What about the Sequester!?

Remember the Sequester?

Yeah. That's gone with the new budget deal.

Thanks Democrats and Republicans.

Thanks for removing any chance of moving towards a balanced budget.

Thanks for helping devalue the dollar even more.

Thanks for nothin'!

Department of Education spends more during the Sequester

Calling out more spending during the sequester. Have to do it because we heard how much the sequester would hurt education.

Where's the hurt?

Date	Project	Amount
February 25	Improve lowest-performing schools	$15,000,000
March 7	Baltimore School Shooting Recovery	$35,000
March 11	School Improvement Grants (SIG)	$69,600,000
March 27	2013 Investing in Innovation Competition	$150,000,000
April 16	Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge	$370,000,000
April 19	TAACCCT	$474,500,000
April 19	Project SERV Grant	$48,000
May 20	Arizona SIG	$10,400,000
TOTAL		$1,089,583,000

It's the Sequester and spending is for the birds.

Since the sequester gets blamed for the closing of White House tours, cutting air traffic controllers, and delayed flights, I must point out stupid spending when government blogs go about advertising their spending as if it were a good thing. So what is it today?

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is spending $3.5 million on conservation projects across the Americas to boost the number of birds. That's not in the U.S. but the Americas.

Who does this include receiving money? Panama, Paraguay, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

At some point we need to spend money on people instead of birds. Really, the government needs to stop spending money. But if we are in financial problems we really shouldn't be giving money to other countries to spend on birds. If they want to save the birds they can spend their own tax dollars, not ours!

How did we get here? The government is crying broke, cuts back on industries that makes money ( air travel ), and spends it on birds!? Even if the country didn't have economic problems the government shouldn't be spending money on this, much less sending money to other countries for it.

Face it. Obama and the administration does not care about you.

More Sequester Spending

How bad is the Department of Education? Well, they don't understand the meaning of sequester.

Sorry to say it but they announced more spending, again.

The topic of the DoEd's post says it all:

U.S. Department of Education Awards More Than $48,000 to Help Vermont’s Windham Central Supervisory Union Recover From Teen Suicide

Yes it's a shame a kid committed suicide. But it happens.

Is the right step though to take $48,000 from tax payers and give it to the school district? For what? Nothing was destroyed.

But there are children's psyches to consider. We need to help them!

• Yeah. There's nothing more convenient than a strawman argument.

I have some free therapy I found on youtube. You're welcome.

Here's the current tally of sequester spending damage from the DoEd alone.

Date	Project	Amount
February 25	Improve lowest-performing schools	$15,000,000
March 7	Baltimore School Shooting Recovery	$35,000
March 11	School Improvement Grants (SIG)	$69,600,000
March 27	2013 Investing in Innovation Competition	$150,000,000
April 16	Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge	$370,000,000
April 19	TAACCCT	$474,500,000
April 19	Project SERV Grant	$48,000
TOTAL		$1,079,183,000

Trifecta on the Sequester

Stephen Green has a brilliant solution.

Spike the One Billion Sequester Mark

Remember the sequester? The Department of Education remembers it and has blog posts about how it will hurt education and the kids. However, the DoEd just simply ignores its ramifications and spend, spends, spends.

Where is all the hurt I have heard about?

We now have $370 million for "Race to the Top-Early Learning" competition to get kids ready to learn or as the post said "close the school readiness gap." So this is money not even to teach but to get kids ready to learn.

The post is really interesting in that it brags about the billions it gets in Obama's proposed budget. But we cannot count proposed money. But we can laugh at its absurd levels.

The most recent DoEd post announced $474.5 million in spending. Somehow it is to make college workers skilled for the factory. Uhm ... 'scuze me?

Factory workers need to be skilled tradesmen. Skilled. But we keep pumping on book knowledge and not skills. In other words, we don't train people to work with their hands anymore.

Our education system has been turned upside down thinking a society needs only book learned people. If you cannot conform to a cubical, screw you.

But really, ...

We are giving up money to undo the eduction of people to be smart enough to not work in factories to learn the skills to work in a factory. Are you kidding me!?

This is the DoEd at work.

Date	Project	Amount
February 25	Improve lowest-performing schools	$15,000,000
March 7	Baltimore School Shooting Recovery	$35,000
March 11	School Improvement Grants (SIG)	$69,600,000
March 27	2013 Investing in Innovation Competition	$150,000,000
April 16	Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge	$370,000,000
April 19	TAACCCT	$474,500,000
TOTAL		$1,079,135,000

Really? During the sequester we have tripled announced spending at the DoEd in one week over the previous months.

There is no sequester people. Only vampires about sucking your cash.

1 2

The Sequester has not slowed down the Dept. of Education

It isn't even funny anymore. The Department of Education has been bemoaning the sequester but keeps announcing new spending. They did it again this week.

The Department of Education continually wants more money to improve low performing schools. Unfortunately, because of the union, firing low performing teachers will never be the solution. So good teachers will continue to accelerate their students under these initiatives while the DoEdu scratches its head why these new ideas don't work when bad teachers implement them in a half-donkey way.

The DoEdu's ADDITIONAL spending so far under the sequester.

Date	Project	Amount
February 25	Improve lowest-performing schools	$15,000,000
March 7	Baltimore School Shooting Recovery	$35,000
March 11	School Improvement Grants (SIG)	$69,600,000
March 27	2013 Investing in Innovation Competition	$150,000,000
TOTAL		$234,635,000

Third time the Dept. of Ed. announces spending during the Sequester

Twice I have pointed out that the same day the Department of Education complained about the sequester they also announced new spending.^{1 2} I thought this recent post was a follow-up to the first one I caught because both posts are about under performing schools. I was wrong.

The first post was about $15 million to be awarded to low performing schools. This recent post was an announcement of eleven states to receive money to turn around low performing schools, but the amount does not total $15 million. This is the list of awardees and amounts:

Connecticut	$3.6 million
Kentucky	$7.7 million
Maryland	$6.8 million
Minnesota	$5.5 million
Mississippi	$6.1 million
New Mexico	$4.1 million
Ohio	$20.2 million
South Carolina	$7.4 million
South Dakota	$1.5 million
Utah	$3.4 million
West Virginia	$3.3 million
Total	$69.6 million

There isn't any hurt going on during the sequester.

1 2