Tag Archives: Employment

News

The stimulus bill funded a study to get monkeys high on cocaine

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From ABC News. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The Obama administration has credited its $862 billion stimulus program with pulling the economy out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. But a new report by two Republican senators argues the stimulus is riddled with wasteful projects that do not create jobs.

The report, released by Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and John McCain, R-Ariz., highlights 100 stimulus projects that they say have “questionable goals,” are “being mismanaged or were poorly planned” and are even “costing jobs and hurting small businesses.”

The Coburn-McCain report takes issue with stimulus spending on projects like one that entailed research on how cocaine affects monkeys. The Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center was awarded $71,623 to study what the report calls, “Monkeys Getting High for Science.”

Bonnie Davis, a spokeswoman for The Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, said the “small grant has helped protect very important research that will have significant impact on public health in regards to cocaine addiction and the issue of relapse.”

Go a little further down the list and you’ll find even bigger spending. The California Academy of Sciences is receiving nearly $1 million in stimulus funds to send researchers to the Southwest Indian Ocean Islands and East Africa to capture, photograph and analyze thousands of exotic ants.

There’s also funding for yoga and hot flashes. Researchers at Wake Forest University have received nearly $300,000 to study whether integral yoga “can be an effective method to reduce the frequency and/or severity of hot flashes” in breast cancer survivors.

This is what happens when you take money away from investors and businesses and give it to government bureaucrats to spend. Unemployment doubles compared to what it was under George W. Bush. Because money was taken from the people who create jobs and spend by people who have no experience in the private sector and no knowledge of economics.

Here’s a complete run-down on the Obama Presidency from a financial viewpoint.

News

Canadian federal government reviewing affirmative action policies

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Story from the National Post.

Excerpt:

The Conservatives have ordered a review of federal government affirmative action policies, saying the public service should hire based on merit, not race or ethnicity.

Cabinet ministers Stockwell Day and Jason Kenney announced the review of the Public Service Employment Act, along with any related practices and policies, on Thursday. “While we support diversity in the public service, we want to ensure that no Canadian is barred from opportunities in the public service based on race or ethnicity,” Mr. Day, the Treasury Board President, said in a statement.

Mr. Kenney, meanwhile, was more blunt in his calls for a meritocracy.

“I strongly agree with the objective of creating a public service that reflects the diversity of Canada, and with fair measures designed to reach that goal. But we must ensure that all Canadians have an equal opportunity to work for their government based on merit, regardless of race or ethnicity,” said the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism.

Under the current policy, the federal government targets four “employment equity groups” identified in the Employment Equity Act as being reflective of Canada’s wider diversity: visible minorities, aboriginals, people with disabilities and women.

And consider this editorial about the review.

Excerpt:

A cursory review of the federal public service job website reveals that all positions contain the following statement on their application:

The Public Service of Canada is committed to building a skilled, diverse workforce reflective of Canadian society. As a result, it promotes employment equity and encourages candidates to indicate voluntarily on their application if they are a woman, an Aboriginal person, a person with a disability or a member of a visible minority group.

This statement appears whether you are applying for work as a cabin inspector, a financial officer, a telephone interviewer, or an administrative assistant.  While it is intended to promote the hiring of “disadvantaged groups”, it has the effect of discriminating against other groups, even when those groups are, ironically, underrepresented in the positions that are being filled.

Indeed, for certain jobs, and even overall, it appears that affirmative action would need to be applied in the opposite direction, at least where the sexes are concerned.   In the federal civil service, 54.7% of employees are female, as were 57% of employees hired in 2008/09. But only 51% of the population is female.  It would thus appear that men need help, not women.

The opposition parties (the socialist Liberals and the communist New Democrat Party) oppose the review because they’re racists. They judge people based on the color of their skin, not on the content of their character.

Commentary

Bobby Jindal explains how Obama’s drilling moratorium will cost jobs

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Bobby and Supriya Jindal

Story here in the Washington Post. (H/T Ace of Spades)

Excerpt:

Against this backdrop, the federal government unwisely chose to add insult to injury by decreeing a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the gulf. This ill-advised and ill-considered moratorium, which a federal judge called “arbitrary” and “capricious,” creates a second disaster for our economy, throwing thousands of hardworking folks out of their jobs and causing real damage to many families. Now this federal policy risks killing 20,000 more jobs and will result in a loss of $65 million to $135 million in wages each month.

To ensure that such a disaster does not happen again, should the federal government increase oversight, or require additional and better equipment or on-site federal inspectors, or even temporarily pause drilling at specific rigs for additional reviews? Of course. Could it? Of course. But by simply stopping all deepwater drilling, federal officials appear more interested in ideology and scoring political points — as they have done with the misguided cap-and-trade legislation — at the expense of Americans who derive their livelihood from the energy industry.

Let’s be clear: This moratorium will do nothing to clean up the Gulf of Mexico, and it is already doing great harm to many hardworking citizens. The effects will extend well beyond Louisiana. Since the moratorium was announced, America has already lost two rigs to foreign countries. More drilling companies are negotiating right now to work elsewhere. Every time we decrease our level of production, we make America more dependent on foreign sources of energy.

On those few occasions when our country suffers a commercial airline tragedy, we do not respond by stopping all air travel for six months. Rather, we get to work figuring out the root cause and set about trying to make air travel safer. We don’t grind everything to a halt and put tens of thousands of people out of work, jeopardizing our economy.

And these jobs are typically male jobs, so you really undermining the man’s role as protector and provider in the family when you go after jobs typically done by men. And I’m sure that some of the foreign countries we buy oil from are not sympathetic with American national security and foreign policy.

What about Paul Ryan?

But Jindal’s not the only one making sense in the news. (H/T Hot Air)

I hope that Bobby Jindal and Paul Ryan run for President in 2012. Ryan is passionate and informed about the budget, and Jindal is passionate and informed about business and job creation. Let’s elect some grown-ups, and get back to the 4.5% unemployment rate that we had under George W. Bush.