The government was caught lying about how many jobs were supposedly “created or saved” by the misnamed American Recovery and Reinvestment act, otherwise known as the $787 billion “stimulus package.” And even with their grossly inflated numbers, the jobs are likely some of the most expensive in human history.

In a review of the government’s count, the Associated Press discovered errors with one in six jobs out of over 30,000 attributed to federal contracts under the stimulus program. Widespread errors and misleading standards for reporting combined with other factors led to an almost 20 percent discrepancy.

“Even in its limited review, the AP found job counts that were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of paid positions; jobs credited to the stimulus program that were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs that were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced,” the news agency reported, citing specific recipients that gave existing workers raises and reported it as jobs saved, contractors that had employees counted multiple times and a myriad of other errors.

A hearing was held by the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, chaired by John Conyers (D-Mich.), on October 28 that allowed Conyers to grill NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and NFL Players Association leader DeMaurice Smith on the connection between head injuries from playing football and later brain diseases.

Conyers asked Goodell whether he thought there is an injury-disease link. Goodell responded that the NFL isn't waiting for that debate to play out and is taking steps to make the game safer, and that he wasn’t a medical expert and couldn’t give any better answer. But Conyers pressed with, "I just asked you a simple question. What is the answer?”

Both Goodell and Smith agreed to turn over players’ medical records to the committee. One would think that because the NFL is a private corporation and that medical records are private, the records would remain in the hands of the NFL.

According to The Wall Street Journal today, the education departments of 15 states lowered their proficiency standards for reading or math between 2005 and 2007. Eight raised their standards.

Quoting WSJ:

The federal law requires all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014, but leaves to each state the job of measuring achievement.

The article goes on and discusses this, that, and the other, thereby missing the point: The average American student has never gained the skills in math and reading that his father and grandfather had and even they were deficient compared to the students of years gone by who went to little red school houses and sat together in one class.

One does not have to look any further for confirmation of that fact than to visit antique book stores and find old reading and grammar texts used in the Nineteenth Century.

Yet the cost for educating students in the basics was a lot cheaper. The more government has gotten involved, the higher the cost has become and the less effective education has become.

In addition, the liberal arts undergirding the Constitution, logic, and morality lessons have all but disappeared. The reason is that ultimately when government is involved in education; only what the government wants taught will be taught. And government always wants to rule; therefore, only what sets the stage for the people to be ruled will find a place in the curricula. The liberal arts, the core education necessary to develop the truly free intellect that is a mark of the fully autonomous and independent individual, has necessarily, under government's control of education, been almost entirely marginalized, if not consigned to the dust bin of history.