More Pelosi Porkulus Exposed

Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) have listed 11 pork projects paid for by the $787 billion porkulus bill as examples of how our tax dollars are being flushed down the toilet by this Democrat controlled Congress. These examples are in addition to the ones I listed in an earlier post:

- 1.9 million for water taxis in Pleasure Beach, CT. Congress approved the money after a fire destroyed the bridge to Pleasure Beach, but the area already is accessible by foot and rowboats.

- 3.8 million for an urban art trail in Rochester, NY.

- 3.1 million for upgrades to a boat owned by the NY State Museum. The boat dates back to 1921 and was originally used in canals.

- 3 million for bicycle racks in Georgetown -- the Washington, DC, neighborhood that is one of the wealthiest areas in the country.

- 1.5 million to improve the streetscape in the six blocks surrounding a downtown Detroit casino.

- 578,000 for fighting homelessness in Union, NY. According to a local news report, the town never asked for the stimulus money and did not even have a program through which to administer the money. The town supervisor said he wasn't aware of a homelessness problem in the town.

- 550,000 for a skateboard park in Pawtucket, RI.

- 500,000 for fish food in Missouri, to help defray the costs for state fish farmers.

- 400,000 for renovations to a vacant building in Jal, NM.

- 380,350 to encourage landowners in West Virginia to grow shiitake mushrooms and ginseng.

- 90,000 for a communal kitchen in Watsonville, CA. The shared kitchen is meant to help food service entrepreneurs.

So that's about 16.5 million of our dollars pissed away on things that are certainly not needed, and in most cases not wanted.

Now, if you think that's bad, just wait until Obamacare is passed ... it will take page after page of single spaced typing to list all the pork that will be contained in the final bill.

Just to be fair, this isn't just a Democrat problem - abuse of pork is truly one of the few things that is bi-partisan in Washington. Rep. Kirk, who is running for the Senate seat vacated by Obama, was guilty of landing more than 30,000,000 for 19 pork projects in his home district, including a planetarium and a religious outreach program.

Slamming Obama, Reid, and Pelosi for the wasteful use of our tax dollars as a basis for the 2010 mid-term elections is fair game. They ought to be called out for what they are doing. But ... (and it hurts me to say this) ... Republicans doing the call outs really shouldn't be the ones who are just as guilty.

Obama/Pelosi's Porkulus - Some Details

Courtesy of Susan Ferrechio of the Washington Examiner, here is a list of some of the wonderful uses your Federal Government has found for that $787,000,000,000 stimulus bill that Pelosi rammed down our throats back in February. Calm yourself, this will make your blood boil ....

- $300,000 for a helicopter to search for radioactive rabbit turds at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation

- $30,000,000 for a baseball spring traiing facility to be used by the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies

- $430,000 to repair a bridge in Wisconsin that carries fewer than 10 cars a day

- $11,000,000 to build a bridge to connect Microsoft's two Redmond campuses, currently seperated by a road

- $800,000 for the John Murtha Airport in Johnstown Pennsylvania, to add a second runway. The airport serves an average of 20 passengers a day

- $219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex habits of freshman women

- $2,500,000 in stimulus checks sent to deceased persons, subsequently lost, stolen, or cashed by unintended persons

- $2,300,000 for the US Forestry Service to breed large numbers of bugs, including such winners as the Asian Longhorned Beetle, the Wooly Adelgid, and the Nun Moth

- $3,400,000 for a tunnel for turtles to use to cross a road in Lake Jackson Florida (I'm sure the wildlife is smart enough to read the signs directing them to the opening!)

- $1,150,000 to install a guardrail on a dry lake bed in Oklahoma

- $9,380,000 to refurbish a railroad station in lancaster County Pennsylvania - a station that has not been used in over 30 years

- $6,000,000 for a snow making machine in DULUTH MINNESOTA

- $173,834 to winterize six pickup trucks in Madison County Illinois

- $20,000 for a fish sperm freezer at Gavins Point Fish Hatchery in South Dakota (what, they couldn't buy one at Sears?)

- $380,000 to spay and neuter pets in Wichita Kansas

- $300 apiece for thousands of road signs to be placed at construction zones announcing that the project was being funded by stimulus money

- $1,500,000 for a fence to block suicide jumpers on the All American Bridge in Akron Ohio

- $1,000,000 to study the effects of environmentally friendly housing for 300 people in Chicago

- $356,000 for an Indiana University study of how children recognize foreign accents

- $983,952 for street beautification in Ann Arbor Michigan

- $148,438 for a Washington State University study on the affects of marijuana in conjunction with other drugs like morphine

- $462,000 to purchase 22 concrete toilets for the Mark Twain National Forest

- $3,100,000 to transform a barge into a floting museum that will travel the Lake Erie Canal in New York

- $1,300,000 for government sponsored art projects in Maine

- $71,000 for a hybrid car for student drivers in Vermont, decked out with signage touting the car's energy efficiency

- $1,000,000 for Portland Oregon to replace aging bike locks and build a garage to house 250 bicycles

Thanks to Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), the Senate Minority Leader, for digging this info out and posting it on hie official web site.

