Sounds like a good use of The People’s (borrowed against the future) money, eh?
Majority of funds for climate change program went to repave Bloomsburg parking lots
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is sending $740,000 to Pennsylvania for “critical infrastructure to combat climate change” – but most of the money will go toward repaving parking lots.
The USDA Rural Development program provides taxpayer money for all sorts of programs, from infrastructure to health care to environmental and economic concerns in the rural parts of America. In fiscal year 2022, it provided almost $1.5 billion for local projects.
Its latest announcement noted 16 projects in Pennsylvania, but the lion’s share of the funding will go to four parking lots in Bloomsburg.
“These 16 projects represent Pennsylvania’s diverse rural economy and will strengthen its resilience,” USDA State Director Bob Morgan said in a news release. “The Biden-Harris Administration has created a roadmap for how we can tackle the climate crisis and expand access to renewable energy infrastructure.”
That roadmap has a strong emphasis on cars.
“The Town of Bloomsburg in Columbia County received a $500,000 grant to repave four parking lots in the town,” the news release noted. “The aging infrastructure needs major repairs. Improvements of these lots will impact more than 30 businesses that are within a block radius of the proposed project.”
It is unclear how parking lots are critical infrastructure against climate change, though local businesses may benefit from customers having higher-quality parking nearby.
You think?
Gubmint spending has always been a leaky bucket. Just look at the billions stolen via forgiven PPP “loans”.
PPP loans were intended to be forgiven. It was part of the grift. Since there is nothing humans can do about climate change because it happens naturally the entire theory is a scam. Not unusual for leftist democommies. That’s why all the new billionaires and such are democommies. It’s a matter of wealth redistribution. You know how the lefties like Dowd are always screaming about the injustice of wealth inequality (like a surgeon should get the same as a trash collector) yet they keep coming up with climate schemes to make rich democommies richer off our money. And like that’s not enough now they want us to pay for college for the rich. All lies and all a grift.
Don’t forget the COVID relief money being used to give teachers raises because the money was “leftover”.
Perhaps higher pay will keep teachers from leaving the profession. But then conservatives have no use for education.
Bloomsburg is located in the northern half of Pennsylvania, east of central PA but not really eastern Pennsylvania. Decent town, surrounded by very rural areas. People need cars to get around the area, and people driving cars need places to park them if they are in or visiting Bloomsburg. Other than Bloomsburg University, the town ain’t much of a much.
You misrepresent the idea that working class people should be paid more. Society needs garbage collectors too. The American economic system has “evolved” to funnel money UP to the wealthy.
BTW, most of the college loan forgiveness doesn’t go to the “rich”. America does have a college tuition problem that needs to be resolved.
BTW, should those “rich” people screwed by tRump University (scam) have their loans forgiven since the University “president” doesn’t pay taxes? (Since TU was a fake university they couldn’t take part in student loan programs). TU was such a scam that even TEXAS went after them, that is until tRump donated $35,000 to the Gov Abbott campaign).
I think that everyone can agree that education is a good thing. I myself am on a life-long path of giving and receiving knowledge. The argument is who should pay for it. What are the incentives in society that we put into place to get not just more education, but better education that improves society?
We can vividly demonstrate that the US Government is the least efficient way to run or pay for anything of value. So instead of government backed student loans, let’s let the universities themselves back the loans their students take out. Then if the university produces a crap education with no market value, it is the university itself that pays the cost for that poor product. And unlike the federal government, students can bring class action lawsuits against negligent universities or even discharge their debts in bankruptcy. No government “forgiveness” program needed.
Education can either be a hobby or an investment. The difference is the return on investment. For a hobby, no return is expected. Those people should pay for their education out of pocket with no loans.
It is the perverse incentives created by free government-backed unlimited student loans that allows young people to invest other people’s money into their hobby that has no possibility of every being paid back. It further allows them to add their living expenses to the loans thus making their college time filled with parties, vacations, and a standard of living that they will not earn on their own for perhaps decades.
Obviously, anyone with an unpayable debt, from an unmarketable degree, would prefer that someone else pay their debt. And they would be grateful to whoever promised to give them that free stuff. People who think like that are already solid democrat party voters. So this program isn’t geared as much to buying votes as it is to transferring wealth to the party faithful. This is what the modern Democratic party is all about. At least since the Obama administration, looting the federal treasury is the only real goal of the Democratic party.
