OFF-THE-CUFF

As always, Vernon Center on July 4 begets big bangs and a parade of orange and red fire trucks and a heavenly sprinkling of kiddie candy.

It’s where I have Independence Day fun. So in that spirit, I’m going to have fun with this column and light some M-80s. Hold your ears and away we go….

Over the years, I have read so many online news articles about government mismanagement of tax money that seeing new examples usually just causes shrugged shoulders and heavy sighs and nothing more. But on rare occasions I become a bit worked up and sometimes write about it here. That writing acts as a catharsis. It’s great mental health therapy. While reading a news article recently from nbcbayarea.com, I became a tad more worked up than usual. For whatever reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about how hard many of you (and I) work to earn the tax money our government sometimes wastes (see below)—and how government inefficiency causes so much needless personal suffering….

From nbcbayarea.com: Two federal stimulus grants of $1.5 million combined are funding University of California San Francisco (UCSF) research studies on “the accurate reporting of someone’s sexual history” and “erectile dysfunction of overweight middle-aged men.” I don’t know about you, but to me $1.5 million seems a lot.

The first of the two UCSF studies, which cost us $1.26 million, involves California researchers trying to identify ways to better assess the HIV/AIDS risk of people with multiple partners and those with sexually risky behaviors by improving their sex survey response accuracy on sexual behavior questions. According to UCSF’s grant application on recovery.gov, the researchers interviewed 200 people using “an innovative method of administering a survey interview—conversational interviewing—that has shown remarkable improvements in respondents’ understanding of survey questions and in the accuracy of the responses when compared to administering it using the standardized interviewing method.”

An NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit (from a San Francisco TV station) learned the study included 200 people interviewed, 11 university researchers, two consultants, and created/saved exactly 0.78 jobs, which most certainly meant the 11 researchers were already on salary. Somehow they spent $6,300 per person interviewed.

I can do the math. Had that $1.26 million been used exclusively to actually create jobs it could have employed, for example, 11 additional full-time university researchers earning $50 an hour for about 57 weeks. But for some reason that $1.26 million resulted in only 0.78 jobs created/saved—in other words, the equivalent of one part-time worker…..

In the other grant you and I paid for, according to recovery.org, UCSF was a $251,000 sub-recipient of a $726,000 Rhode Island hospital grant designed “to complete the scientific planning and administrative activities required to conduct a clinical trial on the efficacy of lifestyle intervention to treat obese men with erective dysfunction…Recent studies suggest that lifestyle intervention (weight loss and increased activity) may offer a promising new approach that could improve erectile dysfunction and reduce cardiovascular disease risk.”

I don’t know about you, but to me $726,000 seems a lot—especially when the project created/saved just 1.61 jobs. I can do the math. That $251,000 sent to San Francisco alone could have created summer jobs for 70 unemployed, inner-city youths working at $10 an hour for 30 hours a week over 12 weeks…..

Three logical questions: How many jobs could you create with $1.5 million? Could you surpass the overall federal stimulus ratio of one job created/saved for every $278,000 spent? And finally, and most importantly, how many Americans right now—or Minnesotans, for that matter—are unemployed and on food stamps and emotionally suffering because this inefficient “jobs” stimulus package specifically created to employ them didn’t?

As editor, I often hear business owners large and small describe the constant pressure they feel knowing the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of their business decisions ultimately will affect their employees’ lives and families. Many deeply fear unwisely spending their money and because of it perhaps having to lay off employees. Somehow I don’t believe government decision makers—Republican, Democrat, and bureaucrat alike—feel that same burden and pressure when supposedly trying to create the maximum number of jobs per taxpayer dollar spent…..

Now I feel a catharsis coming on. Thanks for reading over the last 18 years southern Minnesota’s first and only locally owned business magazine. Stay tuned because we have a surprise brewing for our September/October issue. Until then, have a great summer.