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Show 1 CETA - Hove Low-Skillec! Out Of The Unemployed Ranks ' CETA, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, originally instituted to move the low-skilled and -: unskilled out of the ranks of ;J the unemployed, has : degenerated into an expensive expen-sive ($11.4 billion-a-year) joke on the taxpayer and the hardcore jobless, reports the l: Reader's Digest in its August J issue. :;: CALLING CETA a "gro-; "gro-; tesque Lazy Susan of r programs" populated by op-J op-J portunistic "artists," poli-: poli-: :tical activists and various well-educated professionals, : Digest Washington writer Ralph Kinney Bennett cites j: examples of CETA funds: Paying a Chicago man ?.' W70a month to teach children J how to become "human ; drums" by slapping them-: them-: selves rhythmically. ; - PAYING AN Atlanta man, .:; a professed Marxist, J475 a . month to in his words "keep an eye on city, county :' and state governments and their jiving of the masses." - Providing jobs in Baltimore Bal-timore for the wife of a state supreme court judge, the daughter of a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, and the son of a member of the Maryland House of Delegates. NOTING THAT the lavish shoveling of CETA money has resulted in inevitable financial finan-cial scandals, the Digest story emphasizes that the greatest scandal is the CETA program itself: "CETA has become so far removed from its legislative intent that it constitutes a fraud on taxpayers and most poignantly - on the disadvantaged whose hopes for lasting, useful employment it has ralsely raised." THE DIGEST article examines the problem of local governments openly subsidizing subsidiz-ing their payrolls "to the point where 15, 25, 30 percent and more of their employees are now drawing federal paychecks." Policemen, firemen and other essential local services are being financed out of the federal treasury. Noting that CETA's impact on unemployment has been minimal, the article points out that the program "has evolved into a kind of Federal job fair in which the individual in-dividual desires of some take precedence over the real needs of many." Thus, CETA has become a major source of funding for the arts. "CETA 'ARTS' programs' are funding at least 10,000 men and women, many of whom have left jobs in the private economy to paint, sculpt, make movies, create street theater, play guitar, weave and make pottery at public expense of more than $75 million a year." Indeed, the article points out, the CETA jobs are so attractive at-tractive that they are drawing potentially productive workers away from jobs in. the tax-paying, wealth-producing wealth-producing private sector. Nonetheless, the Carter Administration Ad-ministration intends to maintain main-tain the CETA job level and pour additional billions into the program. |