Summer Fiction: Road Signs as Paid Political Advertisements
Summer in Illinois is construction season. No surprise there. So, roads are closed, squeezed, shifted and crumpled, to allow the pouring of nice, fresh pre-cracked concrete all along your route. As you drive to and from your fireworks, parades, tea parties, and barbecues this weekend – remembering to watch your speed limit and your full stops at red lights in this era of greedy video cameras – you’ll see a new breed of road sign popping up everywhere: “Project Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
Never mind that the ARRA (the trillion dollar stimulus package we passed to keep unemployment under 8%) usually only funds ten or twenty percent of these projects, with the rest of the funding paid for locally…
Read More at the Illinois Review
I believe US Senator Thomas Coburn (R-OK) was highly critical of the amount of money budgeted to erect signs trumpeting the stimulus spending. It is a total waste of tax dollars, but the recovery plan was intended to re-elect incumbents, not to rehabilitate the economy.
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