Posted on 07/18/2009 8:22:24 AM PDT by reaganaut1
LONG BEFORE THE AGE OF OBAMA, FEDERAL SPENDING became the panacea for social problems. Not content with new spending for new ideas, from high-speed passenger-rail services to bankruptcy bailouts, the Obama administration has revived spending for bad old ideas. Nothing better illustrates this folly than federally funded summer-job programs.
Congress torpedoed such programs a decade ago, but President Barack Obama's team revived them in the stimulus package passed in February. The federal government is providing $1.2 billion to hire 125,000 teens and young adults this summer. Local and state governments are plowing in many millions of dollars more to hire thousands of additional youth. The pay rate varies from the new minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, to $10 an hour. The vast majority of jobs are at government agencies or nonprofit organizations.
National Urban League chief Marc Morial declares the summer jobs will build character: "If we want urban kids to value work, we have to give them work."
...
Politicians brag that government-funded summer jobs helps kids get a foot into the labor market. However, the federal hiring criteria for this year's program could affix a scarlet letter on youths later seeking real private jobs. Most kids who receive a federally subsidized summer job must possess at least one "barrier" to employment, such as being a school dropout, pregnant, criminal offender, runaway, homeless or deficient in "basic skills."
The precedents don't bode well. In 1985, the National Academy of Sciences reported that the summer-job program failed to reduce the crime rate among participants. As for the economics, a Health and Human Services Department-funded study of summer-job programs in the 1980s by two Harvard University professors concluded that "roughly 40% of jobs simply displace private employment" for minority youth.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.barrons.com ...
In European nations, high-quality child care, especially for 3- to 6-year-olds, is seen as a right of citizenship. Governments view it as an investment in the nation’s future, and excellent facilities with top-notch care are plentiful.
All seven of them. Somebody needs to wander around among these childhood cell-blocks with a camera and post that quote as a caption on every shot.
I worked on the CITA program back in the 80s and we got some real work done but we were rural kids who already had a work ethic.
The first summer we put in two baseball diamons with cinderblock dugouts, fencing all around, bleachers, and restrooms. We also installed an irrigation system in the football field and paved the track around it. We also built a second story on top of the pressbox and replaced all the seats of the bleachers.
The real problem arose when they brought some city kids out and expected them to do something.
These “jobs” are just a form of stealth reparations.
So what is 1.2 Billion dollars now?
Answer: tinier than a drop in the bucket!
We could buy all these people one-way tickets to Europe then.
As long as it doesn't cut into their midnight basketball.
That would definitely be more “affordable.”
Chinese debt.
Since when are good results any part of the equation when analyzingi federal programs?
Agree, and they won't count one cent towards the real reparations that are coming. They've been quiet on that front, but if cap and trade and healthcare get enacted, reparations will be around the corner. The 40 year war on poverty will be ignored at how many $trillions down the hole.
i work as a civilian logistician for the Navy, and my command brought in 3 engineering students to help. They are told to come to classes (since they supposedly want a career) and they sleep thru them. I asked one to go to a conference room and let somebody know I’d be there in a few minutes and he said “why can’t so and so do it?”. They have already learned to work the federal govt system (can I have overtime; If I work 10 hours a day I get friday off and can I work the holiday and get double time). One, a former nuclear submariner, is good, but the other two are not ready for the workplace.
I also worked on these programs in the 70’s.
I had a CITA job way back. I showed up, worked, and held the job all summer. The other two showed up, did as little as possible, and acted stupid when asked to do work. They were canned in the second week.
The first time they showed up, some personnel had let them go to the bathroom unescorted and they'd immediately started stealing stuff from the lockers. One of the stations found some crack that had apparently fallen out of one kid's pocket.
Summer jobs programs are a joke. When I lived in New Orleans they did a story on a summer jobs program and most of the kids were a couple of hours late, which made sense, since the supervisor was usually at least an hour late.
I remember one program in Austin, and I ran the numbers. A 1.5 million grant resulted in $400,000 in actual salaries to the kids. The other 1.1 million was administrative costs.
We had a crew of about 30 local teenagers. We all knew each other and had a good time but got an incredible amount of work done. We did all kinds of construction projects plus painting as well as stripping waxing and refinishing floors thoughout the school.
The inner city kids were a problem from day one and it didn’t take but a week to get rid of them. The bosses let them go off to work by themselves, gave them half a day and caught them staggering drunk.
In 1978, I was a 2-striper in the Air Force. My boss gave me eight of these kids as part of the grass-cutting crew for the base...for six weeks. I had to stand back and manage these kids every minute out of the day. To some degree, it taught me alot about people management and the number of ways that folks can screw something up.
At some point...we’d finished a job and were in the truck going from housing to the base. Some kid in the back of the truck tossed out a rock of sorts....hitting the windshield of a car coming from the opposite direction. Cracked it. I get back to the office...and here is my boss who says that we all need to go down to the SP station.
I wasted four hours that afternoon....as the cops took statements from all five kids in the back of the truck and myself. They got the guilty suspect, and he was terminated from the program.
A couple of years later at another base...I talked to a guy who had the same experience...some kids stole tools from the engineering unit and the cops went and spent an afternoon interviewing all of these punks. For every penny of money they spend on this program...your local cop enforcement group is spending as much on investigations and interviews.
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