Stimulus Jobs Check: Are They for Real?

(CBS)  Where are all the jobs the White House is talking about? California got $18.5 billion in stimulus money, producing more than 110,000 jobs. Illinois got nearly $6.5 billion, and turned that into more than 24,000 jobs. CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy brings us the story from California, and CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds reports from Illinois.


At Fairfax High School in Los Angeles, classrooms and budgets are tight despite the influx of stimulus dollars.

California received $7 billion for education. The government says that created or saved 62,000 jobs. But the teacher's union says California also made $6 billion in cuts to education resulting in 20,000 jobs lost. Friday, California's governor said that number could have been much worse.

"Teachers would have been gone if it wouldn't have been for the federal stimulus money," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said. "I just want to make sure you understand that."

Fairfax lost eight teachers - they each taught about 175 students, who are now packed in with the rest.

When CBS News visited, one student was sitting on top of a file cabinet because there weren't any seats. Forty-two kids were piled into a room built for 30.

"What does it mean for your relationship with the teacher and your ability to learn?" asked CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy.

"You don't have that one-on-one with the teacher," said Arionne Featherstone, a senior. "If you have a question, you'll probably have to wait."

In one room, three students shared the teacher's desk.

"I think every student here knows that there's something going wrong when you have three students or four students sitting at the teacher's desk," said Ricardo Daniels, a student.

A lack of teachers is not just a problem here in California. More than half of the 160 superintendents who responded to a nationwide survey said they had to cut teachers in core subjects - despite getting federal stimulus money. More than 80 percent cut librarians, school nurses and custodians.

"The stimulus money has made the layoffs less extreme, but the stimulus money won't last forever," said Tim Daly, the president of the New Teacher Project.

Nationwide, $100 billion in stimulus was allotted for education. But three-quarters of that has already been awarded and it will all run out by 2011.

"Honestly I shudder to think what that situation will be like," said Fairfax Principal Edward Zubiate.

Without stimulus dollars, the principal at Fairfax is not sure he can even keep the supply cabinet full.

"You know the basic supplies: pens, pencils, inks for the copiers, etc.," Zubiate said.

Meanwhile, Ricardo Daniels is just trying to finish his last year of high school.

"I have to come to school every single day and do the best that I possibly can to become successful with what's handed to me," Ricardo said.

But what he's been handed is a school still in need of a handout.

---

In Chicago, CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds found that at the Ba Le Vietnamese Bakery, owner Tim Nguyen said the stimulus money sustained his business, saved his workers and found jobs for others.

"I was able to keep my employees and create more positions," Nguyen said.

He received a $270,000 loan from the Small Business Administration. Without that money, he said he would have had to cut employees' hours, and cut some jobs.

With the money he was able to proceed with plans to move to a new spot next door, which in turn created construction jobs in advance of the January opening. About 30 people had jobs building the new place, he said.

Seven miles away, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner toured a job training center that received $200,000 in stimulus, a center that helped Francisco Chavez land a job after 18 months without one.

"Going through the training made me more marketable," Chavez said. "It updated my skills. It enhanced them."

Don Schultz's construction firm did $8 million in business on four shovel-ready projects with stimulus money Illinois received from the Transportation Department.

While that meant jobs for 30 workers, those jobs end next month, and Shultz worries about what happens next for his business.

"We've got to just go out and get some more work and there's going to be less work because we don't have those stimulus jobs to bid on," Schultz said.

Which could bring his business to a grinding halt.

[Virgil-1]

Stimulus creates 1,000,000,000 jobs.They never told you how many were
lost.

[searingtruth]

As I said over a year ago now, America will have an unprecedented depression. The only question was how deep it would be, and whether or not our government would have enough funds to pay for the food, shelter, and health care of our citizens during it.

But because of the incredible corruption of the Republicans, Democrats, and Obama, that question has now been answered.

Our coming depression will be unprecedented in depth and length, and we have given away the money we needed to sustain our people during it.
ST


"We were to be rewarded according to our works, and most justly so.

A home, an abundance of food, an abundance of hope for our children, and a luxury of joy to be shared by all.

Not only for the few, as it always had been before.

And is again."
SearingTruth

A Future of the Brave

[jroach31]

Using California's horrible public schools as an example of the "failure" of the stimulus package?

What utter garbage, CBS.

