Federal stimulus plan’s spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on unemployment, research finds; “Spend a lot or spend nothing at all, it didn’t matter,” the analysis showed as “local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless of how much stimulus money Washington poured out for transportation”

· “It beats being at work!” Federal Aviation Administration spent $5 million to send 3, 600 managers to a conference in Atlanta that some say was little more than an excuse to throw a three-week-long party

· Congress spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to send politicians and staff on a junket to the global warming summit that failed to reach a climate agreement

· “Stealth” company whose address appears to be an empty office to receive $9.2 million federal grant

· The Postal Service’s top marketing executive directed more than $1.3 million in sole-source contracts to former business associates; As a result, some postal employees are sitting idle because the consultants are doing what previously were their jobs

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From the great folks at Sen. Tom Coburn’s office:

Political scientists lobbying Congress for federal subsidies

The National Science Foundation spends about $8 million annually to support political science research

Research sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Air Force attempts to predict individuals’ political affiliation based on Facebook profiles

Congress earmarks $3 million to a company owned by Goldman Sachs and two private equity funds

Congress raids the military’s maintenance budget to pay for $5 million earmark for digital scrapbooks

The Federal Aviation Administration has spent more than $270 million in federal stimulus grants on projects that scored poorly on the agency’s own national priority rating system

Department of Homeland Security steers nearly $1 million in federal funding, typically distributed to fire departments, to ACORN