Stimulus Funds Pay for College Research, Rather than Job Creation

Subsidies for spiders

U.S. taxpayers picking up the tab for the Obama administration's $831-billion federal "stimulus" — touted to create jobs amid a crippling recession when it passed Congress in 2009 – probably didn't expect the program to fund research by the University of Colorado studying the fluorescent properties of glowing spiders.

Or, a CU project "…increasing general understanding of Arctic peoples and their relationship with a changing environment." Or an inquiry by the university into why people — Chinese and Tibetans in particular — become environmentalists.

Nor did taxpayers likely anticipate forking over some $2.5 million just for those three grants alone. And that's but a smattering of the millions of dollars awarded to the university through the stimulus package — over and above the institution's usual federal research funding — including at least $13 million for no less than 21 projects researching the wide-ranging esoterica of climate change.