Wednesday, November 4, 2009

These Are The Folks We Want To Manage Healthcare

From Neal Boortz via the Washington Examiner.  These are some of the items my tax dollars will pay for through the current stimulus package.  My take on them after the statement. 

- $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.
Charter a Delta jet, one-way, to Iran.  These rodents can help their nuclear development program.
- $30 million for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.
Make them one team, the Arizona Coloradoes, eliminate the state line, and move the Dodgers back to Vero Beach.
- $11 million for Microsoft to build a bridge connecting its two headquarter campuses in Redmond, Wash., which are separated by a highway.
Microsoft?  Bill Gates' Microsoft?  Let 'em build their own damn bridge.
- $430,000 to repair a bridge in Iowa County, Wis., that carries 10 or fewer cars per day.
Walk on the unbroken parts of the bridge.
- $800,000 for the John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pa., serving about 20 passengers per day, to build a backup runway.
Rep. Murtha needs to backup.  And run away.
- $219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex lives of freshmen women.
Save the cash.  Just ask freshman men.
- $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.
Send the beetle back to Asia, the nun to a convent, and shear the wool.
- $3.4 million for a 13-foot tunnel for turtles and other wildlife attempting to cross U.S. 27 in Lake Jackson, Fla.
If possums can cross the road in Florida...oh, wait.
- $1.15 million to install a guardrail for a persistently dry lake bed in Guymon, Okla.
You know how those Okies love to dry-lake dive.  The next Redneck Games event.  
- $9.38 million to renovate a century-old train depot in Lancaster County, Pa., that has not been used for three decades.
They renovated the depot in my hometown.  After somebody bought it, used their own money, and opened businesses there.  Capitalist pigs.
- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.
According to Social Security, I've been dead for several years.  I'll take my check now,  please.
- $6 million for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minn.
Making snow in Minnesota.  There's nothing to say.  Really.
- $173,834 to weatherize eight pickup trucks in Madison County, Ill.
Buy Ford trucks.  They're already weatherized.  And Built Ford Tough.
- $20,000 for a fish sperm freezer at the Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery in South Dakota.
Maybe they could just use the snow from the facility in Minnesota.
- $380,000 to spay and neuter pets in Wichita, Kan.
My son had his Golden Retriever neutered (castrated).  Chief hasn't looked at my son the same way since.  Spay/neuter the people behind this so we won't have to face it again from their children.
- $300 apiece for thousands of signs at road construction sites across the country announcing that the projects are funded by stimulus money.
Contractors in Georgia were having to pay for these upfront, then wait for the government to reimburse them.  They decided not to pay.  Or use them.
- $1.5 million for a fence to block would-be jumpers from leaping off the All-American Bridge in Akron, Ohio.
Hire someone at minimum wage to alternately yell "Jump!  Don't jump" if/when someone tries.  Or use the leftover guardrail from Oklahoma.  Or just let 'em jump, because it's not the fall that kills you.  It's that sudden stop at the end.
- $1 million to study the health effects of environmentally friendly public housing on 300 people in Chicago.
Hold the million until everybody in the neighborhood stops smoking, drinking, and using drugs.  Otherwise, the test results will be skewed.
- $356,000 for Indiana University to study childhood comprehension of foreign accents compared with native speech.
Wait ten years.  Then all we'll have to understand is Spanish.  Or Arabic.  Whichever one takes over first.
- $983,952 for street beautification in Ann Arbor, Mich., including decorative lighting, trees, benches and bike paths.
I'm all over it.  Gives folks nicer things to steal, break, and tear down.
- $148,438 for Washington State University to analyze the use of marijuana in conjunction with medications like morphine.
Note they didn't want to analyze the results of mixing drugs, just the use.  This can be done at minimal cost by just walking down the most dangerous street in that college town.  Or just visiting any dorm.
- $462,000 to purchase 22 concrete toilets for use in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri.
Have you ever sat on a concrete toilet?  Me neither.  If it's a National Forest, build a latrine and supply shovels.  That'll cut down on exhaust emissions (both kinds) that are killing trees.
- $3.1 million to transform a canal barge into a floating museum that will travel the Erie Canal in New York state.
You can get to it using that turtle bridge they didn't build in Florida.
- $1.3 million on government arts jobs in Maine, including $30,000 for basket makers, $20,000 for storytelling and $12,500 for a music festival.
That explains a lot.  Government arts.  Let someone make a basket while telling a story as he plays his banjo and harmonica.  I'd pay to see that and save us bundles of cash.
- $71,000 for a hybrid car to be used by student drivers in Colchester, Vt., as well as a plug-in hybrid for town workers decked out with a sign touting the vehicle's energy efficiency.
St Michael's College and Albany College of Pharmacy are both located here.  Take the Washington State study of drugs and the Syracuse study on sex, put them together with this one.  Load 'em up, let 'em drive the hybrid and talk about sex.  Saves a bunch.
- $1 million for Portland, Ore., to replace 100 aging bike lockers and build a garage that would house 250 bicycles.
A bicycle garage.  Where would you put the garage door opener?  I have a suggestion.

1 comment:

Michael Ruffin said...

I quibble with your complaints at one point: you just can't have enough baseball stadiums (stadia?).