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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Tuesday, August 03, 2010 :::
Tom Coburn and John McCain are still opposing earmarks, but I'm not sure they're doing it effectively:Republican senators highlight 100 projects that they say waste taxpayer dollars. The report, released by Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and John McCain, R-Ariz., highlights 100 stimulus projects that they say have "questionable goals," are "being mismanaged or were poorly planned" and are even "costing jobs and hurting small businesses."
The Coburn-McCain report takes issue with stimulus spending on projects like one that entailed research on how cocaine affects monkeys. The Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center was awarded $71,623 to study what the report calls, "Monkeys Getting High for Science."
Bonnie Davis, a spokeswoman for The Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, said the "small grant has helped protect very important research that will have significant impact on public health in regards to cocaine addiction and the issue of relapse."
Go a little further down the list and you'll find even bigger spending. The California Academy of Sciences is receiving nearly $1 million in stimulus funds to send researchers to the Southwest Indian Ocean Islands and East Africa to capture, photograph and analyze thousands of exotic ants.
There's also funding for yoga and hot flashes. Researchers at Wake Forest University have received nearly $300,000 to study whether integral yoga "can be an effective method to reduce the frequency and/or severity of hot flashes" in breast cancer survivors. I don't know about mismanagement, and I don't know how much reason there is to believe that yoga reduces hot flashes, but if I believed that $300,000 to be among the worst expenditures in the stimulus program, I'd be pretty sanguine about the stimulus program. Even the ant program, costing a penny per American household, doesn't excite me a great deal; while I suspect many households could spend that penny better themselves, I think we have bigger fish to fry.
The press release is here; there is a link to the full report in PDF format at the bottom. I haven't looked at it to see whether ABC highlighted the best or the worst of the hundred projects.Labels: McCain, Tom Coburn
::: posted by Steven at 11:52 AM
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