Federal bailout funds coming to Ohio

Upper Arlington, that wealthy suburb of Columbus, the same city that wants a $25 million levy for an addition to the library (last levy was 2 years ago), is hoping to snag a modest $500,000 of the more than $28 million in ARRA funds to install sidewalks along streets that serve as school and bus routes. No self-respecting, safety minded, SUV driving, Gen-X UA parent allows a child to walk or bike to school--so I'm not sure if a little foot will ever meet that concrete. I hope they don't get it. And if our city planners of the 1930s hadn't put the sidewalks up against the street, we'd all be a lot safer.

The process of getting this $500,000 could easily consume that much in employee time because like any government money, it has to pass through many hands. First our own UA city staff has to research it and work through complex applications; the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission which reviews, coordinates and makes recommendations; the Ohio Department of Transportation which administers the funding, makes sure all the applicants meet state infrastructure standards, and requirements; and of course, all the Washington career worker-bees, and party loyalists who are writing those standards and funding requirements. Just to get that little sum to UA city Manager, Virginia Barney, will cost a bundle. Even not getting it has a dollar cost to the tax payer--all over the country wherever ARRA funds are sought unsuccessfully. This is how our politicians, Democrats and Republicans, grow our economy; first you grow the government; second you expand what you just grew. (details from the UA News, April 22, 2009, opinions my own)

Then today's Columbus Dispatch reported that we're going to reinvent the Great Depression CCC and put men to work. Ohio officials are using federal stimulus money to "resurrect the idea and create the Recovery Conservation Corps" expecting to "create" 20,000 jobs funded with $47 million of the federal stimulus (maybe we could give them the library money and 10,000 jobs?), plus another $2 million of state money to transport these workers to their jobs of litter pick-up, building repair, and removing invasive plants.

Now, the snag here is there has always been money (grants) for this, so this is additional money, but these jobs are designated for low-income, disadvantaged, drop-outs, homeless and disabled. You see, Democrats believe that if low IQ men, or ex-cons, or mentally ill, or physically disabled people would just try harder, they could all have government jobs. With all the billions and billions that have been designated for that during the last 50 years, I wonder why we still have people sleeping under bridges? In recent years, when the economy was booming under Bush, disabled and disadvantaged were being incorporated into the regular income stream as tax payers--I saw them many places as grocery baggers, stockers, janitors, and in protected, sheltered workshops. Often with one-on-one, or two-on-one job coaches and supervisors, in part subsidized by the state. Sometimes it was a private-public partnership type thing, but often it was just a private business willing to spend the extra time training them. Workers with disabilities hired for REAL jobs put money into the community--into goods and services, transportation, restaurants, house. But not a program to pick up litter by the homeless (something state workers are hired to do). So this ARRA money will primarily be going for the social services required to assist minimally functioning people who either can't or won't or are too ill to work. More games with our money and with the wording of ARRA, which is pork distribution by Obama to those who supported him.

Government cannot and has never created jobs. It only redistributes money from workers by handing it off (for a fee) to other workers. No job is "created."