May 08, 2004
Unemployment-lover!
So New York Congressman Anthony Weiner, an opponent of the city's planned Jets stadium in Manhattan, is instead backing a cheaper stadium site in Queens. And so Local 580 of the Ironworkers' Union protested this perceived threat to possible employment by setting up a ten-foot inflatable rat outside Weiner's office. At which point Mayor Mike Bloomberg, in his weekly radio address, chimed in: "There's a congressman who's allegedly running for mayor who was picketed yesterday, 'cause he's against jobs! This is a jobs issue."
For the record, the Jets project 6,700 new permanent jobs from the stadium, which would cost the city and state $600 million in taxpayer money. That's about $90,000 in public expense per job created, or in economic development terms, pretty craptacular: the federal government limits economic development funds to projects coming in at no more than $35,000 per job created, while state job training programs have been found to cost an average of $2,300 per new job.
