Tacoma lawyer J. Mills spent some time browsing the federal government’s website created to provide transparency in how stimulus money is spent.

His observations:

You can see that Palau was given 5 grants totaling $1,491,137. That supposedly “saved or created” 103.28 jobs.

Not sure how you create .28 of a job. Notice also that it’s about $15,000 a job. Not much of a job I expect.

The Marshall Islands did better (or did they?). Got a million dollars, but created/saved zero jobs.

In my zip code – 98406 – (yes, you can search zip codes) $314,589 was given, thus saving or creating 14 jobs. $22K per job. Sadly, none went to me.

98407 reports exactly the same numbers, so there must be someone carefully allocating money absolutely fairly between zip codes.

20004, encompassing the White House and the Capitol building, reports getting $225,777,572 thus saving/creating 80.72 jobs. That’s almost $3 million a job, but the cost of living in Washington DC is higher as I understand it.

J.