dollars of investment ...

The New York Times' Jason DeParle and Robert M. Gebeloff had a disquieting report this weekend that six million Americans -- or 1 in 50 households -- earn no income except for food stamps. This, in part, indicates as Understanding Government has looked at, that food stamps "work" ...

The Wall Street Journal's Conor Daugherty reports that state and local revenues were down seven percent in the third quarter of 2009 from a year ago -- and the third quarter of 2008 was not exactly the salad days of local revenue collection. The culprit is less money from income taxes and sales taxes. The result is that states must increase tax rates and spend less at a time when the federal government is cutting taxes and spending more. The Obama administration and Congress leavened this huge federal-local disconnect by handing states fiscal stabilization money from the stimulus bill. However, the administration has not responded to the crisis in local governance with the comprehensive aid package that they provided to, say, financial firms in peril.