Your Stimulus Dollars at Work: Buying Ankle Bracelets For Stay-at-Home Criminals and Hiring Lawyers to Work on Blight Cases

The Cincinnati Enquirer reports on a Queen City council request for $1.3 million in stimulus money for purposes that don't pass the laugh and/or smell test (the laugh-until-it-stops-smelling test?):

Leslie Ghiz and Greg Harris just announced they'll unveil their plan Monday to spend $1.3 [million] in federal Byrne law enforcement grants.

They want to spend $461,000 to lease 75 ankle-bracelet monitors equipped with GPS and $315,000 to hire two city lawyers to work on blight cases. They want the police department to re-prioritize how it'll spend the rest.

Les and Greg, here's some free advice: Keep this perfect plan veiled. Exactly how such spending is supposed to rev the economy up is beyond me. If it's stimulation they're after, why not just buy some Tasers and shock the lawyers? Or better yet, the city council. Incidentally, in southwestern Ohio, home to some of the most egregious eminent domain abuses (remember the Norwood case!), blight is almost always a code word for eminent domain. More here.

This is certainly not the worst of the stimulus-dollar requests (my vote for that honor goes to the legislators demanding more money so they can hire someone to keep track of all the money they're getting), but I suspect it is incredibly typical. And incredibly pathetic.