Nervous About PubliCola

Nervous About Rumors — PubliCola.

It would help Publicola separate itself from the rest of the lame-stream media (I'm afraid that Palin did call it correctly) by using TIME as an element of rumor-spreading.

For example, you state above "Democrats in Olympia are working on a potential $1.5 billion bond proposal for construction projects to send to voters this year. The current package—being discussed on both the senate and house side—would end up bringing in about $100 million through sales tax revenues from construction and would create about 30,000 construction jobs."

Don't you think your rumor might be a little more useful if you could add some thing like "...and would create about 30,000 construction jobs FOR X PERIOD OF TIME?"   Or maybe acknowledge that "...would create about 30,000 construction jobs BUT NO ONE IN OLYMPIA WANTS TO DISCUSS HOW LONG THE JOBS WILL LAST."

The number of jobs created really shouldn't be much consideration of any political calculus -- it's absurd to borrow money to create jobs UNLESS YOU REALLY WANT THE WORK DONE. But much of the justification for any project always involves "job creation." That is natural politics but bad public policy.

So it's even more absurd for Publicola to fail to ask whether those construction jobs are for the NEXT THIRTY YEARS (the presumed lifetime of the bonds) or the NEXT SIX MONTHS (a plausible duration for a project.)