The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Your Tax Dollars at Work
How much of a boondoggle was the so-called stimulus package? Consider this report from Minneapolis’s Star Tribune:
On Sunday, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi toured the American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Center and Career Immersion High School to throw a spotlight on that program as an example of how the stimulus money should be spent.
Today, President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are expected to describe how they will ramp up implementation of the $787 billion stimulus program. . . .
Forty-three students, ages 16 to 24, from the American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Center and Career Immersion High School will earn $7.20 an hour working 20 hours a week in fields such as information technology, construction and literacy education. The school is among the first organizations in Minnesota to implement programming funded by the stimulus money. It received $107,000.
How much is $787 billion? Enough to pay the wages of 52 million full-time workers at $7.25 an hour (the minimum wage effective next month). Instead we’re getting 43–not 43 million, 43!–part-time workers, and we’re even stiffing them a nickel an hour. It’s so preposterous that if we made it up, we’d be accused, rightly, of being unrealistic.
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