Thursday, March 12, 2009

Stimulus or Pork Package

Here are some of the goodies in the $787 billion "Stimulus" package and $400 billion supplemental spending bill that accompanied it


  • $726 million for an after school snack program

  • $20 billion in additional money for the Food Stamp program

  • $8.2 billion to bring broadband and wireless to unserved areas

  • $650 million for more of those coupons for people to buy a $40 converter box for their analog TVs

  • $190,000 earmarked for digitizing and editing the entire Buffalo Bill Cody collection.

  • $52.4 billion for carbon capture and sequestration demonstration projects

  • $2 million for the promotion of astronomy in Hawaii

  • $1.7 million for pig odour research in Iowa

  • $6.6 million for termite research in New Orleans

  • $1.7 million for a honey bee factory in Texas

  • $207,000 for a tattoo removal program in Los Angeles

  • $143,000 for an online encyclopedia in Nevada

  • $951,000 for a "sustainable Las Vegas"

  • $238,000 for the Polynesian Boating Society in Honolulu.


There are 9,000 such earmarks in - so much for change

4 comments:

Kristi said...

Oink Oink:D

BTW--Tattoo removal might not be bad in the prison/jail systems. I was so happy when they removed all my gang tats:D

Anonymous said...

ok thanks for those depressing thoughts...you are such an optimist!!!

Anonymous said...

I don't see how any of those items are "pork." There is an explanation behind all of them, and at the very least they create jobs. Did you look into each of these specifically?

Rob said...

We have very different definitions of pork. Being a Libertarian I consider at least 95% of Federal spending to be pork. I would eliminate almost all of the federal departments; housing, education, agriculture, veterans affairs, health, commerce, energy etc….you get the idea – just a different view on what the constitution says.

As for creating jobs, stealing money from others is no way to ‘create jobs’. Plus it is incredibly inefficient

Peace