Dear Everyone,

Thanks to your generosity the ARRA has provided funding for the following in my fair city

• A 20 hour per week library employee.
• $512,000 for the Adams Street Bridge.
• $500,000 for the reconstruction of West Wisconsin Avenue.
• $1,200,000 for a detention pond on Commerce Court.
• $31,000 to fund a regional crime analyst position.

Thanks everybody!  We sure do appreciate your tax dollars. 

Except … that money has not yet been spent.  The bridge remains in it’s per-ARRA condition, the detention pond is a wet dream, the two employees are un-hired.

So what’s going on here? [1]

I suggest that part of the reason for the red-line – reality – to be screaming skyward like an F-15 on afterburner [2] is that the bulk of the ARRA funds are unspent.

Contrary to what ‘everyone’ was saying, that there were not a whole lot of ‘shovel-ready’ projects.  The funds are hanging around in limbo not doing anyone a bit of good.[3]

Something jerks mightily on his back: the static line, still attached to the airplane God forbid that American fighting men should be entrusted to pull their own ripcords. He can just imagine the staff meeting where they dreamed up the concept of the static line: “For God’s sake, General, they’re just enlisted men! As soon as they jump out of the airplane they’ll probably start daydreaming about their girlfriends, take a few hits from their pocket flasks, catch forty winks, and before you know it they’ll all pile into the ground at a couple of hundred miles an hour!”

I am so, so, glad we have actual professionals handing this stuff so we don’t mess it up.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

[1] Altered image gleefully nicked from TJIC.
[2] Warning!  Cheesy 1970s action and adventure music.
[3] They probably are in an account earning interest at some minuscule rate, but one imagine bales of cash stacked up on loading docks and warehoused in offices around metro D.C. while some serious bureaucratic wrangling goes on.  Good thing money doesn’t loose value just sitting around!