Doesn't this make you feel good about Obama's Hope and Change?

THIS IS OUR MONEY. The bastards running Congress and sitting in the White House told us this $787 ,000,000,000 was desperately needed to bring our economy back from the brink. Instead, this is the bullshit they wasted it on.

Obama, Pelosi, Reid ... should not only be thrown out of office, but should be thrown in jail for stealing our money and lying to us about it. How can we believe anything these crooks, these idiots tell us? And now we're supposed to trust them with 1/6th of our economy, and to oversee all aspects of our healthcare system. NO!!!!!!!!!!

Pelosi Delivers Porkulus

San Francisco ... home of fruits, nuts, flakes ... and Nancy Pelosi. How else can you explain stimulus money, distributed by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), being channeled to these San Fran based entities:

Frameline - gay and lesbian film house, received $50,000 for general operating expenses. One of this house's recent offerings was "Thundercrack".

CounterPULSE - dance hall that puts on programs such as "Perverts Put Out".

The Symmetry Project - $25,000 to produce stuff like this:

The NEA has a huge list of grants it has distributed as part of the National Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Obama's porkulus bill). Here, on their own website, is the list of projects funded through this act alone:

http://www.nea.gov/recovery/grants/ARRA-direct-grants.php

I'm sorry, but what is $50,000 for the Alabama Folklife Association going to do for our economic recovery? $50,000 for Alonzo King's Lines Ballet? $50,000 for Architecture for Humanity? Flint MI Institute of the Arts? foolsFury Theater Company of San Francisco? $50,000 for the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival? $25,000 for Milkweed Editions? $50,000 for the Museum of Glass? There are hundreds of these entries, and all the money came out of the porkulus bill. It is amazing to see how many recipients were in San Francisco - Pelosi's constituents must be very happy with her. $80,000,000 in total out of the porkulus bill wasted on crap like this.

The NEA shells out a tremendous amount of our tax dollars each and every year to support many different types of art programs. How much? Take a look at this list, provided by the NEA itself, of grants JUST for dance companies made in the first part of 2009:

http://www.nea.gov/grants/recent/09grants/09AAE.php?CAT=Access&DIS=Dance

In this time of economic meltdown, where all Americans are being urged by Obama to sacrifice for the common good, why are we shelling out this huge pile of money, instead of using it where it would actually do some economic good?

Now, don't get me wrong ... I am not advocating censorship, and I am not saying that people who express themselves in an artistic manner don't have a right to do so (whether or not I see any 'art' in their expression). However, they do not have a right to do it with my tax dollars. Let the people who appreciate such artistic expressions support it themselves.....

Congress Having a Party, On Us

Under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, members of Congress have increased their foreign travel expenses by over 50% since the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006. Democrats as well as Republicans are guilty of wasting our money on these junkets, but the higher profile, more expensive trips certainly seem to be taken by Dems.

Pelosi herself led a delegation of Dems to Afghanistan this past February. They spent less than a day on the ground in Kabul, before flying home. Prior to getting to Kabul, the group made an 8 day rest stop in Italy, where she and her bunch of thieves racked up almost $58,000 in hotel and meal bills - all paid for by the US taxpayers. This doesn't include the cost of the USAF planes and personnel that had to serve as taxis for the trip.

Sen. Daniel Inhouye (D-HI) took half a dozen Senators and their spouses on a junket to the Paris Air Show this year. They flew on a USAF 737 transport plane ($5700 an hour to operate). They stayed at a $460 per room per night hotel in Paris during the trip. They had a dinner party at the US embassy, and a cocktail party at the Eiffel Tower. All of it was paid for by the taxpayer. What exactly this trip was supposed to accomplish is not clear.

The cost of flying a small group of lawmakers overseas (on a G-20 class aircraft) is about $150,000. Larger groups use the USAF version of the 757, which costs $12,000 a hour to operate.

How dare these people tell us that we have to sacrifice to help the country out of the recession. How dare they raise our taxes, just to throw money away in activity like this. Democrat, Republican - I don't care - these thieves ought to be thrown in jail.

Thanks to the Wall Street Journal for shedding light on this.

This is Economic Stimulus?

A nugget from this morning's AM radio news broadcast here in the DFW area ...

