Because it wasn’t painful enough to know that the “stimulus” money is heavily used to pay for the union-inflated salaries of thousands of bureaucrats in the states, or paying for jobs in phantom districts, or even better, going to recipients who happily spent it without creating any jobs, now we can see how much of the “stimulus” money is going to pay for picnic tables or to replace the motor of a government-owned boat.
For instance, I can see now that R. J. THOMAS MANUFACTURING COMPANY, INC received 4 different awards totaling roughly a $110,000 in exchange for picnic tables (because we know how stimulating these are)
| Contract | 09/09/2009 | FURNISH RECEPTACLES, GRILLS, PICNIC TABLES AND BENCHES TO MAINTAIN RECREATIONAL FACILITIES | $25,518 | Cherokee | IA |
| Contract | 07/29/2009 | FURNISH PICNIC TABLES | $30,480 | Cherokee | IA |
| Contract | 07/30/2009 | FURNISH & DELIVER PARK GRILLS, PICNIC TABLES & CAMPFIRE RINGS | $28,533 | Cherokee | IA |
| Contract | 08/04/2009 | FURNISH & DELIVER PICNIC TABLES | $26,018 | Cherokee | IA |
Check out this website called Stimulus Watch. It allows you to search for contracts and grant awards by state and city, by awarding agency, or by recipient. And they will even have a keyword search soon. The really cool aspect of the site is that once you find an award that interests you, you can vote on whether you are satisfied with it or not, add to the wiki description of the project, and join in the conversation about the award in the comments section.
Oh and by the way, yesterday Earl Devaney, the guy in charge of overseeing economic stimulus spending, went public and said that the White House was too quick to take credit for saving or creating 640,000 jobs. My favorite quote:
[…] the downside of the unprecedented transparency is embarrassment, and there’s enough embarrassment over the accounting problems to go around.
Are you listening Vice President Biden?
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.