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Inflated claims of jobs created or saved

 
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Joined: 14 Jul 2007
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Location: Greater Boston

PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 2:37 pm GMT    Post subject: Inflated claims of jobs created or saved Reply with quote

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Description: Inflated claims of jobs created or saved
URL: http://www.examiner.com/x-8817-Pittsburgh-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m11d13-Infl ...truncated...
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admin
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Joined: 14 Jul 2005
Posts: 1826
Location: Greater Boston

PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 2:40 pm GMT    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
President Barack Obama's economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there.


Maybe the jobs were saved twice.

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john p



Joined: 10 Mar 2006
Posts: 1820

PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 4:47 pm GMT    Post subject: Reply with quote

If you could believe it, they actually let me on my Town's Finance Committee.

Anyway, what I gathered was that our town collects revenue from property taxes and gets money from the State in State Aid, Chapt. 70 (school funding) and Chapter 90 (roads).

Town revenue is basically property taxes and a nominal amount of fees. If property values dip, they just raise the tax rate, but essentially you deal with just a 2.5% increase each year in your taxes (Prop 2 1/2).

The State Revenue comes from sales tax and mostly Income Taxes. Obviously, due to the higher inflation and the payout for unemployment, the State's Revenue is down significantly.

The Governor had three choices: make cuts to State Services, cut Local Aid to towns and cities, or a combination of both.

A decent portion of the "Stimulus" was about helping the State's and Towns meet payroll. These are mostly the jobs that were saved, government union jobs. The State was able to keep on more workers and was able to pass on Stimulus Money to the towns so the had to lay fewer people off.

Last year, our Town was able to meet the Budget without a Tax Override because we ate through our "Stabilization Fund" and we had a few special education students move out of town which saved something like 1/4 of a million dollars. What I saw was that they were neglecting repairs on buildings and roads in order to meet the Budget and the name of the game was really meet payroll and get the essential capital items like police cars and such. I benchmarked other towns and saw that some towns were really in trouble.

The other thing was wages. People were always trying to get step increases and using their political connections to drive it home. One lady spoke for 1/2 an hour about why she wanted a significant increase in steps at the TOWN MEETING. She was shot down by like 85%, while others got increases without much fanfare. Against my advise, they gave town employees a 2% Cost of Living (COLA) even though the inflation Index said there wasn't any inflation (0%). They argued that our town didn't make as much as other towns and I said that they needed a Government Study to evaluate that. Anyway, they just made this year's work much harder. I thought it was almost unChristian to ask for a 2% inflation adjustment when the other Private Sector citizens were getting creamed. The public sector employees didn't give a shit, they wanted thei money and screw their fellow private sector citizens.

My feeling about Unions were based on the fact that we asked the schools to level fund, or keep spending at the same level. Given that salaries are like 70% of the Budget and the Union had a 3% raise negotiated, instead of the Union offering to freeze wages, the Superintendent was forced to make cuts in head count, which hurts the teacher student ratios. So my feeling about Unions was that someone paid their Union dues and when times got tough they threw one brother in the hall under the bus so the rest could get their 3%. I didn't see them sticking together and making sacrifices to help eachother out. There was absolutely no care in the world for the Private Sector citizens who were feeling the heat of the economy. The Stimulus fed money to States, and States to towns to keep their employees (many Union) employed, which is why the head of the Unions has visited the White House more than anyone and why the this Administration gets so much money from the Unions. The fact that the private sector citizens now need to replenish these pension funds is insult to injury.

So again, the Stabilization and Rainy Day Funds were raided and the Stimulus and Deficit Spending prevented politicians from being forced to make tough choices. My current issue with Democrats is that the Unions control them and they will stick it to the private sector in a second. There is enough people on the dole that they can outvote the private sector. Obama's Administration is a marriage of Wall Street, the Academic Elites, the Media, and the Unions. Obama realized that if he funnelled money to Wall Street they would return the favor and they were just picking the winner anyway; he's protecting the government workers and he has the Academics and Media to create the arguments.


My position is that they need to fix the infrastructure because States, Towns and Cities have almost eliminated any repairs from their Budgets in order to pay for wages and health care increases, and we need a strong competitive private sector to be able to create the abundance necessary in a Global Market. If the Public Sector / Unions become predators and kill the host, we will be forced to become a predator nation and you will see War. If Bush and Cheney were really monsters like the rest of the World says they were, why didn't we keep all of Iraq's oil? In our future, either we take someone's oil via War or we develop new technology to reduce our dependence (something I don't see coming from the Public Sector). My position is about getting investment to those that can help innovate us out of our problems (small companies) and use the spending to fix much of the crumbling infrastructure which was built in the 50's and is totally on borrowed time.
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