We did not make this stuff up: Monkeys given cocaine are being studied for their reaction. And (different) monkeys are being studied for their reaction to “inequity.” (Maybe next they’ll study the monkeys that did not get cocaine to see if they felt an “inequity.”) People who are trying to quit smoking are given Blackberries and students who might not graduate are given Ipods. (Maybe the monkeys who did not get the cocaine should be given a Blackberry or an Ipod to make up for the inequity.) Oh, and the National Science Foundation is studying our reaction to the stimulus program. These are not bad TV sit-com ideas; these are your tax dollars at work.
Ice rink projects in Woodbury ($503,900 on a $2.3 million project) and Eagan ($1.3 million toward a multi-million dollar project) receiving federal stimulus money are going to the same contractor. The projects have been defended as smart up-grades that will save taxpayers money in the long run and they certainly are not blatant boondoggles. But one still has to ask whether it is proper to use federal taxpayer funds for things like city ice rinks. We love our hockey but at what price?
Here is Item #77 from the report:
When it comes to keeping the local ice rink up to date, Woodbury, Minnesota does not plan to just skate by. Woodbury has allocated more than $2.3 million to upgrade its heating systems at a local ice rink,using $503,900 in stimulus funding. Funding was provided by the Department of Energy through the energy efficiency block grant program to help install a geothermal heating and cooling system that would, among other things, “prevent heat from the roof from warming the ice surface,” and “provide heat for the west rink spectators.” The City of Woodbury hired Harris Mechanical Services to study possible avenues for moving forward with the project. Not surprisingly, the company came forward with a recommendation that it be hired to perform a $2.4 million retrofit for the Bielenberg SportsCenter. Harris was ultimately hired, but not before City Administrator Clinton Gridley noted that theproject carried certain downsides, including that it “does not utilize the competitive bidding process”and “replaces equipment that has not reached its useful life span.” Harris was also able to land a similar deal in Eagan, Minnesota to install a geothermal heat pump for the ice rink in Eagan CivicArena. For this project, the Department of Energy contributed more than $1.3 million, covering about a third of the project’s overall cost.
Read on–the link to the full report appears below and is worth reading, if you can stand it. It does not matter if these abuses are only a small fraction of the stimulus money (so goes the defense).
Stimulus programs, whether spent by President Bush or President Obama, do not work as sold and are ripe for this kind of corruption and abuse. Think of the money as pay offs to constituents—but the money belonged to you.
Other examples of wasteful projects include:
$554,763 for the Forest Service to replace windows in a closed visitor center at Mount St. Helens
$762,372 to create “Dance Draw” interactive dance software
$62 million for a tunnel to nowhere in Pittsburgh, PA that even Governor, Ed Rendell called “a tragic mistake”
$1.9 million for international ant research
$1.8 million for a road project that is threatening a pastor’s home
$308 million for a joint clean energy venture with…BP
$89,298 to replace a new sidewalk that leads to a ditch in Boynton, OK
$3.8 million for a “streetscaping” project that has reduced traffic and caused a business to fire two employees
$16 million to help Boeing to clean up an environmental mess it created in 2007
$200,000 to help Siberian communities lobby Russian policy makers
$39.7 million to upgrade the statehouse and political offices in Topeka, KS
$760,000 to Georgia Tech to study improvised music
$700,000 to study why monkeys respond negatively to inequity
$193,956 to study voter perceptions of the economic stimulus
$363,760 to help NIH promote the positive impacts of stimulus projects
$456,663 to study the circulation of Neptune’s atmosphere
$529,648 to study the effects of local populations on the environment…in the Himalayas
The full report can be found at: http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=07809d54-2616-4867-b6a0-e8ac3ceeded7
Here is an excerpt from an August 3, 2010 Press Release from Senator John McCain:
Coburn and McCain write in the report:
“We owe it to all Americans that are paying taxes and struggling to find jobs, to rebuild our economy without doing additional harm, and to do it in a way that expands opportunities for future generations. Too many stimulus projects are failing to meet that goal.”
