Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Top 10 Most Wasteful Stimulus Projects

Well I said it once before that the stimulus was a big fat waste of money and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is pointing it out with his Top 10 List of Most Wasteful Projects. Here are the Top 5 and they don't add up to a whole bunch compared to the $789 billion. However this is my money being wasted for this stupid crap so someone needs to be held accountable.

1. Perkins, Oklahoma where accepting $1.5 million in stimulus money for a waste water plant forced the city to borrow $5.875 million more. That shot up sewer rates by 60%. There is nothing that stimulates the economy more then raising rates by 60%.

2. Futurgen in Mattoon, Illinois, $1 billion wasted dollars on a Blagojevich sponsored project to build a next gen coal plant. Too bad the next gen was 2003 and better tech is already available.

3. River Road, Wisconsin where they are spending $15.3 million to fix rural bridges instead of fixing 1256 structurally deficient bridges. My bet is it will take years of permits and bidding to get the bigger bridges fixed so the dinky ones came first. Too bad the big bridges are only going to be fixed when we are already out of the recession.

4. John Murtha Airport, Pennsylvania will get another $800,000 to repave the backup runway for an airport that serves 9,733 passengers a year. I'm willing to bet that Murtha and his cronies make up the bulk of that number as well.

5. Lake Jackson, Florida Eco-Passage will cost $3.4 million to make a tunnel for turtles under US 27. Why can't they just build a bunch of fences along the highway so turtles don't come onto the road? It seems some community activists have already built a temporary fence so just give them the money to expand their work.

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