Obama says stimulus worked, created jobs... here's a reminder of the waste

By Warner Todd Huston

In his recent trip to Racine, Wisconsin, President Obama claimed that his stimulus policies worked and "saved jobs." He also said that his policies staved off another Great Depression. But lets take a look at some of the graft, waste and pointless, useless, wild-eyed spending that was in his so-called stimulus.

• $5 million to create a geothermal energy system for a shopping mall in Tennessee. The mall is over half empty of tenants and has had falling shopper attendance for years *
  
  
• $1.57 million to Penn State University study fossils in Argentina *
  
  
• $100,000 to a puppet theater in Minnesota *
  
  
• $2 million to build a replica railroad tourist trap in Carson City, Nev. *
  
  
• A boat cruise company in Chicago got almost $1 million to "combat terrorism" *
  
  
• $500,000 went to Ariz. State Univ. to study ant genetics *
  
  
• Another $450,000 went to Uinv. of Arizona to study ants *
  
  
• Almost $400,000 went to Univ. of New York to pay students to drink beer and smoke marijuana for a study there *
  
  
• $219,000 went to the Nat'l Institute of Health to study if young people "hook-up" after getting drunk *
  
  
• $210,000 to the Univ. of Hawaii to study bees *
  
  
• $700,000 to crab fishermen in Oregon to pay for lost crab pots *
  
  
• $5,000 a person tax rebate if you buy a new electric golf cart (Wall Street Journal)
  
  
• Up to $1 million went to prisoners in $250 stimulus checks (FoxNews)
  
  
• $54 mil to a New York Indian tribe to run its casino (New York Post)
  
  
• $1 billion for a power plant in Mattoon, Illinois that is based on speculative science and may not even work **
  
  
• $15 million to back-road bridges that get little traffic in Wisconsin **
  
  
• $800,000 for a practically unused airport in Pennsylvania **
  
  
• $3.4 million for an animal walk way under a road in Florida **
  
  
• $1.15 million to install a guard rail for a lake that doesn't even exist in Oklahoma **
  
  
• $10 million to renovate a rail station that has stood unused for a decade **
  
  
• $578,000 to battle homelessness in Union, New York even though the town says they have no homeless people there **
  
  
• $233,000 to the Univ. of Calif. to study why Africans vote... in Africa ***
  
  
• $2 million to build a new fire house in a Nevada town that has no firemen ***
  
  
• North Carolina schools got $4.4 million for literacy and math coaches... to teach their teachers! ***
  
  
• $54 million for a railroad project in Napa Valley went to a minority-owned company that then hired a local construction company for half the price, pocketing the rest ***
  
  
• A California company was given $15 million in stimulus money to monitor water quality in a stream it was under indictment for polluting previously***
  
  

Well, obviously this is just a tiny list of the graft, waste, and useless spending in Obama's so-called stimulus bill but it serves to illustrate the fact that stimulating the economy was far from the minds of those congressmen that voted for the bill. It was more about paying off constituents than stimulating the economy.

Source unless noted: * = The Hill. ** = Americans for Tax Reform, *** = Fox News.

(Originally posted at BigGovernment.com)

© Warner Todd Huston