The following is part of a press release on receiving stimulus money to complete the Cultural Trail:
On Wednesday, Rep. Andre Carson and Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard announced $20.5 million in stimulus money will be used to finish the remaining 4.5 miles of the Cultural Trail downtown, creating an additional 11,000 jobs.
Here we see the idiocy of the President’s stimulus program. 4.5 miles of glorified sidewalks is somehow going to employ 11,000 people. Yeah, sure.
Anyone who observed the work done to date will know there were at most a dozen or so people EVER working on the project. And that was a few days here and there, with barricades and orange barrels sitting and waiting the rest of the time for someone to return and do a little more work.
11,000 people are going to be employed by this? Can you even imagine 1,000 people working on it? ELEVEN THOUSAND PEOPLE? That works out to 1 person every 2.2 feet of trail. That works out to $1818 per person.
So I guess the trail will be done in, oh, about 3 days with that many people? Unless it rains a lot. Then maybe 2 weeks.
Then we’ll have spent $20 million dollars, but still have all those unemployed people unemployed again 2 weeks later.
Oh, maybe it will employ just 100 people to build it and 10,900 people will suddenly be hired by companies going all gah-gah over the new sidewalk out front of their building.
C’mon, seriously? You expect us to believe this will create 11,000 jobs?Wow.
Now I understand how you expected to accomplish this health care reform thing. You believe we are all really, really, REALLY stupid and/or gullible and will believe anything. ANYTHING! No matter how absurd.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Cultural Trail Will Create 11,000 Jobs? Absurd Claim Made by Congressman Carson and Mayor Ballard
I found this over on the Bart Lies blog. I could have said it better myself. 11,000 people employed by this project? How stupid do they think we are?
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14 comments:
Wow. They probably mean that the finished trail's impact will be +11,000 jobs. Which is completely insane.
Bart Peterson and The Indy Star claimed that 6,000 people work at the Convention Center.
And I'm sure there will be wild claims about all the jobs coming from the newest bamboozle - the light rail projects.
"Hundreds of millions of dollars for light rail for white people who moved to Noblesville to get away from black people""
Not a penny for buses inside 465, where the real need is.
Hopefully, you all saw WTHR's utter destruction of Mitch Daniels, Mitch Roob and the funny math employed by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.
Lies, lies, and more lies, eh. Thanks Paul, Unigov, and, of course, Cato.
I've been told that that 11,000 figure might include new businesses locating along the Cultural Trail as opposed to construction jobs. If that's the case, the claim is even more misleading. Most of those businesses are just going to be relocating from someplace else in the city. No net gain of jobs.
I'd like to know
a) How 11,000 people can fit into the confines of Virginia Ave. It is surrounded by mostly residential space and has small, and many cases historically-preserved, storefronts.
b) What timeframe they predict for these 'created' jobs.
People should call the Mayor's action line and ask how to get one of those 11,000 jobs and where those jobs are posted?
The Speedway Redevelopment commission says there are going to be over 1900 full time jobs on Main street within 4 years, thanks to their efforts.
Main street is only 6 blocks long, so that's about 300 workers per block in addition to those already there. Since half the east side of the street is owned by Praxair, that means the worker / block ratio will be higher still, which will probably put them in violation of the new zoning laws for the speed zone.
I'm trying to figure out where all these people will park, given that there is no off street parking.
Maybe Mary will rent them space on the track, she has all that asphalt and it's only used about 15 days a year.
I wonder if Crowe Horwath cooked up those numbers? That's the firm that has the SRC convinced they can predict the future.
While we're at it - Beech Grove got $6 million in federal funding to redo/repave Main Street between Emerson and 10th.
You could buy every private building in that mile strip for less than that.
Your tax dollars at work !
And, Uni, they just rebuilt it from Emerson to around 8th!
My god, they ought to repave from 17th to 25th, if anything. Or Sherman south from Main.
"Hopefully, you all saw WTHR's utter destruction of Mitch Daniels, Mitch Roob and the funny math employed by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation."
Cato, I did not; is it online?
They all just make up numbers, without any substance or hard data supporting them and the media just regurgitates them back to us, without any thought or investigation.
The media should refuse to print or air these outrageous claims unless they are supplied with supporting, verifiable data.
Light rail and commuter rail has the usual suspects slobbering at the feeding trough. The number of jobs created and the amount of private investment leveraged will be astronomical, of course. And everyone will talk about how great it is and then no one will ride it. But supposedly all of the conventioneers and other visitors will pack it to the gills riding to and from the airport.
They might want to check other cities, but from my experience, the number of people riding light rail and toting several bags of luggage are few and far between.
Then two to five years after it is built, everyone will be scratching their heads trying to figure out how to keep it running.
Please note sarcasm to follow; my new business plan is to tout some insane business plan at a ridiculous cost to the taxpayers citing millions of jobs to follow. Then when the ludicrous claims prove to be false I blame the failing on everyone but myself, pay a pittance back to the city and retire to Bora Bora.
Maybe they'll be handing sand bags to each other in the insanely wasteful way we do with emergency relief workers or soliders so everybody will have a "job."
(Doesn't it ever occur to anybody to put a whole bunch of sandbags into a wheelbarrel or on a board you can pull?)
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