“Eighteen months since the passage of the stimulus bill, millions of jobs are still gone and the economy is as uncertain as ever. The only thing getting a boost is our national debt. The stimulus has helped push it 23 percent higher, to $13.2 trillion, a new record.”
“Washington should focus on re-igniting the unmatched power of the American entrepreneurial spirit by sweeping away government red tape, expanding markets for U.S. goods, making it easier for small businesses to obtain credit, and reducing our national debt by eliminating wasteful Washington spending.”
Matt Peiken, a Twin Cities journalist and self-described progressive, offered a refreshingly honest and fair critique of Mark Dayton’s career. We are a bit surprised that the Strib published this commentary. Kudos to the Strib. It will undoubtedly be punished.
Kim Crockett on “Entrepreneurs and Lilliputians”
August 31st, 2010 by adminKim Crockett, President
Kim contributed this piece to a Center of the American Experiment Symposium entitled “How Can We Better Encourage and Reinforce the Most Entrepreneurial and Talented Among Us?” To put it succintly, Kim thinks we should just get out of the way.
“In 1942, Joseph Schumpeter agreed with Karl Marx that capitalism would collapse from within and be replaced by socialism, but not in the revolutionary way old Karl predicted (and not quite the way Schumpeter predicted either, but his insight is still compelling). Schumpeter described a great irony that is playing out now: Capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction.
The great, private wealth generated by a free marketplace is now used by the state to support a progressive, socialist vision. Simply put, capitalism is funding socialism and it is capitalism—not the state—that is withering on the vine. The power of the state to tax and regulate, combined with its insatiable appetite for cash and authority, is discouraging our entrepreneurial spirit and creating great uncertainty. The intellectual elite, so hostile to democratic capitalism yet dependent on its wealth and liberal spirit, campaign relentlessly against business through their domination of the media, academia, and the arts. Our dear fellow citizens, with a growing, sometimes militant, sense of entitlement, vote for candidates who promise to take the risk out of life at someone else’s expense.
Private enterprise and taxpayers (a much smaller group than citizens, many of whom do not pay federal taxes) are laboring to support a massive, corrupt bureaucracy, which directly or indirectly employs a significant percentage of the population and thus grows unchecked by the democratic process. Public employees now enjoy greater salaries and benefits than their counterparts in the private sector. Government, currently our leading growth industry, has run up deficits both annual and structural that stagger the imagination. The modern corporation, though nimble and innovative, often joins the government and its political enemies at the table in order to avoid being on the menu.
We are talking about encouraging entrepreneurs in this symposium because most everyone is looking to them and economic growth to get us out of this mess, which, while daunting, would be no match for American private enterprise, if the state would just get out of the way and stay there. Right now, the entrepreneur is like Gulliver on the beach, trying to get up but unable to do so because he is tied down by the Lilliputians.
The financial crisis and ensuing recession were caused largely by government-created obscenities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Yet President Obama and Congress pile on bailouts and stimulus spending, new regulatory schemes, and massive legislation based on faulty premises and bad science (e.g., ObamaCare, Cap and Trade). All of this only further distorts markets and adds to the cost of business. An arrogant and guilty Congress dragoons executives with its subpoena power to deflect attention from its central role in our economy’s collapse. Senators Barney Frank and Chris Dodd should be tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail. Instead, they are still calling the shots, though Dodd’s impending retirement (and other political shake-ups) may be a sign that all is not lost.
Will we prove Schumpeter wrong and at least extend the greatest experiment in freedom and prosperity for the next generation? This Congress is hostile to free markets, and the courts abandoned economic rights long ago. President Obama would like the economy to recover, but only so he can fund an enlarged welfare state.
Therefore, to whom can we turn to defend American enterprise and free the entrepreneur? The people, We the People.
Liberals and conservatives alike must familiarize themselves with the concept of a limited federal government of enumerated powers. We must elect representatives who understand that means rolling back the state. We must reinvent core services, including K-12 education, while shifting social services back to an already vibrant charitable sector. Public pensions, the big daddy of icebergs for the ship of state, must be reformed. We the People must get our hands out of each other’s pockets so our children do not have to work like mules for the state while dwelling in the mediocrity of socialism. We have tipped, but we have not yet fallen.”
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