I DIDN'T KNOW I COST $228,934... DAMN...

them boots ain't no good no mo'......loaned 'em to cuzzin early came back all slimy....

Snarky I don't think the Savannah site qualifies as municipal infrastructure. It's not even in town...

Seriously though, it serves the nation, not a municipality or even state. So yeah, that is definitely Federal. Geez, do we have to educate you progressives the difference between local, state and Federal?

I work for my state's labor department. My unit is responsible for allocating ARRA ("Recovery") funds to local governments for there job training and placement activities and for collecting the jobs "created" or "saved" using recovery dollars. First problem. This money has a two-year lifespan, which means that after at the end of the two-year funding, the money for those jobs, and most likely the jobs, will disappear. Income redistribution does nothing to stimulate the economy. It only rearranges who has the money. During conference calls with the Feds (Employment & Training Administration, ETA) the moderators had little guidance on the definitions of "jobs created or retained". They settled on a definition that anyone hired using ARRA dollars is a "job created", even though temporary. "Jobs saved" baffled everyone. The White House promoted the idea that anyone who charged their time to ARRA was in a "job saved". The theory was that those jobs might not have continued if it were not for the ARRA funds. When ETA questioned whether only jobs that were in jeopardy and charged to ARRA should be counted or all jobs who charge to ARRA. The WH, hemmed and hawed. They didn't know the answer but in a mealy-mouthed fashion hinted that all of them should be counted in this way, regaredless of whether it was in jeopardy. Also, part time jobs charged to ARRA were aggregated and averaged to calculate a number of full-time equivalents. So many jobs counted as full time jobs are actually comprised of a number of part-time and temporary jobs. The audio of thesed conference calls are still on the web on the Workforce3One website, at www.workforce3one.org

You said 'Hey Snarky, if you think that's a great investment, you pay for it then. Stay out of my wallet, thief."

so, your advocating for the privatization of municipal infrastructure?

Let's take the first one http://www.savannahrivernuclearsolutions.com/

""Our mission at the Savannah River Site is to serve the nation through safe, secure, cost-effective
management of our nuclear weapons stockpile, nuclear materials, and the environment. ""

So, rather than the govt contracting out this work, we should just...what? sell all this to the highest bidder and let them do whatever they want with it on the free market?

Neal, Im surprised that you, too are taken in by this.
I had a plan that would have hired 10 people at $9.00/hr. I would have needed about $2million. I would have had to rent space, and lease equipment, etc. Each job requires a physical plant of some sort. I can't speal for these billion dollar projects, but mine was to be "green" and hire people within 2 weeks of recieving the money. Only problem is, Houston statred a plan similar, so I'm SOL.

And Joyce, They did the same thing to a major road (Westheimer) in houston.

DAMIFINO.......youz one rich sumbitch......you gotta knife to slice dem beans.....

we gotta use a rock........don't work so good........but they git real...... W I D E..

Hey Snarky, if you think that's a great investment, you pay for it then. Stay out of my wallet, thief.

Jack-- "benefits of socialism" That's a real laugh. If you think socialism has benefits then you are quite gullible. Give me a call sometime, I'd like to sell you some bridges and swamp land. Actually, socialism does have some benefits...for the government leeches in charge.

These are DOE facilities, except maybe 1. Just the government funnelling our money back to themselves. I doubt any jobs were created- just held on to existing folk. One can't get a clearance to work at one of these facilities under 6 months.

There are no benefits of socialism. It is a complete loss of individual liberty and RESPONSIBITY. That last part is what people find hard to swallow. Socialists don't want to take individual responsibility.

In 2006 Kia broke ground on a new plant in West Point, GA; it officially opened this month – cost, $1.2 billion. The job projection is 30,000+ by mid 2010 between Kia, the jobs in the town, and the other jobs required to support all the businesses.

So Kia has single handedly matched Obama’s numbers (Kia’s can at least be verified) and spent an amount equal to $40,000 per job created. And to boot there is an ROI for Kia.

This would average to 6000 jobs per year that Kia created, at no cost to the taxpayers.

There are over 4,000,000 small businesses with between 1 and 99 employees in the United States. If each one hired just one more person in one year that would be over 4 million jobs at no cost to the taxpayers.

Each one of those projects listed is related to a national science or defense lab. The overhead for these jobs can be over $300k to hire a new employee, depending on the position (PhD's cost over 300, tech staff ~200, maintenance are around 80+). This covers salary, benefits (retirement, health, etc), work space, supporting staff costs, etc. Anyone in a management position knows that an employee doesn't just cost a salary. Neal, I'm shocked that you don't point this out.

This map shows unemployment over time.

http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html

We all know Lamar is a miserable RINO. Just check out his voting record.

http://www.votesmart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=15691

Makes you wonder why Tennessee got so much of the stimulus money instead of places like Michigan and Ohio where the populace are down to eating fatback and beans.

These "per job" calculations ignore the fact that labor is not the only cost involved in most projects.

For example, let's suppose a new highway is being built. There are costs for labor, indeed. But there are also costs to buy concrete, pay for equipment (and maintenance thereof), acquire land, conduct design studies, and so on. And each of these payments creates jobs for the payees: at the local concrete contractor, at places that rent out and maintain equipment (and indirectly the equipment manufacturers) . . . and when the highway is at last built, there is a benefit to the economy . . people and goods move more efficiently and more quickly.

Ascertaining "economic impact" or "jobs created" is a "soft science", and depending on your assumptions and math, you can present whatever picture you need to paint. It happens all the time in debates about government funding of sports stadiums.

without the aspect of time as a divisor (not to mention many other factors like materials cost, overhead, etc), these numbers are rather silly.

not to mention the per job cost, even if it's one year, the majority of them aren't that high for a single person, let alone dozens compared with, say, the single year salary of an AM talk radio host. :-}