The biggest waste of money in history of world

Michael Grabell:

...The stimulus was supposed to work like this: First, a flood of money in tax cuts, food stamps and unemployment checks would get consumers spending. A deluge of education and health-care money would stanch the bleeding in state budgets. 

Then, a wave of “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects would kick in, creating new jobs repaving roads and making homes more energy efficient. As the economy got churning again, new investments in wind farms, solar panel factories, electric cars, broadband and high-speed rail would lead America out of the recession and into a 21st century economy competitive with the rest of the world. 

But it didn’t happen like that. The White House’s economists, like nearly every forecaster, misread the recession. The state assistance wasn’t enough to plug the budget holes and, in many cases, the school aid merely delayed rather than prevented teacher layoffs. Infrastructure projects took months longer to break ground than the public had been led to believe.
...Even as the stimulus was pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy in its first year, it appeared as if nothing was happening. The jobless rate skyrocketed, easily exceeding the poorly conceived chart Obama’s economic advisers had put together, showing that unemployment would never breach 8%.
Of the parts that were visible, it often seemed that the stimulus was providing money for everything. Instead of investing in a few marquee projects, Congress tried to make the stimulus a cure-all. There was money for every one of society’s ills, from cancer to cogongrass, from ailing infrastructure like bridges and rails to invasive species like Asian carp and Russian olive trees....In Michigan, human services officials estimated that 90% of the homes in line for weatherization work would need a historic preservation review. But as of late fall 2009, the office responsible had only two employees. 

Public transit advocates expected a windfall for bus companies like New Flyer in St. Cloud, Minn. But the transit money took longer to get out the door because every grant had to be reviewed by the Labor Department to ensure that it wouldn’t have a negative impact on transit unions. And when the Chicago Transit Authority postponed an order because it couldn’t secure state funding, New Flyer announced that it would lay off employees rather than hire more....One of the little-appreciated aspects of the stimulus is that it was about much more than reining in the Great Recession. It was also about laying the groundwork for a new economy. The second part of the bill’s name, “reinvestment,” was intended to steer federal money toward long-term projects like clean energy, electric cars and high-speed rail — things that will probably take decades to achieve. 

In this way, the stimulus was supposed to be a down payment. But all of these investments were predicated on the administration’s optimism that the public would continue to support Obama’s plans — and that Congress would pass comprehensive energy and infrastructure bills. 

A fundamental argument I heard again and again was that Americans would come to embrace bullet trains as soon as they saw one up and running. This almost-platitude makes it all the more perplexing why the DOT repeated the flaw of other stimulus program and spread the $8 billion fund out like peanut butter.
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There is much more in this long piece.

I think Grabell is too kind to this massive boondoggle, that started the trend in massive debt, that the administration doubled down on with Obamacare, and more top down government controls like Dodd-Frank.  The Democrats have been a disaster under Obama and this was just the starting point.