Three stainless-steel trash cans with motion-activated sensor lids: $314.93 each. A 500-lb capacity ottoman for the cafeteria: $469. Mahogany-finished conference room table: $3,000. The line items sound extravagant enough on their own. When you learn that they were to makeover a Detroit city office that handles the federal money for feeding and clothing the poor, and the credenzas and sofas and such came out of that money, it's time to get livid.
The Detroit Free Press blew the lid off this misspending and waste after it used a Freedom of Information Act request to get a copy of the receipt for the pricey office furniture that was delivered to Detroit's Human Services Department. You can look at the entire receipt here (PDF).
The $210,000 used to buy the office furniture came directly a $1.2 million grant that was specifically supposed to cover the salaries and administrative costs of hiring employees for food and clothing banks... this same Human Services Department, saying they were short on funds, didn't open a high-demand warming center for homeless people until late this winter. Employees were amazed to see the new furniture arrive, considering their wages had been cut 10% last year...
Isn't a huge, centralized, unaccountable administrative state awesome?
Faceless bureaucrats are using your hard-earned money to reward friends, enrich themselves, and punish enemies.
This wasn't a "stimulus" -- it was wealth redistribution, plain and simple. Legalized theft.
This country's founders knew that the federal government must be small, accountable and highly limited in its powers. And every day we see more evidence that the Framers were geniuses.
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