Southern Bread

Well, now here’s a story that should shock nobody. It looks like a recent analysis of the stimulus plan handouts has found that the parts of the country that are hit worst with unemployment are getting the least, if any, money. Why shouldn’t that shock you? Because if you’ve even been a casual reader of this blog, and other libertarian sources for a while you will know that everything politicians do is… wait for it… political. I actually started writing a post along these very lines about a month ago and decided to wait and shore up my research a bit. The idea was that usually when huge sums of money are doled out by a president, you can bet that the money will go first and foremost to the places he did poorly in during the previous election. It’s no coincidence that the very first “stimulus” project was a bridge in Missouri. In case you didn’t know, Missouri was a swing state that Obama barely lost by just a few thousand votes.

But, back to the article at hand. It seems I was smart to wait on doing a ton of research, because the AP stepped up and did it all for me. Here’s the money quote:

Let’s look at the counties listed in the AP article and see how they went politically in the 2008 election. Basically you will see that money is not going to be spent in areas that are either a lost cause for Obama(he lost big there) or where he won by a big margin. Just as F.D.R. did, you will see over the coming years that the money flows to “swing” areas, where a little money from Washington can change people’s mind enough to get them to vote for Obama in 2012. It’s fiscal gerrymandering. Let’s look at it.

The only one that was even close, if you can call 10 points close, was Steuben, IN. But, a quick look at recent election returns shows that Steuben is a historically reliable Republican vote going way back. So, what about the counties that are listed as having stimulus money spent there? How did they vote in 2008?

We see here that in swing states like Indiana where Obama barely won, all he has to do is pick off a few counties and he’s golden for 2012. Such is the case with Elkhart which borders a bank of blue counties, and shouldn’t take much cash infusion to swing to blue also. Riley County in Kansas is the college town for Kansas State University. Like any college town, it’s going to trend blue. This is a good inroad for Obama into this traditionally red state. The NY Times cited it as a big swing toward blue this last time around. There is clearly an inroad into the state in the North East corner.

So, right now you are saying, “Yeah, Yeah, but it’s the states that dole out the money, just as the article states. So, Obama couldn’t have anything to do with it.” And my response would be: haven’t I taught you by now that everything politicians do is political? You have to think about this thing for a minute. This isn’t some perfectly segmented system of checks and balances like you were taught in Government class. The article even tips you off to how this works:

It’s the Transportation Department that oversees the doling out of the stimulus money for road and bridge projects. The Transportation Department is a cabinet level office under the control of the White House. And, according to the article, they get the final approval on each project. It’s not a stretch to envision Obama controlling which projects get approved based on the 2008 county election map and the relevent historical voting trend chart. It’s politics. And if there’s one thing politicians are, it’s political. Just stop trying to be optimistic and hopeful and naive. This president and congress is just like the rest of them. Corrupt to the core.