In San Francisco, Ants Talk and Taxpayers Listen
According to the report, “Summertime Blues: 100 Stimulus Projects That Give Taxpayers the Blues,” from Sen. Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-Oklahoma) and Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona):
“When Congress passed the $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, otherwise known as the stimulus bill, it passed with assurances that it would stem the loss of American jobs and keep the economy from floundering. As most can see, it hasn’t.
“Eighteen months since the law’s passage, millions of jobs are still gone and the economy is as uncertain as ever. The only thing getting a boost is our national debt – the stimulus has helped push it 23 percent higher, to $13.2 trillion, a new record.”
[ . . . . ]
“There is no question job creation should be a national priority, but torrential, misdirected government spending is not the way to do it. Generating record-breaking national debt is not an investment in our children’s and grandchildren’s future and will not lead to any long-term recovery.”
I’ts difficult to decide which of the 100 projects that Coburn and McCain pulled together that cause one's blood pressure reading to go up more. The $1.9 million handed out to the California Academy of Sciences might be one such project, though. As the two senators write:
"Ants Talk. Taxpayers Listen (San Francisco, CA)
"The California Academy of Sciences is receiving nearly $2 million to send researchers to the Southwest Indian Ocean Islands and east Africa, to capture, photograph, and analyze thousands of exotic ants. The photographs of the ants – over 3,000 species’ worth, according to the grant proposal – will be posted on AntWeb, a website devoted to organizing and displaying pictures and information on the world’s thousands of ant species.
“The project’s goals are, to the lay person, both laudable and arcane: In addition to “foster[ing]…a large pool of ant taxonomists,” it also strives to document “the vast majority of ant species known from [Africa].” “[Ants] give us back the most data on the environment than any other group. Their life cycle is shorter, they change very quickly,” says the project’s Principal Investigator in a promotional article on the Academy’s website. “Everyone has run into ants . . . now we need to listen to them.”
In commenting on the report, Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Wase:
““President Obama talks incessantly about wasteful government spending and reining in the budget deficit, yet his policies do the opposite and end up spending more taxpayer money than any previous President. In fact, President Obama and Congress have increased discretionary spending by 84 percent . . . ."