The schools in California have been in a death spiral for 30 years. You can thank Prop 13 for that. It has nothing to do with the stimulus.

[natdef_1]

WHO CAN BELIEVE OBAMA'S CONTINUED LIES?

[hungry1968-17]

Lies such as.....?

Or didn't Beck give you those talking points?

[hungry1968-17]

Still googling furiously to find ONE, huh?

Guess I should have cued the Jeopardy music.

[Jess0908]

Jobs?! Don't talk about - - jobs?! You kidding me! Jobs! I just hope we can get handouts!

The years of complancency may be over and it may be time to kick it in high gear again. We certainly won't if we are too stupid to figure this out. So education, its certainly critical. But what are we teaching? Complacency! Go to school, have a decent job waiting for you. This is the difference between foreigners that move here with little education and start businesses and end up successfull. They know how to get off their tush and do something. No education is going to put fire under an "educated" person's backside like going without food for a while will. That said, we need education in order to develop and sharpen minds, inspire ingenuity, and offer tools for innovation. As another commented wisely, our system can't depend on growth forever, that is why there is outsourcing. What our system does need is to stay fresh and at the top innovatively so that we always have something to offer that the rest of the world needs or wants. Less education, then less innovation, less new jobs. Detroit wasn't built because Ford had a college degree. But an education or surrounding oneself with educated persons will certainly help an idea become reality and suceed in business. So the point, is quit complaining and go out and do something! The Stimulus money was only designed to buy time, so the rest of us could get off our tush and kick it in high gear! True, not everyone can start a business, but we can communicate and network and spread ideas in a way that the world has never seen in its history. If we can't pull ourselves out of this mess, when we were saved from outright depression, and bought some time (with the Stimulus) to regroup and get something done, then many of you are right, the stimulus will only do so much because we will simply return to the status quo. If we fail, it will not be Bush's fault and it will not be Obama's fault, WE OWN THIS.

[jsd330]

jess0908 Good post, The problem in our society today is most think manual labor is a Mexican name.

[two-cats]

The stimulus was too small, if anything. Many, many projects which would have benefited everyone were cut out by screaming Republicans and blue dog Democrats. It is so perplexing that these same politicians are pushing and fighting for us to expand military initiatives which are dubious at best in really fighting terrorism. Afghanistan is probably a lost cause now because the incompetent Bush pulled out so many troops there when momentum was going our way to send them on a wild goose chase in Iraq. I get furious every time I think about the last 8 years which nearly decimated our economy!!!

[natdef_1]

You continue to propagate this LIE. The stimulus bill was written in the dark of night and voted on before ANYONE could even read the bill.

Besides, you don't think $800 BILLION MORE DEBT IS ENOUGH???

[charmainelim]

Economic downturn is the best time to upgrade ourselves. Perhaps, we should take 2 steps back and assess our weaknesses to determine how we can improved ourselves to be more competitive to other countries.Think out of the box. Why should we waste our time and energy sulking and moaning. We cannot just rely on government aids cos' it will get run out very fast if we ourselves are not doing anything to upgrade ourselves to be more competitive. It takes two hands to clap.

[curse914]

charmaineli, a Nue-Gilded Age capitulator.

<snip>

In June 2003, Bill Moyers said that "Karl Rove has modeled the Bush presidency on that of William Mckinley (1897-1901) and modeled himself on Mark Hanna, the man who virtually manufactured McKinley. Mark Hanna saw to it that Washington was ruled by business, railroads, and public utility corporations." President Bush's tax cuts have given over 93% of their benefits to large corporations and well-to-do households with over 250,000 dollars of annual income (about 10% of the U.S. households). Moreover, President Bush's tax cuts are abolishing taxes on such asset-based income as stock dividends and capital gains. He is opposed to taxing management aristocrats' self-dealt stock options (salary payment in kind). He is opposed to requiring the corporations to treat such stock options as their personnel expenses. More than anything else, management aristocrats' stock options are encouraging many corporations to abandon manufacturing-and-supply procurements at home and switching to imports from China and other lower-wage countries. He is phasing out estate taxes. All these measures are transforming the past "potbelly flower vase" shape of the U.S. income distribution to the "bottom-heavy hour glass" shape.

