Where'd the Stimulus Money Go Anyway?

The Stimulus Package. It stimulated government just fine. There’s been a 20% increase in the size of government since Obama assumed power.

Where’d it go? It was supposed to go to the private sector to create jobs. Seen any new private sector jobs lately?

A huge chunk, most, went to education. You know, those union people that don’t teach our kids and whine they don’t get enough money for schools and salaries.  More than two thirds of the 594,754.3 jobs the Dems and RHINO’s take credit for, were in the education sector. There are more public sector union members than there are private sector. A third of those jobs are in education.

Stimulus money got some fat pay raises for government employees too. USA Today: “The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded.”  “When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.” Just a couple examples.

There was the “Cash for Clunkers” that blew through a billion dollars funding in a week, and then received an additional two billion from Congress. Three $billion spent for old cars by taxpayers, and no more cars were sold for the year than ordinarily. The rest of us couldn’t afford new cars because we’re paying for all that government largess for others to buy new cars. Then there was that issue too of Obama and the Dems closing down all those car dealerships; all but one of them being owned by Republicans.

So the package only benefited government employees, Democrat car dealership owners, unions and the Democrat Party. That money going to the unions by the way, your tax money, was used to finance Democrat politicians running for office in the last election. The circle of Statist life…take money from the citizens and give it to public union supporters to pay for your election so you can raise more taxes to give to the unions to pay off your political campaigns and life styles so you can raise more taxes to give more money to the unions to….

The collective personal wealth of congressional members increased by more than 16 percent between 2008 and 2009. Members of the House saw their median wealth move from $765,010 in 2008, to $645,503 in 2009 and Senators moved from $2.27 million to $2.38 million.

Looks like politicians, some Wall Street fat cats, government bureaucrats, and public sector union members did just fine with the stimulus package. Our Leftist friends think all this is fine and dandy. The citizens don't need none of their stinkin' money they earned. The money you earn belongs to the government in the first place, and they'll tell you how much of it you get to keep. 

Federal Education Spending-Effective?

It appears that education, like most things the Feds get involved in, is a dismal failure. (click on chart to enlarge) Conservatives are against a Dept of Education. It should never have been created and is should be abolished. It reinforces a monopoly. Why is a government monopoly acceptable? It should be broken up like any private sector monopoly.

To fix the problem of worsening education, the regressive unions National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers should be dissolved. I'll even go further. There should be no unions for government employees at all. They are there to serve the citizens, and if they don't like their jobs, go to the private sector.

Tenure for teachers should be eliminated. Most of us go to work every day knowing we had better do a good job, and continually upgrade our skill set, or we'll get fired. Why is it different for teachers?

Go back to teaching 'readin' 'ritin''rithmetic' along with history (of the Daniel Boorstin type, not Statist revisionist), and bring back music, civics and economics (without agenda), and PE.

This is a solution that will work, but not happen. That grieves me deeply. The purpose of education is now to indoctrinate, not educate. This government is attacking what works, measured by test scores and performance, which are charter schools, homeschooling, vouchers, and private schools. That last less so because politicians and the rich use them for the obvious reason of poor public school performance.

Kids With Disabilities Abused in Our Schools

Like the journalists being imprisoned in North Korea that I wrote about a couple entries ago, here's another story the MSM isn't reporting. I would think it would be a huge story.

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) recently came out with a report that children with disabilities, autistic children, and other distressed children, were being seriously abused and some have been murdered. Nothing is being done about this by the Dept of Education. Nothing.

From the GAO report:
"GAO also examined the details of 10 restraint and seclusion cases in which there was a criminal conviction, a finding of civil or administrative liability, or a large financial settlement. The cases share the following common themes: they involved children with disabilities who were restrained and secluded, often in cases where they were not physically aggressive and their parents did not give consent; restraints that block air to the lungs can be deadly; teachers and staff in the cases were often not trained on the use of seclusion and restraints; and teachers and staff from at least 5 of the 10 cases continue to be employed as educators.

GAO did find hundreds of cases of alleged abuse and death related to the use of these methods on school children during the past two decades. Examples of these cases include a 7 year old purportedly dying after being held face down for hours by school staff, 5 year olds allegedly being tied to chairs with bungee cords and duct tape by their teacher and suffering broken arms and bloody noses, and a 13 year old reportedly hanging himself in a seclusion room after prolonged confinement."

In Texas a teacher sat on one of these children and the kid died. It was ruled a homicide, charges were not filed and the "teacher" is now in Virgina "teaching" kids with disabilities. Just one more example. A California teacher repeatedly abused a seven year old autistic girl. The teacher is now "teaching" kids with disabilities in another school district.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has nothing to say about this. Well, not exactly nothing. He did say he "will ask state school chiefs around the country about the use of restraints and confinement of pupils in the classroom."

Of course this is where I make my cynical and snide observation. Do you think if these were Catholic Church schools there would be massive reporting? If it were private Christian schools, you could be sure there would there be massive reporting and the Dept of Ed crushing the abusers. Something else. We certainly must treat terrorists and other enemies of the United States lovingly, but disabled kids in our school system? Not so much. Lets go ahead and let them be tortured, for real.