A few Saturday night quick hits about our Federal tax dollars at work.
The Army Corps of Engineers announced last Tuesday that the Louisiana Levee Rebuilding will be at Full Federal Funding. The decision means local politicians don’t have to spend any of their money on the reconstruction so their cash can remain in suitcases and coffee cans.
Under normal cost sharing, non-Federal sponsors, who in this case are the levee boards for each parish, would be required to pay a total of approximately $249 million to repair these facilities. Because of the unprecedented damage and impacts to local governments, the repairs will be entirely funded by the Federal government under the Corps emergency response authority.The Center for Disease Control determines the highly lethal influenza virus they brought back from extinction should probably not be allowed to just sit around unsupervised. The CDC declares 1918 Pandemic Virus Restrictions, so if Dr. Evil has any of this recreated infectious agent, he should call for the appropriate regulatory forms and updated Federal storage guidelines.
This action follows recent work done by CDC scientists to successfully reconstruct the 1918 virus in hopes of better understanding it. Under provisions outlined in the interim rule, all entities (e.g., scientists and researchers) that possess, use or transfer the 1918 strain of influenza or the eight key gene regions of the 1918 virus are required to register with the CDC.Finally, the US Department of Energy created The Energy Hog to help everyone in the USA be better subjects. No thanks necessary.
