Written By : Warner Todd Huston

What is the cost of three Canadian visitors a day? Fifteen million dollars in Obamabucks, apparently. Worse, this waste of money wasn’t something the president of “transparency” seemed disposed to let us easily discover. Still, the Boston Globe reports that $15 mil is the amount of so-called stimulus money that Obama allowed to be spent by the state of Montana on a tiny border check-point facility that sees about three visitors a day — that’s $14,000,000 per tourist for the year.

Despite Obama’s promises that the stimulus plan would be transparent and free of politics, the government is handing out $720 million for border upgrades under a process that is both secretive and susceptible to political influence. This allowed low-priority projects such as the checkpoint in Whitetail, Mont., to skip ahead of more pressing concerns, according to documents revealed to the Associated Press.

Obama claimed he’d be “different,” though. Remember that he was supposed to be the serious president that only did the right thing? Yet, he’s turned his back on any sort of effort to hold stimulus spending to account. Projects all across the country are being given to less needy government facilities instead of going where need is greatest because of the influence brought to bear on distribution of funds by powerful politicians.

But, let’s step back even another step, here. Notice that the quibbling the media is involved in is over just which government facility gets so-called stimulus cash? Is it the government facility that is in bad repair that gets it or the government facility favored by one powerful politician or another that is favored by the largess?

In truth, does it really matter which government facility gets its repairs with “stimulus” money? Weren’t we told that Obama was trying to stimulate our flagging economy with his lavish gift? How is government spending on government stimulating the economy? In truth all it stimulates is government.

Instead of scolding Obama for spending his “stimulus” cash on government facilities that are not in need of the money, we should be scolding him on spending on government itself. The supposed stimulus money should be going to the actual economy, not further government projects. Government is not the economy, it is but a drag on the same.

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