U.S. News & World Report writes about just one of the multitude of outrages contained in the now-infamous U.S. Conference of Mayors so-called “shovel ready” list of infrastructure projects. The town featured in this article, which is asking for $375 million from the new economic stimulus package is a not-so-bustling metropolis of…..of 194 residents!
This laughable list emerged just before the holidays and was duly excoriated by many, including CAGW. It is the mayoral equivalent of the AIG execs taking billions in taxpayer money and treating their staff to spa retreats and the auto execs flying private jets to Washington, D.C. ….to beg for money!
One of the dirty little secrets of the pork-barrel spending epidemic is that some of the biggest supplicants, the ones sending their notorious Gucci-clad lobbyists up to the Hill to cadge for federal dollars to pay for teapot museums, indoor rain forests and silly beautification projects, etc….are your city, state, county, and municipal officials.
This list furnished an instructive look behind the curtain: the Mayors apparently decided to throw every little thing their hearts desired into this publication and expected us all to take them seriously.
Here are some of the overrall stats on the list:
11,391 infrastructure projects are “ready to go” in 427 cities. These projects supposedly represent an infrastructure investment of $73,163,299,303 that they claim will produce an estimated 847,641 jobs in 2009 and 2010.
The list includes $718 million for 54 museums;
$30 million for 16 projects building or renovating tennis courts;
$10 million for four indoor pools in Jackson, Mississippi;
$87 million for 56 projects for bicycle paths;
$110,245,000 for 34 projects for golf-related projects.
Read the U.S. News Article and the entire Mayors’ list (do not try to download it, it runs 600 pages long), but if you have ever wondered where some of the biggest crackpot pork-barrel items which appear in our annual Pig Book originate, now you know.
Filed under: Pork
