Jobs a Million, but not a Million Jobs

Today at our ACHD pre-commission meeting, sorry no video - no audio, we discussed the son of stimulus bill and our list of projects. The son of stimulus is actually called the jobs bill I guess because the first stimulus which was supposed to create jobs really didn't so now there might be another stimulus bill which will actually create jobs. (However, with the election of Scott Brown in MA to the Senate, this latest bailout might not even happen.)

Actually, I raised the topic. You see, in our various project submissions, like thin lift overlays and sidewalk construction and intelligent transportation systems we are supposed to state "how many jobs are to be created". Guess what folks - it's all phony! The most egregious is found on page 10 of the pdf file. We are proposing to buy 24 replacement commuterride vans and that will create 9 jobs!

The question I had was how? How does buying new replacement vans create one job in Idaho? Maybe it keeps a UAW member on the Ford assembly line working for more than 6 hours a day for a week or so, but seriously 9 jobs?

Commissioner McKee stated that she thought any job created anywhere was appropriate. I pointed out that this "stimulus" money was supposed to create jobs in Idaho and that buying vans was not creating any jobs anyway.

People are getting fed up with stuff like this. It's all smoke and mirrors. Maybe buying commuterride vans is a good thing but in that case it should rise or fall on its merits. And we certainly shouldn't be dummying up numbers of "jobs created". People aren't that stupid.

Oh well, like I said earlier, this may all be moot.