Library Copy of Chicken Little Out on Loan

They tell me the sky is not falling.  The recession is over and job losses have peaked.  The stimulus plan and government bail outs have done the job.  Sure, okay, I believe you.

Today it was revealed, not by a Republican mind you, that the job gains reported from the stimulus bill are if not bogus, totally inaccurate.  One report showed that a $26,000 grant created more than 400 jobs.  It doesn't take an economist to figure out there is something wrong with those numbers.  Other reports indicate that as much as $50 billion dollars of stimulus funds may have been misappropriated.  Hmmn, sounds like a Katrina story in the making to me.  Maybe governing something as large and complex as the United States isn't that easy after all.

I think we are in trouble.  While the federal government is attending to national problems, and the news outlets focus on the same, state governments are facing massive deficits (billions).  State deficits mean municipal deficits and municipal deficits mean higher property tax rates.  Higher property tax rates mean you and I have to realign our spending and take more from our discretionary income to ....wait....I don't have any discretionary income.

A ton of the stimulus money has already gone towards helping state and local governments pay for budget shortfalls and keep government employees employed  including teachers.  So Hans Brinker has his finger in the dike, but what next?  Where is the growth going to come from?  In contrast to manufacturing jobs that produce jobs at a rate of 4:1, government jobs don't produce jobs.  Think of it this way, if the number of students stay the same and the number of teachers goes down, you still need to order the same amount of #2 pencils.

Warren Buffet is predicting the future is in the railroads.  A friend and confidant of President Obama, what does he know that we don't about what's coming down the pike?  As an unemployed Irish-American, I suppose I should be excited, after all, along with the Chinese, we built the 1st set of tracks.  I'd need a few months to get in shape, but I'm ready, Warren!

None of this makes any sense, but neither does anything I hear coming over the airwaves.

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