Residents of Washington, D.C., who are trying to quit smoking will get fancy cell phones courtesy of a $500,000 grant from the federal "stimulus" program. The idea is that the phones will enable them to call a hot line or use elaborate software to get help for their addiction.
The number of jobs created by doling out those taxpayer-funded phones? Two.
In Utah, 1,600 students at a single high school will get iPod Touch devices - hand-held devices that play music and movies, allow Web surfing and have some educational applications - with $1 million from the stimulus. The jobs created? Zero.
Those are just a couple of the dozens of examples of waste in a new report on how the $862 billion stimulus is being spent.
This news is distressing because the entire purpose of the stimulus when Democrats in Congress approved it was supposed to be "creating or saving" jobs.
What is even more distressing, though, is the use of stimulus funds as a propaganda tool to tout the supposed benefits of the stimulus.
"In several cases, stimulus money went toward the promotion and study of the stimulus itself, at a cost of millions of dollars," Tribune newspapers reported from Washington.
For example, "A small, Maryland-based consulting firm specializing in health communications received $363,760 to tout the National Institutes of Health stimulus spending efforts and highlight success stories," Tribune reported.
The resulting material on the NIH website had headings such as "Stimulus Money Puts Students at the Forefront of Research" and "Stimulus Helps Fund Science Experience for Young Women."
An even more dubious use of stimulus money was nearly $194,000 given to two universities to look at what the public thinks of the stimulus. That's absurd, because repeated opinion surveys show that the public realizes stimulus money has been squandered. A CNN survey, for instance, found that three-fourths of Americans believe half or more of the stimulus has been wasted.
This new report unfortunately bears out that belief.