President Barack Obama’s nearly $800 billion in deficit spending is just beginning to be spent and already stories are trickling in about how the money is being wasted. Remember that bridge to nowhere in Alaska? Well the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel reports that Obama’s stimulus is funding 37 bridges just like it in Wisconsin alone: A vast majority of the Wisconsin bridges awarded construction money in the first wave of federal stimulus funding carry fewer than 1,000 vehicles a day, a Journal Sentinel analysis of federal bridge inspections shows. And many …
In the video below, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) describes the inevitable bailout of the auto industry as “a bridge to the future.” [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w8jEKoX5-Q[/youtube] A “bridge to nowhere” is more like it. As David Brooks notes today: Not so long ago, corporate giants with names like PanAm, ITT and Montgomery Ward roamed the earth. They faded and were replaced by new companies with names like Microsoft, Southwest Airlines and Target. The U.S. became famous for this pattern of decay and new growth. Over time, American government built a bigger safety net …
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who once threatened to resign if Congress stripped funding for the infamous Bridge to Nowhere, was indicted yesterday on seven felony counts for failing to disclose gifts from an Alaskan firm. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in Geneva, international talks aimed at ushering in a new era of free trade collapsed over World Trade Organization member nations’ unwillingness to end farm subsidies. These events are not unrelated. They are examples of how big government inherently breeds powerful special interests that leverage government power to create policies for …
