Saturday, October 31, 2009

Our StimulusTax Money Well-Spent After All

And you thought that the 15% or so of the stimulus money spent so far was being wasted on silly things. Well, we're here to tell you otherwise. The Democrats know where their priorities are, and have spent accordingly. Thanks to a recent report from the Senate Republicans, we now get to look at a few of the projects our commandeered money has been used for. I'm impressed. See if you are.

$300,000 FOR MAPPING RADIOACTIVE RABBIT FECES: The State of Washington hired a contractor to rent a helicopter to fly 50 feet over the outback of the state to find out all those vital things we need to know about radioactive rabbits. With highly-sophisticated scanners, the helicopter covered an area of 13.7 square miles. The concept was to find out the effects on the wildlife of areas which were affected by nuclear fallout. Of course, no bomb was ever dropped or tested in Washington, and the Hanford Nuclear Plant has been given a 0% emissions report card each and every time it was routinely but intensely investigated by both private and public agencies. One comment from the California radical director of Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment pretty well summed it up: "It was kind of funny, in a sick way."

$4200 to $5500 TAX CREDIT FOR PURCHASING GOLF CARTS: It seems that the cash-for-clunkers and fuel-efficient automobiles plans of the Obama administration have fared very well. In a fine bit of creativity, some citizens discovered that the lowly golf cart is a very fuel-efficient vehicle indeed. By combining federal tax incentives for purchasing electric cars with state incentives for fuel-efficiency, happy duffers are finding that they can get a really nice golf cart nearly free. Now that number in the headline may not sound like much, until you multiply its per-vehicle number by the actual number of golf carts actually purchased. Welfare recipients get free cheese. Golfers get free motorized carts.

$219,000 TO STUDY THE SEX LIVES OF FEMALE COLLEGE FRESHMEN: Now frankly, I think this is a study that needs to be done, but I would have been glad to do it for far less than that sum. The "Women's Health Project" being conducted by Syracuse University professor of psychology and medicine Michael Carey will interview five hundred Syracuse University freshwomen to check out what kind of sex they enjoy, and how often. Critics have said it's a misuse of stimulus funds which will produce no discernible economic benefit. To them I say, "it sounds pretty stimulating to me."

$1,000,000 TO RENOVATE THE SUNSET STRIP: Nothing to see here. It's just another $1 million or so to go along with the $7 million already set aside for the project. I see it as a perfectly reasonable exercise of government power to revitalize an area much beloved of the druggies, hippies and anti-war protesters from the 60s who now pine for a memorial to their youth. After all, not everyone from the 60s was able to get a job as a radical university professor.

$2.3 MILLION FOR BUG RESEARCH IN CONNECTICUT: No, we're not talking about the bugs that the Democrats have placed in Joe Liebermann's office, or the ones the Republicans have placed in Chris Dodd's office. These are real bugs. The research involved more than just observation. It provides for raising multiple generations of the Asian longhorned beetle, the nun moth, and my personal favorite, the woolly adelgid (aka "the infamous predator of the hemlock). And there's never anything normal about the use of these funds. They first went to the US Forest Service, and they used it to fund a non-forest rehabilitation of a quarantine research facility. But at least it's better than the last US Forest Service moneyfest for the study of forests in Washington, DC.

$6 MILLION FOR A SNOWMAKING FACILITY IN THE 15TH SNOWIEST CITY IN THE UNITED STATES: Yep, that's Duluth, Minnesota. I'm sure the locals were thrilled to find that they would now be able to shiver all 365 days of the year.

$500,000 TO STUDY SOCIAL NETWORKS LIKE FACEBOOK: Since Facebook and the other social networks are free to the user, we must find a crisis to exploit. That crisis was found by Landon Cox, A Duke University assistant professor of computer science. His concern is the issue of privacy. The good professor now has half a million bucks to intrude into the privacy of Facebook users.

$380,000 TO SPAY AND NEUTER PETS IN WICHITA, KANSAS: It is a proven fact that fertile dogs and cats produce very little in economic rewards. Females particularly tend to drag down the economy by taking a few days off work each month, and then become completely economically unproductive after giving birth. Males are even less useful to the economy, since they tend to spend most of their time sniffing around for available females rather than sticking to their jobs. So--off with their organs!

$3.4 MILLION FOR A TURTLE TUNNEL IN FLORIDA: This doesn't do a lot for the economy, but those turtles are just do damned cute. So the money will be used to create an "ecopassage" across a highway in Tallahassee, Florida. You see, without the passage, automobiles tend to make the turtles larger, but also flatter. With the passage, the little cuties can just march from their nesting sites straight to the sea without getting run over by an eco-unfriendly automobile or truck.

$30 MILLION FOR A SPRING TRAINING BASEBALL COMPLEX FOR THE ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS AND THE COLORADO ROCKIES: This facility will be built on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian lands near Scottsdale, Arizona, to a total tune of $100 million. Publicly-funded sports facilities are frequently complete boondoggles, but here we can look at the bright side. Only 1/3 of the funds will come from the stimulus package.

We're used to the government wasting our tax money on silly projects. But this bill was supposed to do one thing, and one thing only--stimulate the economy, not just create jobs where the only ones who benefit economically are the ones who already have jobs or will get jobs because of the projects. It was an economic stimulus package, not a job-perpetuation or job-creation package.

In March, President Obama pledged that the stimulus funding would be closely watched to ensure it is properly spent. Well, another promise broken. "And so I've said before--I know Joe [Biden] emphasized this point to you earlier--if we see money being misspent, we're going to put a stop to it, and we will call it out and we will publicize it," said The One. So how come I got my information from a Republican Senate report?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN !

