Your money, hard(ly) at work

Via Mish, comes this report (PDF) from Senators McCain and Coburn, entitled Stimulus Checkup, on the 100 latest ways the administration is spending your hard-earned dollars. An example [footnotes omitted]:

12. Broadband Map That May be Obsolete by the Time It’s Complete ($350 million)

In just a few short years, taxpayers will be able to log onto a government website and find out if broadband services are available in their neighborhood. Using up to $350 million in stimulus funds, the Department of Commerce (DOC) will build a broadband inventory map, though some experts say it is too expensive and possibly unneeded. The DOC is awarding grants to organizations that will help create a national map of all areas with access to broadband Internet services. While individual telecommunications companies already have such information publicly available on their websites, this website would consolidate the information and provide users with a one-stop shop. The State of North Carolina already produces a statewide broadband map for $275,000 per year, which is a fraction of the amount to be spent by DOC. When asked about whether $350 million was a reasonable amount, Rory Altman at Altman, Vilandrie & Co., a broadband mapping consultant, said the amount was "ridiculous" and that his firm could produce a nationwide map for $3.5 million. ...

A website with a map of areas with broadband ... for a mere $350,000,000! What a bargain! And one private consultancy quoted in the report said they could do it for a mere $3,500,000, or one hundred times less than the government is spending. Must be that Keynesian "stimulus growth multiplier" they're always talking about. Although maybe they should rename it the growth demultiplier. Basically, one dollar of private investment produces the same amount as one hundred dollars of government spending. Sounds about right.

To be sure, not all the highly stimulative projects are so costly as simple government websites displaying information that's already publicly available from other sources. For example, the very next entry:

13. Grant to Fund Search for Fossils . . . In Argentina ($1.57 million)

Move over Indiana Jones! Penn State University is sending a team of researchers to search for plant fossils in Patagonia, Argentina using a $1.57 million stimulus grant from the National Science Foundation. Patagonia has been a hotbed of fossil research since remains of one of the largest dinosaurs, the Puertasaurus, was found there in 2006. Now, researchers are interested in unearthing fossils for plants that went extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs, hoping to understand the region's biodiversity, as well as "whether an ancient rainforest environment was present in Patagonia."

Clearly an astoundingly good use of American taxpayer dollars (at least in the mind of an Obama bureaucrat) -- those extinct dinosaurs and ancient rainforests can't study themselves, you know. And the "scientists" will no doubt be able to squeeze even more dollars from the American taxpayer by showing that, if only the dinosaurs had voted Democrat so many millions of years ago, they would be alive today and enjoying full social security benefits in that lush ancient rainforest, which will forever be preserved by the Dems' Cap-and-Trade plan.

Some stimulus projects, however, seek to find answers to the really important questions confronting our nation, such as

51. Study On Why Young Men Do Not Like Condoms ($221,355)

Indiana University professors received $221,355 in economic stimulus funds to study why young men do not like to wear condoms. The research will "advance our understanding of…the role of cognitive and affective processes and condom application skills in explaining problems with condom use in young, heterosexual adult men," and to create "education strategies tailored to the needs of individuals who have trouble using condoms effectively."

Seems like those professors don't know economic stimulus from erectile stimulus. But hey, you're paying for it, so what do they care! Although admittedly, at a paltry $220 grand, it's pretty much a drop of semen in the proverbial $787,000,000,000 stimulus bucket. That's the price you pay for electile dysfunction, America.

Read the report here to see some of the many stimulating ways our beloved government is spending your money. Your money, hardly at work.