It’s becoming apparent that the stimulus bill will stimulate little more than political cronyism and special interest spending designed to get the pols re-elected. For instance, even before the stimulus bill was passed, Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick had already spent $500,000 on a “spending czar” and an accounting firm to help spend Massachusetts’ cut of the massive pork barrel spending bill. Is everyone else on Beacon Hill so busy?
Even worse, the Patrick administration admits that the infrastructure projects will create only between 9 and 14 jobs per $1 million spent. At that rate, in order to regain the jobs lost in January alone, we’d have to spend $55 billion. That seems somewhat inefficient.
And now that the bill has been passed? Boston Herald reporter Jay Fitzgerald gets it right: “Let the feeding frenzy begin.” After all, the real currency of political power is the amount of money you can funnel to companies and workers in your district and our pols are going to ensure they get as much of our tax dollars as they can. Does anyone doubt that sometime in the next 12 months we’re going to be reading news reports about corruption, misappropriation, and special favors related to this money? Mark my words.
Does anyone doubt that sometime in the next 12 months we’re going to be reading news reports about corruption, misappropriation, and special favors related to this money? Mark my words.
Um, no, I don’t doubt it. What I doubt will be that it has any effect, since a day without a corruption story is pretty rare.