Pork, I mean stimulus, money just raining everywhere!
I wasn’t going to say any more about the stimulus bills because they’re done and over with. I don’t see the value of wasting time on them any more.
However….I just have to say this. Bits of stimulus money keep popping up all around me. The latest is my aunt’s opera company, and they got a wad. Hey, if they’re gonna spread this money around, I *am* delighted some is going to the arts, and her company got some benefit. We had a nice laugh about that today on the phone. I’m not sure what that does to the economy, because the same people who go to the opera are going to go to the opera, and the arts depend a lot on donations anyway. And ticket sales, and I doubt they’ll go down. I figure opera is like porn in that no matter how hard times get, you need your fix.
The other bits of stimulus money, one I can’t say because it would violate someone’s privacy. It was just funny; basically a call to a certain company out of the blue saying “Hey you want fifty grand?”
Um yeah.
The third bit makes me roll my eyes. Shortly after the money was being divvied up, I had to take a drive from St. Louis to the middle of Illinois via I-70. I know this stretch of interstate well, because I grew up taking trips on that road. The little town in southern Illinois is my hometown.
Usually, during this two-hour drive, you might see a state cop in the turnaround, using radar to catch speeders. It’s a big day if you see two.
On this particular trip, I can’t tell you how many I saw because I didn’t think to count. But there were usually two state police cars at EVERY turnaround (are those about every two miles? I’ve never measured.). A few places only had one car, and a couple had THREE CARS. Some were unmarked, but most were not.
Turns out….stimulus money. I’m all for state police getting some overtime. But do we *really* need this kind of overkill? Nobody was speeding, that’s for sure, but it’s not like that stretch of road is filled with crazy drivers. It’s 80 percent truck drivers. (That’s not scientific, I just made it up, although in the field of psychiatric medicine, pulling a number out of your ass IS scientific. But that’s another story.)
Seeing so many state troopers was just ABSURD. Somebody, go do a murder so they have something to do. Geesh.
So yesterday, I made the trip again. (It’s a common trip, I fly in from NY and then take a car east.) This time, the state trooper level was back to normal. But now, the trip took a lot longer because….ROAD CONSTRUCTION.
I’m sorry, but they just redid those roads not so long ago. In fact, I remarked a year or two ago to my mom that they did a really nice job, the surfaces were so smooth and it was overdue because there had been some rough spots.
So this is yet ANOTHER waste of money, in my opinion.
I traveled yesterday on a number of roads, the interstate and then some state routes. ALL WERE NA REMONT, which is Russky for under repair. (When I lived in the USSR, the big joke was that the entire country was na remont, because even though it was many decades after WWII, they were still repairing the damage.)
Oddly, huge stretches of road were being worked on, and NOT ONE BRIDGE. Illinois is a state full of damned bridges. (Lotta rivers.) I thought the bridges all needed to be fixed, or that’s what they said after the big disaster up north when the bridge fell in.
Yes, I suppose it’s normal that Illinois got more than its fair share of pork money, I mean stimulus money, given that our president is from Illinois (by way of other places…it’s not like he’s really a native, and I don’t know if he’s yet learned that Kentucky is our neighbor to the south). But c’mon, this is just out of control.
If someone can give me justification for that many state troopers having donuts in the turnarounds, please do. And if someone can tell me that Interstate 70 east of St. Louis was in dire need of repairs, but the bridges are good, I’m open to hearing it.
So????
