Consti coming to you with a report from the accounting offices of Bunker, Bunker, and Finkelstein. This morning over bagels my accountant pointed me to an interesting article as to how our Stimulus money has been spent. I ve included a large portion of it below with my comments on a case by case basis. Overall, it s a truly shameful waste of tax payer money, and does little to create long term jobs which is the number one concern for voters according to all the current polling data.
Here is where some of YOUR money went:
- $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state. I’ve used Geiger counters before they are cheap and so is manpower. Handheld GPS units are cheap too.
- $30 million for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies. I lived in AZ and there is already plenty of training facilities. This shouldn’t be government funded. It’s tourism! Ask anyone from AZ how they feel about the Cardinals stadium and you will get an ear full!!
- $11 million for Microsoft to build a bridge connecting its two headquarter campuses in Redmond, Wash., which are separated by a highway. I’ve actually seen this project being worked on. Drive past it every day. Why are we funding tax dollars for what should be a private corporation concern?
- $430,000 to repair a bridge in Iowa County, Wis., that carries 10 or fewer cars per day. Is this a safety issue?
- $800,000 for the John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pa., serving about 20 passengers per day, to build a backup runway. 20 a day and they need a backup? WOW I’ve been in airports big and small. That’s congestion?
- $219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex lives of freshmen women. For $50 and a bottle of whiskey I can tell you right now! But I’d have to whisper. 
- $2.3 million for the U.S. Forest Service to rear large numbers of arthropods, including the Asian longhorned beetle, the nun moth and the woolly adelgid. Who’s a jigawhat? AND a “longhorn” beetle! OH my Christian sensitivities’! (Sarchasim)
- $3.4 million for a 13-foot tunnel for turtles and other wildlife attempting to cross U.S. 27 in Lake Jackson, Fla. $3.4 Mill for 50 ft of PVC? Remember the $30,000 toilet seat?
- $1.15 million to install a guardrail for a persistently dry lake bed in Guymon, Okla. Dry lakebed. Sounds like a desert party to me. But at $1.15 mil is it really that necessary.
- $9.38 million to renovate a century-old train depot in Lancaster County, Pa., that has not been used for three decades. ER’¦.WHAT!! MILLION!! SERIOUSLY!!
- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased. Dead and LOVING IT!!
- $6 million for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minn. WAIT A MINUTE! Minnesota? Like Minneapolis Minnesota? Minneapolis Minnesota where their major state export is snow and hard to understand accents!
- $173,834 to weatherize eight pickup trucks in Madison County, Ill. This actually is reasonable. Especially given that Ill salts the streets in the winter.
- $20,000 for a fish sperm freezer at the Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery in South Dakota. Home Depot!
- $380,000 to spay and neuter pets in Wichita, Kan. This is actually a good thing.
- $300 apiece for thousands of signs at road construction sites across the country announcing that the projects are funded by stimulus money. THIS is RETARDED!
- $1.5 million for a fence to block would-be jumpers from leaping off the All-American Bridge in Akron, Ohio. $1.5? For two hundred bucks and a six pack I can take care of this with Home Depot!
- $1 million to study the health effects of environmentally friendly public housing on 300 people in Chicago. What for?
- $356,000 for Indiana University to study childhood comprehension of foreign accents compared with native speech. We all know kids pick up language at an early age duh!! This is redumbdant!
- $148,438 for Washington State University to analyze the use of marijuana in conjunction with medications like morphine. Eh’¦ why do you think locals joke about the Space NEEDLE and how it should have a SPOON next to it? You want to study that here just go downtown and talk to some of the punks. Again this is redumbdant.
- $462,000 to purchase 22 concrete toilets for use in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri. For concrete? Really? Seriously?
- $3.1 million to transform a canal barge into a floating museum that will travel the Erie Canal in New York state. Who wants to ride in a museum? This is just a terrible idea.
- $1.3 million on government arts jobs in Maine, including $30,000 for basket makers, $20,000 for storytelling and $12,500 for a music festival. SIGN ME UP! I did basket making in Scouts! Any 5 year old can weave baskets! JEESH!
- $71,000 for a hybrid car to be used by student drivers in Colchester, Vt., as well as a plug-in hybrid for town workers decked out with a sign touting the vehicle’s energy efficiency. Green brain washing anyone? And will the city pay when someone keys the car for being a tool?
- $1 million for Portland, Ore., to replace 100 aging bike lockers and build a garage that would house 250 bicycles. Interesting, and not a terrible cost I guess but how does this create long term employment?
I promised myself I would keep this below a thousand words. So really, take a good long look at this list and ask yourself; how does any of this create long term jobs? Where are the jobs saved or created? Really I don t see them, and the numbers that are cooked up coming out of the administration are laughable at best and distorted at worst.
Just at 1,000 words and trillions in future debt.
Consti.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
As always you are welcome to your opinion. And I encourage you to continue to express it.
Excuse me- maybe I missed something here. How exactly did I belittle you? I think I noted that you took something out when you moved this over from the comment section of another article and asked if that was in response to a question I posited? Did I say anything that wasn’t true? If it is indeed true, then if you feel belittled, it is because you choose to feel belittled and by your own actions. I don’t rail against entitlements and place negative stereotypes on the people who take them, along with trashing the poeple who fail to accept those negative stereotypes as the gospel truth, yet all the while takes government money. Maybe that’s why you feel belittled, because you do.
As always you are welcome to your comments. Again, I don’t really read what you write any more. It’s all the same tired old arguement to me, and until you stop your belittlement of people I don’t feel the need to justify myself to your narrow world view. I don’t agree with you often, and when I do I tell you. That is my right yet you treat people who disagree with you as if they are below you. As is your right. Despite it not being “compassionate” as you protray yourself.
Here’s a golden oldie from the people who created democracy;
The more corrupt the state, the more laws.
- Tacitus
I notice how you chose NOT to blame Obama this time, as you did when you brought these quotes in to a comment you made. Could it be because, after you laid the blame squarely on Obama and the Dems (not that you’ve EVER done that before), I asked you how many of these pork projects exist in districts represented by Republicans (and therefore were probably used to cement Republican cooperation.) And as I stated in that response, doesn’t this little shout out about Microsoft go to show that corporate America is more than willing to put their hands out for government money when it benefits them, but then want government intervention out of the market. Much like Wall Street and auto makers…and someone else we all know…
One man’s pork is another man’s bacon…It’s all a matter of perspective.