To me this looks like misleading accounting with the intent to make the government look bad.
For example, people whose jobs were saved because of $70 mln in DPW spending obviously did not earn $1.5 million/year. Where is the money? Two thirds of the DPW stimulus budget involved street resurfacing projects. There are substantial costs associated with these projects, in addition to direct labor costs, (e.g. equipment rental and raw materials) and you can’t say that spending money to buy asphalt and rent heavy equipment does not create jobs. Were all these jobs counted correctly? I bet they weren’t.
About those traffic lights. Notice that the cost quoted is ‘per location’. At a typical intersection, there are at least eight normal traffic lights (x3 or 4 light bulbs each), + pedestrian traffic lights. One traffic-light-sized LED light bulb can cost on the order of $100. So $5000 per intersection, including labor, seems reasonable. Again, where does most of the money go? To light bulb manufacturers. Those are probably located in the United States because of the ‘buy American’ provision in the stimulus bill (Republicans wanted to take it out, but failed). Did anyone count jobs saved and created in the company that produced and supplied light bulbs, and in the company that produced raw materials for those light bulbs …? Evidently not.
