Posted on 02/04/2010 5:14:20 PM PST by opentalk
Federal agencies are spending stimulus money at the rate of $196 million an hour. And they will do so every hour for the next eight months until a September 30, 2010, deadline.
"When you put that kind of money out the door that fast, there's a possibility of $55 billion dollars of waste, fraud and abuse connected with it," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Thursday before a Senate Finance Committee hearing examining the lack of oversight in the $878 billion dollar economic stimulus bill passed a year ago.
Grassley said he fears much of the money is going to some individuals and businesses that don't qualify for it and projects that do not serve taxpayers best interests. Judge for yourself:
-- $233,000 to the University of California at San Diego to study why Africans vote. Jobs created: 12, but seven of those are Africans in Africa.
-- Penn State University got $1.5 million to study plant fossils in Argentina. Of 5 jobs created, 2 belong to Argentines.
-- Researchers the State University of New York at Buffalo got $389,000 to pay 100 Buffalonians $45 each to record how much malt liquor they drink -- and how much pot smoke each day. Consumption is then reported via an automated phone hotline. Cost per job: almost $200,000.
-- The Obama administration is spending $5 billion to weatherize homes. But one Texas county spent $4 million to weatherize just 47 homes. That's $78,000 per house. Each retrofit is supposed to save homeowners $500 a year in energy costs. That means taxpayers will recoup their investment in 156 years, long after the home is probably torn down.
-- Two Arizona universities got almost $1 million dollars so 3 grad students can study how ants work. That's more than $300,000 per job.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Doin a heck of a job, Joey. You too, Barry.
When a depression hits, expanding roads and infrastructure does not increase real commerce.
It only produces make work jobs...it occupies the minds of the unemployed while they wait for real work.
This is what the stimulus does. It occupies...but it does not extend the economy.
Obama does not know this because he nor any of this advisors have ever had a real job.
Economics is not an Ivory Tower course of study...economics is what a worker knows, a housewife knows, an employee, and small business employer know.
To Obama, economics is a theory...an ideology.
He cannot know because he skipped that part of growing up. He was promoted to Columbia and Harvard long before he learned the lessons the rest of us know instinctively.
The economy grows by innovation not stimulation. Companies expand because they reduce the cost of production, increase sales, or make a better product.
Stimulus doesn't enter into that equation (unless by pure happenstance).
Obama is killing the living, breathing human quality of our economy.
It can't be learned in college...it is not indoctrination or ideology. It is practical knowledge, learned by experience...it is common sense!
This week they are working on a second stimulus bill- AKA jobs bill, crazy.
This is how the common people lose their will to excel. Why try?
Very good summation.
Thx! Just good ole common sense!
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