Four area schools will be receiving $10 million from the federal government over the next two years. The reason - they have a higher than normal percentage of kids who receive low or no cost meals during school hours. The money is supposed to help fund that program. Now, that's four out of several hundred local schools in this area. Also, there is no provision for additional funding after those two years, so folks who get used to receiving those benefits will have them pulled out from under them in a couple of years.

OK, not that big of an issue, I guess. Except ...

The $10 million is coming out of the economic porkulus bill funds Obama rammed through Congress earlier this year.

Regardless of the value of this program, just what in the hell does it have to do with economic stimulus? Nothing... nothing at all.

Just as was pointed out when the bill passed, Obama's economic stimulus was nothing of the sort. It was a blanket of huge spending on items that wouldn't have passed through Congress on their own. Every pet project and pound of pork Democrats (and some Republicans) wanted was delivered to them without debate, without consideration, and without the public being aware of it.

90% of the spending in that bill has nothing to do with economic stimulus.

Obama's Spending Bill is Full of Pork

Obama's $410,000,000,000 spending bill going through Congress right now is so full of pork that it is obscene. (For the politically naieve, pork is defined as pet projects, also known as earmarks, attached to a piece of legislation by Senators or Representatives. This practice allows spending without debate, giving the elected official a way of 'bringing home the bacon'. In other words, securing government funding for local projects outside of the normal budget process, without oversight, and without debate.)

Democrats and Republicans are guilty of this. The earmark process has been around for a long time, and is widely seen by our elected representatives as a way to help their local consitituents get federal money. Most reps take advantage of this, and some of the earmarks make perfect sense. Other reps abuse the process in order to buy votes at home.

In this time of financial crisis, you would think that Congress and the President would hold off on earmarks. Quite the opposite - Obama's budget has more pork projects in it than any other budget in history. There are 8570 disclosed earmarks in the bill, costing the taxpayer $7,700,000,000 dollars. There is another set of undisclosed earmarks in the bill, though the number and amount is hard to define, since the reps have carefully hidden them in language that is difficult to interpret.

Obama, during his campaign, said that earmarks had to be reformed, and that he would not allow the process to continue to bleed the taxpayer. However, the Democrat Congressional leadership has laid down the law to him, and he has backed off. He will do nothing to block earmarks in this spending bill - his staff is stating that it is left over pork from the Bush Administration, and he is not responsible for cleaning it up. Bullshit! Another blocking force is a few Republicans who misuse the earmark process. They've told Obama if he lays off the earmarks, he can expect their cooperation passing legislation through Congress.

Here is a list, composed by Taxpayers for Common Sense, of the 20 biggest offenders of the earmark process in the US Senate, along with the amount of money they are personally responsible for wasting in this spending bill:

1) Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. -- $122,804,900
2) Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. -- $114,484,250
3) Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo. -- $85,691,491
4) Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. -- $76,899,425
5) Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss. -- $75,908,475
6) Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska -- $74,000,750
7) Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa -- $66,860,000
8) Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. -- $53,133,500
9) Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. -- $51,186,000
10) Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii -- $46,380,205
11) Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. -- $39,228,250
12) Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. -- $36,547,100
13) Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt. -- $36,161,125
14) Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. -- $35,577,250
15) Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. -- $27,169,750
16) Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. -- $26,628,613
17) Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. -- $25,320,000
18) Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis. -- $23,832,000
19) Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. -- $21,952,250
20) Former Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. -- $19,588,625

And this doesn't even touch the immense figures coming from the House of Representatives.

Among the ridiculous things they are wasting your money on:

$713,625 Woody Biomass. Walsh and Schumer sponsors
$951,500 Sustainable Las Vegas. Berkeley and Reid sponsors.
$24,000 A+ for Abstinence. Specter is sponsor.
$300,000 Montana World Trade Center. Rehberg sponsor.
$950,000 Myrtle Beach International Trade and Convention Center. Graham sponsor.
$200,000 Oil Region Alliance. Peterson sponsor.
$190,000 Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, WY for digitizing the Cody collection. Barbara Cubin is the sponsor
$143,000 Las Vegas Natural History Museum, Las Vegas, NV, to expand natural history education. Sponsored by Harry Reid
$238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society, HI, for educational programs. Sen. Daniel Inouye is the sponsor.
$381,000 for Jazz at Lincoln Center, NY for music education. Jerrold Nadler is the sponsor.

These people are stealing your money, and throwing it away on crap like this. They aren't even trying to hide it. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, has been so blatant as to say that the American people don't care about earmarks.

Congress tries to demonize Wall St. and corporate America, for being greedy and making money off the American worker. What hypocrites! Congress, run by Democrats, are the biggest thieves the world has ever known!