What About that Stimulus Money?

6/9/16 | Originalbuckeye

[Stirner]

The rationale was that it prevented further job loss. The most “economical” way for government to prevent unemployment is to create/maintain government jobs. The fact that the jobs create no infrastructure or anything else for that matter and instead throw sand into the gears is irrelevant in the short run, which is all politicians (and many sorts of business managers) can care about. Depressing? You bet

[Kit cat]

Since ALOT of that money is in the Republicans pockets also I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for ANOTHER so called investigation !!!!

[rlmorel]

Unions.

[rlmorel]

I posted this below back around 2011 or something like that, and a few times since. Up here in Massachusetts, that stimulus money wasn't spent on bridges and roads as much as it was on a plethora of small things that add up.

As the poster libertarian27 said, back then they had it where you could download it in Excel. Sounds good, except for the obvious deception and obfuscation of things that received stimulus monies, and they way they tried to fragment it up to make it a pain. But I was able to compile some, as I explain in this old post below:

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I have to sometimes take a breath. I don't WISH for a company to go out of business, and I don't even generally mind that some of my tax dollars are used to help people get retrained. But when it is UNIONS that put someone out of work, and MY money is used to retrain people who have been put out of work because of it, it makes me angry, because unions are wasteful and selfish, and we end up having to clean up the mess.

I can't tell you how angry I was when I recently tried to find out how many dollars from the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" were used to build a state of the art visitor center on the grounds of a national park near me.

Sudbury, Massachusetts is near where I live, it is one of the wealthiest communities in the state, and is located some twenty miles due west of Boston. In Sudbury, there was an old, abandoned Army base that had been closed up for years, and sometime in the last ten years or so, it was opened to the public to be able to walk through. It was great.

Not many people knew about it or knew it was open, and one could walk on dilapidated old crumbling roads through the woods, punctuated by an occasional boarded up decaying building. Most interestingly, there are a series of huge concrete munitions bunkers with evidence of railroad (possibly small gage) that serviced the bunkers, and on a few of them, you could get inside to find old, empty metal desks, light fixtures in the overhead with old fashioned incandescent bulbs in them.

To anyone who has ever lived on military installations, it has that general air of decay you know you could sniff out in the remote accesses even on some large active bases. As someone who grew up as a military brat and spent many hours exploring such ignored areas, that type of thing has always had a kind of charm for me. Anyway, it was great, and always deserted. Just about two years ago, I began to see evidence of activity...backhoes, roads being paved and such. It was a real disappointment, and I stopped going there for a while. Then, last winter, my wife and I went for a wintertime snow walk there, and came across this facility:

Now, just seeing that sign makes my blood pressure go up, but as I looked over the facility, I got angrier and angrier.

There was apparently no expense spared to build this facility, everything built of the highest quality materials, I do believe there were solar electricity panels on the roof (not sure though) but it didn't look like they skimped on anything. As I looked through the windows of the closed facility, I think I even saw Herman Miller chairs in what looked like an office. Bottom line, I see this, and figure they probably spent at LEAST a million or two on this facility, probably more, and now have it staffed with a park ranger or two. All this money WE DON'T HAVE for one or two government employee FTE's. Don't get me wrong, I like parks and such. BUT YOU DON'T SPEND MONEY YOU HAVE TO BORROW TO BUILD THEM! If times are prosperous, just maybe you can do it, but when we have a debt burden of $500,000 per household in this country, it is INSANITY to spend money on this type of thing.

So I decided to try to find out just how much of the "stimulus" was spent on this boondoggle. There is a website in Massachusetts to monitor the distribution of the stimulus funds at Massachusetts Recovery Website as an an attempt to live up to the Obama administration's promise of "transparency".

On the site, you can dig around in a variety of ways to see data, one way to slice it is by project, another shows funds by zip code. Unfortunately, they make it so you cannot download all the funds for all Massachusetts zip codes, but at least you can download data for a given zip code for a given fiscal quarter. Now, I never did find out how much was spent on that facility. But what I did find out was interesting.

I downloaded the data for 01776 (oh, the IRONY at that zip code) in successive passes for each fiscal quarter and got them all into an Excel spreadsheet. Once there, I used a pivot table to slice the data in a variety of ways. The column on the left is a general category, and the categories from left to right are subcategories of that. I specified that I only wanted to see the top four, and specifically excluded the Police and Firefighter components, but since the total money awarded was $25.2 million and this table shows an expenditure of $23.13 million, that means all other expenditures for this community that I didn't show totaled just over two million dollars. So my table below shows the lion's share.

(I only showed money awarded, not money used, but gee whiz, is anyone concerned they would get awarded the money and not use it? I'm not...)

