I was going for a hike with my wife back in 2010, and came across a brand spanking new welcome center at at state park up here in Massachusetts. It was in Sudbury, one of the wealthiest towns in the state. The new facility was closed, but it was clear no expense had been spared. There were actually Herman Miller chairs, fine granite or stone floors, only the best. Here is a picture I took on the day I first saw it:
As I looked at this, with that "your recovery dollars at work" sign, I got damned angry, with all that was going on, so I tried to find out how much money had been spent on this "welcome center".
I tried and tried, and never did find out. But in the process, I found a website the purported to show how the stimulus money had been spent in Massachusetts.
I started digging around in that site, and it was difficult to get data, but interestingly, you could download tons of data by fiscal quarter in Excel spreadsheets. So I downloaded as much data as it would let me, and I dumped it all into one spreadsheet where I could sort to get things to kind of group together.
When I did, I saw these groups of payments to "MINUTEMAN NASHOBA HEALTH", and thought "What the heck is this money for? So I did a Google search, and guess what? Minuteman Nashoba Health provides heath care benefits to teachers.
One of the wealthiest municipalities in Massachusetts (sixth place in per capita income) was taking stimulus money to pay for health care for teacher's unions. This was just two fiscal quarters in Massachusetts, stimulus money going to pay for teacher's unions healthcare:
FY 2010 Q2
MINUTEMAN NASHOBA HEALTH Health Insurance premiums for district employees
$1,184,601
MINUTEMAN NASHOBA HEALTH School employees health insurance payments (Apr-Jun)
$382,238
MINUTEMAN NASHOBA HEALTH GROUP 4th quarter FY09 health insurance premiums
$265,251
FY2010 Q3
MINUTEMAN NASHOBA HEALTH School employees health insurance payments (Apr-Jun)
$382,238
MINUTEMAN NASHOBA HEALTH Health Insurance premiums for district employees
$1,184,601
MINUTEMAN NASHOBA HEALTH GROUP FY10 health insurance premiums
$183,765
MINUTEMAN NASHOBA HEALTH GROUP 4th quarter FY09 health insurance premiums
$265,251
MINUTEMAN-NASHOBA HEALTH GROUP Health Insurance Trust
$241,820
MINUTEMAN/NASHOBA HEALTH Emp por health insurance premiums for school employees
$188,029
This isn't chump change. This is real money that you and I paid in taxes, going directly into the pockets of Teacher's Union Members. (Going into their pockets, because THEY don't have to pay them out of their own pockets.)
I then went through the entire spreadsheet and assigned categories to each line, then sorted it and did a pivot table. These were the top four items that Sudbury used stimulus money for between March 2009 and February 2011:
The mechanism by which teachers unions can set money aside from various buckets it is in is not known to me, but I know this much: My tax money is supporting teacher's unions, and those teacher's unions are giving that same money (whether from dues, from an account used to pay operating costs or whatever...I don't give a crap which "bucket" they put it into) to liberal politicians and liberal institutions like this idiotic "Media Matters".
This is only $100K. Just imagine how much of it is being skimmed off and shuttled back to liberal politicians and causes THAT WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT BECAUSE IT NEVER SEES THE LIGHT OF DAY.
It is stuff like this that makes me angry enough to understand how the American Colonists felt back in 1775.