Defense Bill Signed by BHO

[Teresa]

In another "unprecedented" (BHO's favorite word) move, the President signed a defense budget bill so loaded with pork it Oinks!  Promising during the campaign that he would never allow the addition of so called pork projects to the defense budget, our Fearless Leader scribbled his moniker to a bill that included the following crucial defense projects.

$5 million for a visitors center in San Francisco
∙$23 million for indigent health care in Hawaii
∙$18 million for the Edward Kennedy Policy Institute in Massachusetts
∙$1.6 million to computerize hospital records in Oakland
∙$47 million for anti-drug training centers around the country
∙$20 million for the World War II Museum in Louisiana
∙$3.9 million grant to develop an energy-efficient solar film for buildings
∙$800,000 for minority prostate cancer research
∙$3.6 million for marijuana eradication in Kentucky ..
∙$2.4 million for handicap access and a sprinkler system at a community club in New York..

When is that damn money printing press going to break?

Oh yeah, I forgot. It's the working Middle Class that will have to break!

[Warph]

Add to that:

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today released its preliminary analysis of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 Department of Defense Appropriations Act. There are 1,719 projects worth $7.6 billion in the bill. FY 2010 marks the first time that defense earmarks are below $9 billion since FY 2002, when the total was $8.8 billion. Despite this decrease, the bill was still rife with waste, including:

* $3,385,000,000 added anonymously for four projects. This figure equates to 44.7 percent of the dollar amount included for earmarks in the bill. According to the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, signed into law on September 14, 2007 by President George W. Bush, members of Congress are required to add their name to each earmark. However, they continue to violate this law by adding anonymous earmarks to fund projects – often big-ticket items – at the expense of taxpayers.

* $2,500,000,000 added anonymously for ten additional C-17 aircraft. In a floor statement posted on his website, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) voiced his opposition to the C-17 funding: "[w]hat we would do in this bill is effectively fund the purchase of new aircraft that we neither need nor can afford with critical sustainment money. That would have a significant impact on our ability to provide the day-to-day operational funding that our servicemen and women and their families deserve."

* $465,000,000 added anonymously for the F136 alternate engine program. According to a November 10, 2009 Reuters article, deliveries of the F136 alternate engine will be delayed by one year. Built by General Electric and Rolls-Royce, the alternate engine program has had two major setbacks in as many months. In October, F136 testing was halted when a nut came loose, damaging turbine blades in the engine. Top military officials, former President Bush, President Obama, the Office of Management and Budget, and independent analysts all agree that the alternate engine should be eliminated. The project is expensive, unnecessary, and only survives because of pork-barrel politics.

* $250,000,000 added anonymously for advance procurement of components for the two DDG-51 destroyers planned in fiscal year 2011. According to a September 29, 2009 Associated Press article, the DDG-51 destroyer is "to be built in Pascagoula, Miss., home to Republican Sen. Thad Cochran...." Senate Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), John Kerry (D-Mass.), and Paul Kirk (D-Mass.), and Rep. Travis Childers (D-Miss.) added $8,100,000 for a hybrid drive system for the DDG-51 destroyer.

ABC News also reported the waste in the spending bill, including the C-17's the Department of Defense doesn't even want. Later Charles Gibson asked President Obama if he'll sign the bill even though it contains so much pork. Obama said something like "Well, I know there's a lot of pork in there, but I have no choice but to sign the bill." Well, he could have sent a message to Congress to send him a bill that doesn't include a any pork. Maybe point out Pelosi's recent promise to address the deficit. She could start by cutting out the lard. He could have vetoed the omnibus bill that increased spending. But the truth is, he has no problem with wasteful spending. He likes it.

[Teresa]

∙$3.6 million for marijuana eradication in Kentucky

Oh yeah that'll work,...

Generally when they start their eradication... all they do is fly a few national guard blackhawks over the woods to spot, burn some av gas, then send a bunch of troopers in camo into the woods to find what they spotted.
They usually find a few hundred plants, but never catch anyone red handed.
In my opinion......It's a waste of time and a hell of a waste of our money ( along with all the other "oink " money flying out the window..)

That's why only a portion of the Stimulus Funds have been spent. It's a slush fund to literally "buy" votes. Not stimulate anything else but pork projects that benefit a few.
It's all a SCAM!!!

The strategy is ........"Who would vote against a Defense Bill?"

Remember first........2010 .........
Then 2012 folks..............

[Warph]

From Hot Air:

$27 million in Porkulus money spent in nonexistent zip codesposted at 9:30 am on January 4, 2010 by Ed Morrissey:
Two months ago, we found out that over six billion dollars in Porkulus funds got credited as spent in false Congressional districts.  Now the same group that first made that discovery has found millions of dollars disappearing into nonexistent zip codes as well (via Instapundit):


Closer examination of the latest recovery.gov report for New Mexico shows hundreds of thousands of dollars sent to and credited with creating jobs in zip codes that do not exist in New Mexico or anywhere else. Moreover, funds reported as being spent in New Mexico were given zip codes corresponding to areas in Washington and Oregon.

The recovery.gov site reports that $373,874 was spent in zip code 97052. Unfortunately, this expenditure created zip jobs. But $36,218 was credited with creating 5 jobs in zip code 87258. A cool hundred grand went into zip code 86705, but didn't result in even one person finding work.

None of these zip codes exist in New Mexico, or anywhere else, for that matter.

The recovery.gov report also credits New Mexico with $131,139, though the zip codes receiving these funds (but creating no jobs) are in fact located in DuPont, Washington, Richland, Washington, and Gales Creek, Oregon.

These errors were found by checking the zip codes reported at recovery.gov against the United States Postal Service's on-line zip code locator. Coming on top of our discovery of millions of dollars reportedly going to ten phantom New Mexico Congressional Districts, this latest discovery confirms that the data released by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, at least for New Mexico, contains serious errors. All told, we have found over $27 million dollars that has been reported as going to either nonexistent Congressional districts or nonexistent zip codes.

As before, what we have here is incompetent database management.  In the earlier case, which was much more significant in terms of dollar allocation, projects got credited to phantom Congressional districts.  A competent database administrator would have set up the data-entry processes to check for legitimate CDs on the front end, which would have avoided the problem.  Watchdog.org notes that Recovery.gov still has not corrected that problem, instead dumping the $6.4 billion in Porkulus spending into an "indeterminate" category rather than fixing the data.

This should have been an easier problem to avoid.  The US Postal Service offers a website to check zip codes for accuracy, but even easier, most database programs have tables built into them for checking zip codes and proper city and state references. It's the kind of process check that exists in every online-shopping website, which prompts the question as to why the government couldn't figure out its own zip code system for its own database.  Even that doesn't address how legitimate zip codes from one state got credited to others, such as New Mexico.

For the millions of dollars spent on building the Recovery.gov website, we should have expected a professional database with industry-standard competence.  Instead, we got a lesson as to why tasks that can be handled by the private sector should be left to it.