Tuesday, Good Morning America's Jon Karl broke the story of senators John McCain and Tom Coburn listing government waste in Obama's stimulus package, one of which was $71,623 going to Wake Forest University to study how monkeys react to stress when under the influence of cocaine.
These type of stories quickly bring ridicule. I certainly found myself laughing when I heard it. Government funding to study monkeys on cocaine? Oh, boy!
I googled up an old story of how the same Wake Forest University has studied monkeys on cocaine before. Science Digest reported it in 2008. That study showed that monkeys with lower social status were more likely to choose cocaine over food when in stressful situations.
Wake Forest's scientists say much good will come of the new study, helping to understand the addiction and why addicts slip into relapse. I don't know. Perhaps so. Still, I am not at all in favor of public funds for this study.
I've heard the $71,000 for the new study, and many of the other abuses on the McCain-Coburn list, were things that went into the stimulus bill to get it passed, rather than being actual save-the-economy measures.
I don't know that that is the case, though. It seems the good portion of the stimulus went for things we didn't necessarily need. We spent the $862 billion simply to be injecting money into the economy. We reaped some benefit whether the money ended up being spent on needs or on things not needed.
I don't know how many of the projects on the McCain-Coburn list are trully wasteful, but I would be rather sure many of them are. Inserting such waste into the stimulus is the same as saying, "Our economy is in big trouble, so let's waste some money to save it."
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