Rice County Republicans

An astute reader brought the Stimulus Watch website to our attention. Although the site does not list directly the stimulus package’s targets, it does list the projects that mayors have on their desks ready to go … the so called “shovel-ready” projects. The stimulus package itself only identifies the organizations who will be given money (oh boy, free money, no accountability) and who will in turn fund these sorts of projects (they get to pick the winners) .

The site explains itself this way

“StimulusWatch.org was built to to help the new administration keep its pledge and to hold public officials to account. We do this by allowing you, citizens around the country with local knowledge about the proposed projects in your city, to find, discuss and rate those projects.“

It presents a list (by state) of the number of projects that are ready to go at the link

http://www.stimuluswatch.org/project/by_state.

If you click on a specific state link you’ll see the projects that the mayors in Minnesota have listed as shovel ready. Then, if you click on a specific project you can read more about it, enter your own comments, and vote on whether it is a good project or not. For example what about that (Duluth) “Spirit Mountain snowmaking and maintenance facility” project? $6,000,000 and 70 jobs! Who could complain about that? How about the people who have to pay for it? Oh, that’s right. They can’t vote.

Power to the (noisy) people. The Russians would say that the nail that sticks out gets hammered (meaning don’t be different).  We in the West say the squeeky wheel gets the grease … so we all squeek like fiends and get the government to tax others to get that grease. Makes you want to cry, doesn’t it?