Some have said that the stimulus hasn't saved any jobs, but here is a case where at least one job was saved.Oregon State University Athletic Director Bob DeCarolis was considering firing their basketball coach, Craig Robinson, after an 8-11 start (2-5 in the Pac 10 conference). When word of this reached Washington, Undersecretary of Education Martha Kanter was dispatched to Corvallis with $17 million in stimulus money for the university. Craig Robinson's job is safe for this year. For those of you unfamiliar with Coach Robinson, he just so happens to be Michelle Obama's brother. Just a coincidence I'm sure!
Of course as most of these go, it was immediately suspect. In the first place colleges rarely replace their coaches in the middle of the season. After checking out Oregon State's basketball program I found that this season was Craig Robinson's second one at OSU. He inherited the program after an 0 - 18 season. It then became very clear that he had no where to go but up and would not have been fired after but one season. After all, he won 18 games his first season.
In the second place it is highly doubtful that 17 million dollars would have been quietly given to a college to save a basketball coach's job. I am sure there are enough Republicans in the state college system in Oregon to find out about such a move. It would have hit the news outlets big time. I further doubt that 17 million dollars could have saved a coach's job, if the alumni wanted him out. Finally, stimulus money would very doubtfully have gone straight to a school without a middle man somewhere along the way.
After this bit of research and thought, which took a couple of minutes at best, I went over to truthorfiction.com to see what that site had to say about the situation. As I suspected, it put the email in the "fiction" category. No surprise. It is scary to see how these silly emails get passed along by people who want to believe this nonsense. The friend who sent it to me responded to me that he was glad that he sent it on because it was so "heart warming." In other words he wanted to believe it and he wanted others to believe it.
Just another example of the lack of thought and consideration about the plethora of misleading information on the internet and on the airwaves. If it is written, they believe it. If it is spoken, it is the truth. After all it is passed on by such trusted sources as FOX Noise, the Washington Post, unfortunately now, the Wall St. Journal, Rush, Sean, BillO, and their ilk.