27 comments:

StanH said...

Lawhawk these seem like reasonable things, …not! The Ponzi scheme that is the omnipotent federal government is fast heading for collapse. We’ve created a monster in this country, turbo charged since the LBJs Great Society. Perhaps as awful as it sounds the only way to stop Washington, is failure. Somebody called Rushes show yesterday and mentioned Galt’s Gulch of sorts. Productive America stops work for a week, send your employees home, turn off your phones, no banking, commerce wheels to a stop. Any government is a façade and only works with the faith and trust of it’s people. Just a thought?

patti said...

gold carts FOR FREE?! i have been jonesing for a street legal gator (cause i CAN!) and have been trying to finagle a way to get barry to pay for it. seems as if i missed the boat. after reading about being outfoxed by golfers, i'm gonna be beating myself up for weeks...

Writer X said...

I think Joe Biden was recently spotted in Scottsdale with his pencil, paper, and abacus looking for wasteful spending on the Arizona Diamondbacks spring training facility. But he got lost in an Indian casino somewhere.

And seriously? A snow machine in Duluth? That'd be like funding a gigantic sun lamp over Phoenix. And the readioactive rabbit feces study just kills me.

What thievery! These are exactly the kinds of wasteful projects Republican politicians should be yelling from the rooftops whenever they talk about this piece of crap Anti-Stimulus Bill. Why is it we only read/hear about it in blogs??

Anonymous said...

StanH: It's so outrageous that it's beyond parody. I keep thinking about that old saw "a million here, a million there, and pretty soon you're talking serious money."

Anonymous said...

Patti: We gotta work harder on this. There must be some major pieces of the pie that we could yet get our hands on. Just remember to wear your Obama button when you go to pick up the application.

Anonymous said...

WriterX: I'm not sure yet what the final verdict is, but I proposed a $2.7 million fog machine for San Francisco.

AndrewPrice said...

Unbelievable! Well, not really. Disgusting is more like it. I worked hard for years to build a practice so that I could earn the money that the Government steals from me every single year. And now I find out this is what they've done with it? [insert explitive here].

This should be a crime.

StanH said...

Lawhawk don’t short change yourself. I think a fog machine for SF would cost at least 3.7 million. You’ll need .7 million for the machine and 3 million for you and some friends to observe for a couple of years. You know, keep a daily journal, and what not. LOL!

Anonymous said...

Andrew: If they made theft and embezzlement a crime for legislators, we'd only have about six people in Congress.

Anonymous said...

StanH: I like your thinking. And you seem to have a real handle on government programs. I may need you to help me write the new proposal. LOL

HamiltonsGhost said...

Lawhawk--Wouldn't it have been cheaper to map the radioactive rabbits? Or do the little suckers move too fast? I would think that one rabbit full of radioactive feces would be easier to locate than the aftermath which would be spread out over a much thinner area.

Anonymous said...

HamiltonsGhost: You're thinking too logically. It might be cheaper, but how would that benefit the stimulus moneygrabbers? They need it to cost more, not less. And who knows what great economic benefit there might have been had they found glow-in-the-dark bunnies or bunny fertilizer? Imagine your lawn looking as bright at night as it does during the day.

BevfromNYC said...

I say that Commentarama should apply for a grant to study the efficacy of journalistic investigations of Congressional legislation in a post-racial, post partisan web based environment. I don't know what that means, but it must be worth at least a few hundred million stimulus dollars.

Anonymous said...

Bev: I am thrilled by the creativity being shown by our gang. Your plan makes absolutely no sense, which means we could have the money in nothing flat. Where did you all learn how to speak bureaucratese and grant-grabbing?

StanH said...

I did have a typo change “friends” to “scientist.” I deem thee LawhawkSF scientist extraordinaire. Your friends are now scientific “colleagues.” This is easily worth and extra couple million.

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, I love the idea of getting million from the government to study things that we won't even bother understanding. I'll go look for an application form!

Anonymous said...

StanH: I like being a scientist. Thanks for the promotion (and the raise).

BevfromNYC said...

Andrew: It is great 'cause one usually has to be elected to get money to study things one doesn't bother to understand (or read).

StanH said...

Congratulations Lawhawk, your lab coats are in the mail, from ACME medical supplies an Obozo corp. along with 5.7 million dollars for your important research.

Anonymous said...

StanH: Thank you, kind sir. Now which government bank should I deposit the funds in for optimum stimulus effect?

AndrewPrice said...

Lawhawk, Use the bank that Maxine Waters has been calling secretly.

Bev, LOL! I'm sure our elected officials are so well versed in the issues that they don't even need to legislation. . . or they just can't read.

Anonymous said...

Andrew: Just because I'll be using stolen money for my project doesn't mean I want to put the money in a bank that's going to steal it back. LOL

StanH said...

B.R.E. Savings & Trust SF, a newly chartered bank. Close by Lawhawk, they have the same building address, minority owned Barry sanctioned.

Anonymous said...

StanH: Got it. I await my next correspondence.

StanH said...

Their motto is “No deposit is to small.”

Anonymous said...

StanH: And "no lie is too big to fail."

BevfromNYC said...

LawHawk: For future reference, I am fluent on Bureaucrat and Legalese. And, though not fluent, I can read and write in certain dialects of Grant-Grabbing, mostly of the Non-profit NEA type. I am working on Robert Gibbsian basic Whitehouse MSM briefspeak, but, man, it's slow going. It's a very hard language to comprehend. Linguistically speaking, it's a blend of Clintonian legalese with a not so subtle and heavy influence of just plain crapola.

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