washexaminer: After a flurry of stimulus spending, questionable projects pile up

[SnyderShrugged]

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/po...-68709732.html

The $787 billion stimulus bill was passed in February and was promised as a job saver and economy booster. Here is where some of the money went:
- $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.
- $30 million for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.
- $11 million for Microsoft to built a bridge connecting its two headquarter campuses in Redmond, Wash., which are separated by a highway.
- $430,000 to repair a bridge in Iowa County, Wis., that carries 10 or fewer cars per day.
- $800,000 for the John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pa., serving about 20 passengers per day, to built a backup runway.
- $219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex lives of freshmen women.
- $2.3 million for the U.S. Forest Service to rear large numbers of arthropods, including the Asian longhorned beetle, the nun moth and the woolly adelgid.


remainder of list at link

[Brad_Edwards_Fan]

Originally Posted by SnyderShrugged

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/po...-68709732.html

- $219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex lives of freshmen women.

Who is conducting this study, Van Wilder?

[PiLfan]

Originally Posted by SnyderShrugged

[url]- $219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex lives of freshmen women.

Originally Posted by Brad_Edwards_Fan

Who is conducting this study, Van Wilder?

whoever it is, it's not enough


stimulus baby, hoo-ahh!!

[helptheSKINS]

This is shocking to me. I was under the impression the govt was much better at spending my money than I. Oddly, the only project I approve of is for rearing a large number of nun moths. I'm so curious to see if they sleep around to reproduce. That wouldn't be very nun like.

[Kilmer17]

John Murtha might be the most dispacable human being on earth.

[GhostofSparta]

Originally Posted by Kilmer17

John Murtha might be the most dispacable human being on earth.

I cannot believe I live in this man's district. But he was dead-on in '08 when he called the people that constantly vote him into office backward-rednecks.

[GhostofSparta]

Originally Posted by SnyderShrugged

- $30 million for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.

There is no reason at all for the federal govenment to be giving money, especially this large amount, to professional sports team.....especially for a complex they'll only use 1-2 months out of the year!

[Mooka]

I see plenty bad, plenty of WTF and some good.


Many of those you can't judge with just a little quip. The Syracuse Professor for example has caught a ton of flack and I think its unwarranted. He's not a sociologist. There is plenty of merit to his study for the health of young women.

[SnyderShrugged]

Originally Posted by Mooka

I see plenty bad, plenty of WTF and some good.


Many of those you can't judge with just a little quip. The Syracuse Professor for example has caught a ton of flack and I think its unwarranted. He's not a sociologist. There is plenty of merit to his study for the health of young women.

I can judge them all as improper use of taxpayer funds

[Mooka]

Originally Posted by SnyderShrugged

I can judge them all as improper use of taxpayer funds

Well then your gripe is not with these particular projects, but Stimulus in general.

This is what our government does.

[SnyderShrugged]

Originally Posted by Mooka

Well then your gripe is not with these particular projects, but Stimulus in general.

This is what our government does.

Yes, that's correct.

[DjTj]

Originally Posted by SnyderShrugged

- $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.

This is actually kind of an interesting project:

A government contractor at Hanford, in south-central Washington State, just spent a week mapping radioactive rabbit feces with detectors mounted on a helicopter flying 50 feet over the desert scrub. An onboard computer used GPS technology to record each location so workers could return later to scoop up the droppings for disposal as low-level radioactive waste.

The Hanford site, overseen by the federal Department of Energy, produced roughly two-thirds of the plutonium used in the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, beginning in World War II and ending in the 1980s. Today it is the focus of the nation’s largest environmental cleanup, an effort that has cost tens of billions of dollars and is expected to continue for decades.

Yet the helicopter flights, which covered 13.7 square miles and were paid for with $300,000 in federal stimulus money, took place in an area that had never been used by the bomb makers.

The area had, however, been used by rabbits that had also burrowed into other areas that were contaminated. Many of the contaminants were in the form of salts, which attract wildlife. The rabbits carried strontium and cesium, which emit gamma rays, back out of the area in their digestive tracts.

The flights were far less expensive than other strategies, said Dee Millikin, a spokeswoman for the contractor, a subsidiary of the engineering and environmental consulting company CH2M Hill.

Walking through the area with radiation detectors would have taken eight months longer and cost $1 million, she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/sc.../15rabbit.html

[Forehead]

Originally Posted by SnyderShrugged

$219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex lives of freshmen women.

Originally Posted by PiLfan

whoever it is, it's not enough

I dunno, I'd have probably accepted less money...

[JMS]

Quick ask Ron Paul what he thinks about these Questionable Pork Barrel Projects?

[Hubbs]

Microsoft? Some of my money is being given to ****ing Microsoft? Hell, why not just hand some tax dollars to Scrooge McDuck while you're at it?