Based on the Recovery.gov data, more than two third of the 594,754.3 jobs “created or saved” with the stimulus funds were “created or saved” in the Department of Education (see chart).  Basically, what the administration meant by shovel ready projects was funding for your next door teacher.

Now, let’s recap some of findings and news of the previous weeks.

1. Most jobs are created in the Department of Education

2. In 2009, for the first time ever, more public-sector employees (7.9 million) belonged to a union than did private-sector employees (7.4 million) despite there being five times more wage and salary workers in the private sector.

3. A third of all union jobs are in Education

4. 33 percent of the education industry is unionized

5.  The union boss, Andy Stern, was appointed to be on the president’s debt commission.

It all makes sense, doesn’t it?

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Because it wasn’t painful enough to know that the “stimulus” money is heavily used to pay for the union-inflated salaries of thousands of bureaucrats in the states, or paying for jobs in phantom districts, or even better, going to recipients who happily spent it without creating any jobs, now we can see how much of the “stimulus” money is going to pay for picnic tables or to replace the motor of a government-owned boat.

For instance, I can see now that R. J. THOMAS MANUFACTURING COMPANY, INC received 4 different awards totaling roughly a $110,000 in exchange for picnic tables (because we know how stimulating these are)

Check out this website called Stimulus Watch. It allows you to search for contracts and grant awards by state and city, by awarding agency, or by recipient. And they will even have a keyword search soon. The really cool aspect of the site is that once you find an award that interests you, you can vote on whether you are satisfied with it or not, add to the wiki description of the project, and join in the conversation about the award in the comments section.