Speaking of perverse incentives, what sort of behavior do you suppose society gets more of when they pay off the students loans for all those bad investments, but not paying the loans of the good investments?
Further… we already have a Department of Labor, complete with a Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a Department of Education AND a part of the government that collects vast information about everyone’s earnings (IRS).
What if all those agencies could talk to each other and then produce a giant spreadsheet on the present market value of various degrees from each university? Then public schools (under the control of the government) could force students to see those results before making a costly decision to buy a potentially expensive and useless degree. They could even post that spreadsheet in a place where everyone could potentially see it (the internet).
The Department of Labor could even make projections about what skills would be highly demanded in 5-10 years and which skills had no value ever.
Finally, government backed loans and grants for education would be tied to those high-value-low cost programs and degrees exclusively. Thus: learn engineering from state college, get paid for. learn advanced grievance mongering at Yale, get the cold shoulder.
But that would require a government that actually functioned like they claimed it would when they created those departments.
Prof,
Something has to be done about the cost. The loans are obviously an issue, but little will help until the cost is addressed. I think that the cost is so inflated because of government involvement. That is the pattern in medicine. If it is suspected that the government is coming, we generally jack price in order to compensate for the real or imagined restrictions that will follow government rules. In the 60s, the rule of thumb for college cost was figured on the ability of a student to earn during the summer and earnings as part time work during the school year. I know, walking to school in the snow and other hearts and tears. But I do remember the debate on cost centered around how much a student could earn.
In medicine, loans are forgiven if the doctor or nurse works in a hardship circumstance, such as Indian reservation, etc. Perhaps similar could be arranged for other occupations. That would help here in Louisiana as in state graduates haul ass elsewhere on graduation.
Cost by itself is not relevant. Cost-Value is the right ratio. If the return on investment is profitable, it doesn’t matter if the cost is astronomical. There are lots of problems in this equation. Too many students that don’t belong in college, so the colleges cater to them by offering easy courses. The big name places have more candidates than they can serve, so they jack the prices to the stratosphere (supply-demand) and give some free positions to minorities to fees good about themselves. Harvard has a large enough endowment that they could offer all of their students a free ride every year.
Understand. Do these kids get some guidance on future earnings and other aspects of their anticipated curriculum? I have bee away so long that it is impossible to know what they are told. Also, I note that the Ivy leagues are a big deal in the north, not so much here. But we run into similar issues. Relatives have insisted on going to Baylor when UT or on of the other state schools would be better, not to mention that Baylor sucks.
No. Kids are fed total BS where costs are never mentioned and very little of the curriculum is ever discussed. Just glossy pictures of attractive students hanging out together and broad promises about the total college experience. Every high school guidance counselor should be fired for incompetence. They really are totally useless and their job title is to provide guidance. It’s almost as if the schools really don’t want the kids or their parents to have any information to make good choices.
The worst of the worst are MBA students. They should know before signing up how to do a cost-benefit analysis as well as a return on investment calculation, but if any of them ever did, there wouldn’t be any students in those programs.
Anyone could see this coming. Our infrastructure is a mess all across the country. Red States and Blue States.
In travelling Everywhere I went in 2020-2021 there was road construction everywhere and I do mean everywhere.
No one was spending money on covid. They were buying masks, and vaccines and PPE but that cost them 100 million dollars. then with with other 100 billion they were fixing roads all across the country. Had to get their brother in laws contractor business plenty of business.
This is why the USA is fast going broke.
The government throws 1 trillion dollars and a 100 billion dollar problem. They will give a state billions to build a million dollar bridge. They fund OPERA HOUSES when everything is locked down. They do not fund Joes eatery or Bills bar and grill but they will spend millions renovating an opera house or community arts center that is closed.
Nothing new about them building parking lots. USE IT OR LOSE IT!!
Wow 3 million is such a big scary number!!
Teach forgot to mention how many evictions there are in an average year. Now everyone is going to have to look it up for themselves so as to put that big scary number in correct context
Since Pennsylvania has (from long distance Truckers) the reputation of having the worst roads in the USA, you might think that money could have gone to road maintenance and/or repairs.
But Noooooooooo.
As an Aside:
Whatever happened to all those Shovel-Ready infrastructure projects? Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. oversaw those projects, iirc.
That money went into pockets of people with connections… just like all the rest.