October 19, 2009

Saving a government job?

While perusing around this morning, I happened on this headline from Reuters. “White House says stimulus saving education jobs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration said on Monday its economic stimulus had saved or created 250,000 education jobs, as it sought to push back against Republicans who contend the package was wasteful and had not worked.

The Republicans are saying that it isn’t working because it isn’t working. I guess cause the Republicans are focusing on the private sector where it really matters and not the government where it doesn’t. The quarter of a million jobs we are now losing on a monthly basis are private sector jobs not public ones.

It’s like getting shot in the arm and bandaging your leg. Like that.

I had to read the headline once again to make sure I wasn’t dreaming or perhaps read this incorrectly.

School teachers outside of the public system were excluded in this story. The stimulus didn’t save the private sector jobs just the public ones that you already pay for anyway. I mean “saved or created.”

School teachers are on the public payroll. You pay them. You the taxpayer. In theory, school districts are funded for the most part by local school taxes which then pay for school teachers. Federal money is given in the form of a supplement to existing programs and so on.

Let’s assume that the federal money is paying for the teacher’s salaries (it’s really not but play along). What this headline says is that the federal government isn’t cutting jobs that it wasn’t going to cut anyway and that the stimulus has everything to do with that.

Complete and utter nonsense.