Democrat Math

A writer to the Independent Coast Observer (our local weekly newspaper) recently demonstrated that many public employee jobs at an average annual salary of $65,000 could be saved by diverting campaign finance money to fund their continued employment. This is truly an apples and oranges concept: public employees are paid from taxes; campaigns are financed by contributions. How the money would get from the one pot to the other puzzles me. Short of an outright donation to the government, which I encourage all Liberals who think they aren’t taxed enough to make, this is not doable.

However, I surmise the letter writer’s point was that funding Republican campaigns was a waste of money, and that Democrats spending twice as much was not, since this was not mentioned. This inspired me to examine government money wasted supporting clean energy development which could be better used.

In a January report, CBS News featured 12 clean energy companies that were having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five already filed for bankruptcy: the junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy, and the infamous Solyndra. Abound Solar Manufacturing, Longmont, Colo. recipient of a $400 million federal loan guarantee, just laid off 280 workers, 70% reduction of its workforce.

Using Republican math, $6.5 billion would fund 100,000 public employee jobs at $65,000 each per annum to vote for Democrats. Using Liberal math, Democrats would take credit for saving 100 million public employee jobs even if the unemployment rate stayed over eight percent, and still get all their votes.

Since there are only 310 million Americans, the Democrat claim would not pass the smell test but that wouldn’t stop them from making it or their Liberal supporters from believing it. Democrats just get a lot more from numbers than Republicans can.