This was the same kind of income distribution that the U.S. built during the McKinley-Gilded Age. There was no Securitiesy Exchange Commission to check "creative accounting" and Enron-WorldCom like malfeasance of corporations. America had poor public schools and medical care. There was no minimum wage or labor standard. Both federal and state governments and courts were hostile to labor unions and civic groups protesting the "injustices" of the society. The natural environment was ravaged by railroads, mining, lumbering, and newly emerging oil and gas firms. Abortion was illegal. Women did not even have the vote. In the South, Christian fundamentalists were pressuring public schools to stop teaching Charles Darwin's evolution theories. During the McKinley-Gilded Age, America's democracy atrophied. And America embarked on her imperialistic expansions of colonising Cuba, Panama, and the Philippines.

[brickorock]

We have had a thriving masonry business for the last 15 years. We have maintained city and state licenses, paid workmen's compensation, public liabliity insurance, paid taxes and unemployment. One of the biggest problems we have run up against is what we call scabs, who come to town, do the work for cost and pay none of the above. We cannot compete with these people. Our city officials refuse to do anything about these scabs even if they are given a location where they are working. They say they don't have the man power to police these situations.
We recently had an idea that would add more jobs to our local economy by manufacturing artificial stone. We had a shop that was large enough to manufacture and store many pallets of the stone, we could have employed several people, and when the economy picked up, use the stone on our projects whether it be residential building or commercial. We applied for some stimulus dollars through our state to follow through with the project, unfortunately our state turned down most of the stimulus dollars and therefore we were turned down. We lost the office and shop we were renting because we couldn't pay the rent; as the building industry took a major nose dive. Then watching the CBS broadcast of a foreigner who is recently a new citizen of the U.S., and not paid taxes all his adult life, not only applied for federal stimulus dollars received 280,000.00 through the
SBA to expand his business and employ several more people.
This has got to be the most frustrating and exasperating situation we have encountered over the past 15 years. How can a hardworking tax paying American compete with scabs and foreigners where is the blame to be placed?

[Renegade.Rivers]

When is everything going to make those who have been blinded by the Obama mantras, that it's all a "pig in the poke," and that there has not and will not be any change as long as we the American people allow the same professional politicians to remain in office.

Very few of those in the senate or congress have the American peoples' interest at heart, instead they are obligated, blackmailed, and coerced into taking care of the corporations and their lobbyist that support their campaigns with millions of dollars in funding for their reelection campaigns.

As for the course that Obama has taken, it should be clear to anyone who can think logically that what this administration has been doing all along is blowing smoke. Nearly ever campaign promise that Obama had promised during his campaign, has either been altered, wavered, or forgotten up to this point.

Instead we have seen nothing but rhetoric, more promises, highly questionable, and doctored statistics, and a lot of wasted time and billions of dollars that have done little to improve the economic picture in America or the lives of the American people.

[curse914]

by sharncedar October 30, 2009 10:58 PM EDT
The logic of course is terrible - the fact that some teachers were laid off when funds were short does not mean that more teachers would have been laid off if funds were even shorter. Perhaps they would have cut the school year shorter, or asked parents to drive their kids to school, or buy their own books, or raised taxes. It was a good article, but not skeptical enough of this bogus notion that one can pull numbers about "saved" jobs out of Obama's backside. Because there is no way to estimate such things, in the first place, and in the second place these guys are lying as hard as they can lie as part of the deal fo getting these funds.

So please let's have some journalism folks, if you have even a shred of pride or self-esteem left. Yes, ask some questions. Ask this one - Mr. Obama, you talk about jobs "saved and created" - could you break that down and give us the numbers for jobs created separately from jobs "saved"?

[][][][][]

What Obama needs to do is something that no president in recent history has had the courage to do, admit our economic system is inherently flaw and we have reached its inevitable end. An infinite growth economic model simply cannot work on a finite planet. Can you put more water in a full glass?

It boggles the mind that we are throwing money at our current economic model to keep it alive, when anyone with an inkling of understanding should know we have no means to create jobs; industry creates jobs and all of those jobs have been intentionally shipped off to nations that resemble American in the late 1800's with no product or labor safety laws with "employers" who pay their desperate laborers pennies.

Free trade did not "lift all boats", it sank most of us so that those already on yachts could purchase even more grotesque displays of wealth. And those yacht owners were rewarded for the ravaging of our economy with bailout money so that they may ship off to the nation of choice as ours crumbles in a Class stratified, gated community cesspool like Venezuela.