The Obama administration states it has created or saved 640,000 jobs based on data of those who received loans or grants through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This data is obviously overstated by thousands of jobs. The unemployment rate is 10.8% despite a $787 billion economic stimulus package pushed through Congress in February. The Associated Press review found counts as high as ten times the actual number of jobs created due to stimulus money.

Maybe you wonder what some of this money is being used for, so here are a few examples:

1. $300,000 for Mapping Radioactive Rabbit Feces in Federal Stimulus Money This is done by a helicopter with mounted detectors flying over desert scrub. This is very important because??!!!!??

2. $4,2000 – $5,000 Tax Credit For Purchasing Golf Carts: President Obama’s Stimulus Plan to make sure everyone has this necessity of life.

3. $219,000 To Study the Sex Livesof Female College Freshmen. “Five hundred Syracuse University Freshmen Will Divulge The Details of Their Sex Lives” This is called “The Women’s Health Project”. I wonder with those long winters, snow bound days would their sex lives differ from say San Diego freshmen???

4. $1 Million to Renovate “The Sunset Strip.”This is just part of the $7 million that is being spent to give the 78 year old strip a facelift. I’m not sure why federal money is being spent on a tourist attraction in California.

5. $2.3 Million for Bug Research In Connecticut. The Federal stimulus money rearing large numbers of arthropods, such as “Nasty Invasive Insects Like the Asian Long horned Beetle, The Nun Moth, and the infamous ‘Predator of the Hemlock,’ The Woolly Adelgid. A quarantine research facility in Ansonia will be repaired for use in this fun job.

6. $6 Million For A Snowmaking Facility In The 15thSnowiestCity In The Country. And that would be the wonderful city of Duluth, Minn. And we have children in this country who go to bed hungry every night???

7. $500,000 To Study “Social Networks LikeFacebook” This is a 3 year grant awarded to Cox. We assume we have some privacy by the way we set up our accounts but apparently this will be lost.

8. $380,000 To Spay And Neuter Pets In Wichita, Kansas. The City recently launched a $55,000 project to spay and neuter pets of low-income residents. Unwanted pets ultimately cost $240 apiece to collect, board and euthanize. This has created 32 jobs so far.

9. $3.4 Million For A Turtle Tunnel In Florida. This will help turtles cross a highway in Tallahassee, Florida. I want this contract! How ridiculous! Aren’t there some dangerous bridges that need repair?

10. $30 Million For A Spring Training Baseball Complex For the Arizona Diamondbacks and The ColoradoRockies. This complex will be built on tribal land. The Pima-Maricopa Indian Community says it may borrow as much as $30 million of the estimated cost of the $100 million complex near Scottsdale that will become the spring home of the teams. I can see that this package would put some people to work, but couldn’t they find another place that would be cheaper? I mean there is a lot of desert in that are

11. $300  Million For John Murtha’s Airport In Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The airport offers only 3 commercial flights a day. This has got to be right near the top of the King of Pork! They received $800,000 from the stimulus to repave a crosswind runway that’s used as a backup to the facility’s main landing runway. This airport also supports an unstaffed $8 million air traffic radar system installed in 2004. They have no need for this type of system in an airport of this size.
This list could just keep on growing but I’ve made the point.. The waste of tax dollars is a good reason to consider term limits. The Congressmen and Women with more power get more pork. We have bridges that aren’t safe and roads that need paving. Maybe we could begin to repay the deficit. There’s a novel idea. Of course, it looks like ultimately China will own our country since they are financing everything at this point. I could think of a huge number of worth while uses for the stimulus money, like helping small businesses stay afloat, etc. There has certainly got to be a better use for our tax dollars.

It is frustrating as a tax payer to read these things. I am thinking of applying for one of these grants for a psychological study. I could study the affects of second hand cigar smoke suffered by beautiful lap dancers for about $500,000. Then I could write a detailed report with my findings. What do you think?

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