As I went through the data, I kept seeing an entry for Minuteman Nashoba Heath, and it was a large chunk twice a year. Doing a search on the Internet showed this website: Minuteman Nashoba Health Group. They describe themselves as such:

"The Minuteman Nashoba Health Group (MNHG) is a coalition of Massachusetts towns and school districts that have joined together to purchase health benefits for their employees, retirees, and their eligible dependents. Joint purchasing of health benefits gives the participating governmental employers purchasing clout to help keep costs under control. The MNHG has been operational since 1990 and has added several towns to its membership in the last several years." I don't know what the cost for healthcare is for teachers in that town, but it looks from a couple of things I have seen that teachers might contribute between 20-30% of their own money towards their premium. Bottom line, you folks down in Texas, all you Freepers in California, even you Sooners out in Oklahoma, your tax dollars are all paying for the health care of unionized Massachusetts teachers.

I am not choosing Sudbury, MA for analysis because of some perceived corruption. I don't believe it is any more or less corrupt than any other community in this country. It just happened to be the community I was looking at to find out about something else, and this fell out of it. I fully expect that if I were to do this analysis on my town (which I will do) or any other locality in this state or throughout the country, we might find similar activity. What is unspeakable in my opinion is the fact that we took hundreds of billions of dollars we didn't have, and opened the coffers for every community around the nation to dip their hands into. To me, this is the equivalent of a family that cannot meet their mortgage (or their second and third concurrent and outstanding Home Equity Loan) pay their car insurance or keep up with any of the other bills they have incurred, taking out a fourth home equity loan, withdrawing it in cash and distributing it throughout the family. "Hey everyone, I'm going to buy a new boat, Mom is going to get a sports car, you kids can take the rest of this and spend it on whatever you wish! Computers, video games, clothes, whatever you want! You don't have to tell me precisely what you are doing with it (and even if you do tell me, I'll just wink and approve!) and you won't have to pay any of it back! This is FREE MONEY, and we are going to have a great time with it!" We have heard people say the whole stimulus bill is a scam. From day one, I have believed it. We have heard many say that this stimulus was supposed to provide "shovel ready jobs" that would stimulate the economy, but from looking at the expenditures, it is clear that, in one of the single, wealthiest communities in Massachusetts, 25 million dollars of stimulus money was spent, and the vast majority of it appears to be spent not on "shovel ready jobs" (whatever the HELL that means) but instead for paying for unemployment benefits, benefits for teachers and other "unspecified" educational costs (that detail could not be teased out of the spreadsheet, since it is not broken down that way). Spending the money on unemployment benefits may or may not be the best use for that money, but I think there should have at least been a dialogue about the wisdom of using it. It might indeed be the best use of our taxpayer money, but nobody got to even discuss it. It was just used to pay for these things...AND THOSE USES WERE NOT WHAT THE "STIMULUS" WAS SOLD AS. Brain dead liberals think that pumping borrowed/printed money back into the hands of the unemployed so it can be used to pay bills actually STIMULATES an economy. (Ask Nancy Pelosi...SHE thinks it does, and has said so.) It doesn't, but people who believe in socialism think it does. And socialists are running the show now.

Many of us recognize that the stimulus was a bill of goods, being used primarily by many communities to cover shortfalls, and who could blame those communities for doing so. But the unimpeachable idiocy of declaring that this money was going to stimulate anything is apparent, and it is yet another instance of the dishonesty of the liberals (and so-called "conservatives") who not only supported this expenditure the first time around, but are now pushing for more money WE DON'T HAVE to be thrown down the rat-hole.

And I do mean "Rat-Hole".

And it is a UNION Rathole. Using MY money to pay for it.

[Intolerant in NJ]

I know a lot of the money went into the pockets of the unions via contributions especially to their retirement and health funds and payoffs to their officials, which of course is tantamount to into the pockets of Democrats all over the country - why don’t you tell us what Republicans got some of it.....

[Mr. Peabody]

Sw these signs south of San Francisco with No Work going on:

[Envisioning]

Wondered on this for years! Maybe Trump can look into it?

[norton]

$1 trillion for shovel ready infrastructure projects...
Gone.
Where did it all go?

Does government shoveling BS count?

[Cementjungle]

Where did it all go?

Mostly it made its way into the bank accounts of political friends, relatives and supporters. Loads and loads of "companies" sprang up, all with some familial or other tie to someone high up in the administration, and promptly got big fat projects. Huge amounts went out for initial funding, and many of the companies went bankrupt, with the money having vanished.

Redistribution of wealth... from the taxpayers to the politicians' family and friends.

