Mark Steyn notes the practical application of all that money:
I was in Vermont the other day and made the mistake of picking up the local paper. Impressively, it contained a quarter-page ad, a rare sight these days. The rest of the page was made up by in-house promotions for the advertising department’s special offer on yard-sale announcements, etc. But the one real advertisement was from something called SEVCA. SEVCA is a “non-profit agency,” just like the New York Times, General Motors, and the State of California. And it stands for “South-Eastern Vermont Community Action.”
Why, they’re “community organizers,” just like the president! The designated “anti-poverty agency” is taking out quarter-page ads in every local paper is because they’re “seeking applicants for several positions funded in full or part by the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA)” — that’s the “stimulus” to you and me. Isn’t it great to see those bazillions of stimulus dollars already out there stimulating the economy? Creating lots of new jobs at SEVCA, in order to fulfill the president’s promise to “create or keep” 2.5 million jobs. At SEVCA, he’s not just keeping all the existing ones, but creating new ones, too. Of the eight new positions advertised, the first is:
“ARRA Projects Coordinator.”
Gotcha. So the first new job created by the stimulus is a job “coordinating” other programs funded by the stimulus…
…SEVCA serves two rural counties with a combined total of a little over 40,000 households. If you wanted to stimulate the economy, you’d take every dime allocated to Windsor and Windham counties under ARRA and divide it between those households. But, if you want to stimulate bureaucracy, dependency, and the metastasization of approved quasi-governmental interest-group monopolies as the defining features of American life, then ARRA is the way to go. Oh, you scoff: ARRA, go on, you’re only joking. I wish I were. We’re spending trillions we don’t have to create government programs to coordinate the application for funds to create more programs to spend even more trillions we don’t have.
And do keep in mind that even that small part of the Spendulus which will go to people who hold real jobs – like highway construction workers – will be very inefficiently spent on things we already have (roads and bridges) which don’t generate much, if any, income. Most of the money, however, will go to things like SEVCA – groups which will “organize” and “advocate” and “coordinate”, but which won’t actually do anything other than provide well-paid, bureaucratic jobs for well-connected second raters who donated correctly at the last election (second raters? Well, yes – unless you want to say that the people staffing the DMV are more efficient than the people staffing your local Best Buy).
This sort of thing just highlights, once again, my contention that the issue is the People vs Powerful political dynamic. The Powerful want more and more people spending more and more money ripped out of the private economy – and, of course, more and more people who are dependent upon government and quasi-governmental agencies for their sustenance. The Powerful figure they won a mandate last November and they are determined that there be no more slip ups – no more Reagans, no more 1994s. The People, as evidenced by the growing “Tea Party” movement and the recent vote in California, are waking up to their predicament – the Powerful are insisting that in this economic downturn that the People pony up even more so that the Powerful can go on with business as usual…with the threat that if the People don’t pay up that fire departments and police forces will be curtailed (thus leaving us at the mercy of disasters and criminals, while the Powerful are safely tucked away in upper class, safe neighborhoods). But I don’t think we’re buying the threat.
Change? Not hardly – it is actually Revolution which is in the air. The Powerful over played their hand, and the time is fast approaching when we, the people of the United States of America, will take our country back.
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