{"id":26353,"date":"2011-08-30T15:23:31","date_gmt":"2011-08-30T19:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=26353"},"modified":"2011-08-30T15:24:03","modified_gmt":"2011-08-30T19:24:03","slug":"the-dumbest-crap-ever-written","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=26353","title":{"rendered":"The dumbest crap ever written"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought I’d read the dumbest shit ever written at Veterans Today and from Gordon Duff, but this one from the Old Media has everything over there beat hands down. In the Minnesota Post<\/a> is an article written by Doug Grow entitled “This week’s American Legion gathering is latest evidence that government does create jobs”;<\/p>\n

It has become popular \u2014 especially among conservative voices \u2014 to say that government doesn’t create jobs and economic growth; that only the private sector can do that. Government, the voices say, needs to get out of the way.<\/p>\n

But this week, more than 10,000 members of the American Legion will be in the Twin Cities, filling up hotels and restaurants throughout downtown Minneapolis. Before they leave, the delegates to the convention are expected to spend from $17 million to $22 million in the region.<\/p>\n

Much of the money will end up in state coffers directly through sales taxes and indirectly by income taxes paid by people whose jobs depend on tourism dollars. According to Explore Minnesota, there are 70,000 people in Hennepin County alone whose jobs revolve around travel and tourism.<\/p>\n

The point: The Legion delegates \u2014 and the thousands of delegates from dozens of other large conventions \u2014 wouldn’t be here without the Minneapolis Convention Center.<\/p>\n

The convention center is a product of government. It’s owned by the city. It’s built \u2014 and maintained \u2014 through a variety of hotel, restaurant and entertainment taxes. Authority for levying those taxes came from the 1986 Legislature.<\/p>\n

Government doesn’t create jobs? The convention center would seem to be a small example of a different reality. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fucking brilliant. One local government builds a convention center and it’s proof that conservatives are bone heads. How can Grow translate that into a national jobs program? Is Obama going to fund a series of convention centers?<\/p>\n

The structure, which opened in 1989, is not self-sustaining. Tax collections from hotel, liquor and restaurant taxes amount to about $48 million a year. $18 million of that is used to subsidize operations of the building, and the rest goes to pay off debt and keep the center as current as possible.<\/p>\n

But by continuing to invest, Tennant said, “the building remains ahead of the [national] competition.”<\/p>\n

“It’s designed to be a loss leader,” said Tennant. “There’s an effort to minimize the losses. But in every way, it’s been a great public investment.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, so it doesn’t make enough money to be profitable without continuously dipping into taxpayer pockets, but somehow it’s proof that government creates jobs, huh? Funny, but something that costs more in taxes than it’s worth is hardly an asset to taxpayers, Mr. Grow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought I’d read the dumbest shit ever written at Veterans Today and from Gordon Duff, … The dumbest crap ever written<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}