by Jack Campitelli | September 26th, 2011
STIMULUS MONEY
September 23, 2011
Salisbury, North Carolina So I’m visiting my sister. Her city got some “stimulus money.” They weren’t used to anyone giving them anything since Reconstruction after the civil war, so they didn’t have an elaborate plan already in place to spend the ill-gotten gains. They decided to put the money to work on sidewalks. Not a grand plan, but who knew it was coming, huh? The city being old and well-kempt had sidewalks but the spreading suburbs did not. So they extended sidewalks that were already in place into the suburbs toward the rural areas that surround the city. The sidewalks look good, but they’re on their way to farms. No one much walks there is my point. And worse? They go to nowhere.
They let out bids and a company in SouthCarolina got the bid. So far no jobs in Salisbury. The South Carolina company offered jobs to local pretty-much legal Mexicans. Now Mexicans are respected workers in stone and cement and they tend to work hard and cheap, so it was a good call by the South Carolina company.
One of the locals who got a new sidewalk watched as it started a half-a-block away where it connected to an existing sidewalk and continued a hundred yards past his house and there stopped on its way to oblivion. He went out to talk to the workers. Turns out the Mexicans send most of their money to their families in Mexico. Now this isn’t bad – people in Mexico need money, too.
So the stimulus to the local economy largely went to another state and thence to another country. It created not one lasting job and was gone in a wink.
We wonder why the stimulus didn’t get us anywhere?
By idiots for idiots.
Or was that Abraham Lincoln?
