How Bad Is Stimulus? Even CBS Notices

Finally, after 18 months of the disaster known as the Generational Theft Act, the media is starting to notice that bad things happen

A couple of Republican senators put out a report today spelling out how they say a lot of the money taxpayers shelled out for the stimulus package was wasted. CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson Follows the Money.

It may be called the Recovery Act, but to Pastor Greg Sheets – it’s the law of unintended consequences.

A well-meaning stimulus project to improve the road in front of his Newark, Ohio home has led the city to take part of his yard through eminent domain. Sheets got a restraining order when workers got too close to his house. The mess is now in its fourth month.

“My grandmother owned this house when I was a child,” Sheets said. “There’s not much left here to keep in the family.”

In the state of Washington, another stimulus project may be hurting those it was designed to help. Construction began one year ago today in front of the Archery Bistro Restaurant. The owner says it’s shut off business like a fly in a bowl of soup. He’s had to stop serving lunch, close two days a week and, ironically, lay off 12 workers.

Hey, maybe they can all get jobs building roads and painting bridges, since most of the Stimulus was aimed at blue collar workers.

A new report from Republican senators Tom Coburn and John McCain says too much of the $862 billion in stimulus money is being spent with dubious results: $700,000 for a researcher to study improvised music. For a project on interactive dance, 44 percent of the money goes to “overhead.”

The $1.9 million spent to photograph ants in foreign countries has created two jobs created so far. That’s better than other ant research stimulus projects: $451,000 has created one job, $276,000 spent on another created six one-hundredths of a job, and the $800,000 spent on a different one created no jobs.

The $144,000 spent to study the behavior of monkeys on cocaine created four-tenths of a job.

To study why monkeys respond to unfairness cost $677,000 – and has created no jobs yet – except maybe for the monkeys.

And, yes, the White House did whine like 4 years olds not given a cookie. They were not able to dispute the report because it contains hard facts from the Stimulus website itself, as well as others.

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