[La Lydia]

And speaking of baby-sitting, this week's Parade magazine has a cover story about "affordable" child care and the desperate need for the government to step in and provide it. It will be affordable because someone else, other than the parents of the children involved, are supposed to pay for it. And to put the frosting on the cake, it contains this paragraph:

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.

[cripplecreek]

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.

[Iron Munro]

These “jobs” are just a form of stealth reparations.

[DontTreadOnMe2009]

So what is 1.2 Billion dollars now?

Answer: tinier than a drop in the bucket!

[EGPWS]

The federal government is providing $1.2 billion to hire 125,000 teens and young adults this summer.

As long as it doesn't cut into their midnight basketball.

[Boiling Pots]

Since when are good results any part of the equation when analyzingi federal programs?

[merry10]

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.

[Richard Kimball]

When I worked for Austin Fire we signed on to a program to let "at risk" youth mow the yards. After the first time they came around, all the stations started locking the doors when they saw the kids show up, and we wouldn't let them in the station except one at a time, and they had to be escorted the entire time they were there.

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.