Corruption is on steroids in Obama's admin, and everyone in the know is in on it... Dems, GOP's, media, etc.

Trump's got his work cut out for him, and he's going to need a really energetic Attorney General.

[Kit cat]

The republicans are ALL in bed with defense contractors there is NO difference in the 2 parties defense contractors give the republicans huge campaign contributions, defense contractors in return get contract and charge government things like 500.00 for a damned toilet seat, or 5,000,000.00 for a gas station in Afgahanstan that was NEVER used and probably should have been able to be built for NO MORE than 200,000.00 the list is ENDLESS!!! if you are EVER looking for the Republicans to look for where ANY money went don’t hold your breath they are ALL corrupt on both sides of the isle and they ALL get wealthy and the taxpayer gets SCREWED!!!

[V K Lee]

Unions have their place in history, but in today’s game they become the demons of society. In the past they did provide a voice for workers...which provided lawmakers the incentive to be the megaphone in repeating that message. We fault unions when we should fault government as being the entity who has taken the role of the Body Snatchers. As in all other aspects of government: their job is to take our money to use as they see fit. Even if the only result seen is to line their personal pockets. Unions are nothing more than an extension of government with goals of power and wealth. All provided by other people, the taxpayers who are forced to fund but receive nothing in return.

[hattend]

Where did it all go?

Offshore accounts.

[gloryblaze]

Just saw your post today. Thanks for sharing your great work. Just amazing, in a sickening way. This issue is a particular thorn in my side... especially when I constantly hear accolades for O for “saving us all from catastrophic economic collapse..” No accountability whatsoever. No one in authority willing to do the type of research you did. Thanks again.

[originalbuckeye]

Just wow. I knew the money was being wasted but didn’t realize how pathetic the projects were. I saw some of the ‘recovery and reinvestment’ signs, with no work being done anywhere near them. I just figured most of the money went into the company that made the fake signs. Is it any wonder that the vast majority of Americans no longer believe/trust the Government? But Big Media and Democrats (but I am being redundant) are constantly praising Obama for all the ‘good’ he has done. Fraudulent usurper.

[rlmorel]

They have become demons of society for good reason.

They are anti-commerce class conflict-warriors adhering to host of other liberal dogmas, and have done nothing but destroy industry in every sector they enter. The ones in charge leave a husk of the memory of a functional company behind when they leave after they destroy it, and like locusts and liberals, go to another host in another area to suck that one dry and destroy any viability it has.

That, coupled with their UNIVERSAL support of ultra-liberals with the dues of union members (even over the objections of those who are appalled that money is taken from their dues to contribute to these corrosive parasites) is a blasphemy on decency that invalidates anything good about unions.

I am sure there is a happy medium somewhere, but it isn’t with unions as they are constructed today.

[rlmorel]

And just to be clear-I am completely anti-union, but not anti-union members. I recognize that many who are in unions have to belong to the union to work (the scummy union a-holes and their allies have made sure of THAT in many areas) so I can’t hold that against them. I feel differently about those rank and file who are evangelists for the unions. They suck as bad as the leadership.

[rlmorel]

The key point I should make in a wordy post like that one is: Just this one example I happened by chance to look into, in one of the wealthier areas in the state or country showed funds that were intended to be used for repairing infrastructure (whatever that really means) were really being used instead to fatten operating budgets by providing pay and healthcare for unions, when they weren’t being used to build state of the art visitor centers, hardly what I would call important infrastructure repair.

And this is one community.

This type of free hand into the money trough took place at tens of thousands of localities around the country, I am certain of it.

As George Washington once said, derived from an old Scottish saying: “Many mickles make a muckle” (The little things add up)

You take two million here, three million there...

[Mr. Peabody]

The signs were in excess of one million dollars. For signs that were nothing but propaganda.

I seem to remember a lot of the stimulus going to shore up pension funds.

[rlmorel]

Don’t even talk to me about those signs. I can’t see one without my blood pressure spiking.

[PGR88]

I mentioned in my post - the $1 Trillion in “stimulus” was simply paid with printed, fiat, unbacked money and government debt - courtesy of our Federal Reserve, and its manipulated interest rates.

Our government has been captured by statists and progressives, and the Federal Reserve is the foundation. They literally can create debt, or more specifically, greatly expand the system of fractional-reserve banking. They attempt to centrally-plan our monetary system with manipulated interest rates, nonsense inflation targets, and supposed job-maximization. They directly use their powers of creating money to bail-out their Wall Street owners.

Through all this - progressive government is funded. The corruption you cite would be impossible without the Fed and a real currency, linked to precious metals.