President Barack Obama promised that his coveted $787 billion stimulus plan would jump start the economy and put Americans back to work, but instead millions have been lost to waste, fraud and abuse as well as highly questionable projects that are unlikely to fulfill any of the plan’s goals.

Just weeks after a U.S. Senator’s scathing report (A Second Opinion on the Stimulus) documented $55 billion in wasteful projects—including a multi million-dollar turtle crossing and government checks to 10,000 dead people—nationwide, a pair of news reports expose the latest scandals involving stimulus fund recipients. 

The first reveals that about $1 million went to nearly 4,000 jailed convicts, including murderers and rapists, who received $250 stimulus checks that they did not qualify for. The money came from the Social Security Administration, which previously mailed out stimulus checks to 10,000 dead people. Additional stimulus checks were also mailed to fugitive felons and people that had been deported.

A separate news report says that, despite Obama’s promise of a transparent stimulus plan free of politics, the government is dishing out hundreds of millions of dollars under a cloak of secrecy that is clearly susceptible to political influence. Among the undercover allocations is $15 million for a rarely-used Canadian border checkpoint in Montana. Although the project was low on the government’s priority list, the state’s two powerful Democratic senators persuaded the White House to fund it. 

A Mexican border station in Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s home state is getting almost five times more than any other station (nearly $200 million) and a North Dakota checkpoint that serves only 70 people a day will receive nearly $15 million for renovations even though it ranks among the lowest priority projects. In the meantime, a busy Texas checkpoint that serves tens of thousands of travelers daily and ranks among the government’s highest priorities is getting no stimulus cash. 

The only real thing President Obama’s precious recovery package has stimulated is growth in the federal government, according to a news report, that reveals Uncle Sam has hired 25,000 new workers this year and spent tens of billions of dollars to oversee and implement stimulus funds. More than a dozen federal agencies, that combined spent $46.1 billion in stimulus money, also spent nearly $200 million on salaries related to stimulus administrative expenses. 

During the government’s spending spree national unemployment continued soaring, increasing by nearly 4 million. One Republican lawmaker from California correctly points out that Obama’s stimulus package has enlarged the federal bureaucracy without making a dent in the nation’s unemployment rate. 

This is hardly earth-shattering news. In the last few months various reports have exposed the pervasive fraud that has corrupted the massive stimulus program, undoubtedly contributing to its failure. Millions have been lost to waste, fraud and abuse as well as highly questionable projects that are unlikely to fulfill any of the plan’s goals.

A scathing U.S. Senate report (A Second Opinion on the Stimulus) documents tens of millions of dollars in wasteful stimulus projects and predicts that at least $55 billion will be lost to fraud and abuse by the time all the money is spent. Other examples of waste include $1 million in stimulus money for nearly 4,000 jailed convicts—including murderers and rapists—and Social Security checks mailed to 10,000 dead people. 

Additionally, $15 million went to a seldom-used checkpoint in an isolated Great Plains town with influential politicians and more than $1 billion to dozens of highly questionable projects at remote airports that didn’t meet the grant criteria and to facilities with a history of mismanaging federal money. 

Several big—and no doubt politically connected—firms in California are raking in lucrative government stimulus contracts despite previous pollution violations, criminal probes and allegations of fraud, according to a local newspaper investigation. The businesses are all doing work in a relatively concentrated area of southern California, despite their shady pasts.

In Ventura County, airplane and defense contractor Boeing got a $16 million stimulus contract for environmental monitoring at the same county site (Simi Valley) where the company was fined for polluting a creek with chromium, dioxin, lead and mercury. A construction company facing three federal criminal probes for fraud got a $6.4 million stimulus deal to repair roads in three counties and a Denver-based firm that dished out $3 million to settle a lawsuit over operating rodent-infested buildings littered with safety hazards got $13 million to rehabilitate a housing complex in Los Angeles.

These are just a few recent examples of the pervasive corruption in the monstrous $787 billion stimulus that Obama promised would jumpstart the economy and put Americans back to work. Instead, unemployment is at an all-time high and tens of billions of dollars have been lost to waste, fraud and abuse. Much of the wasteful spending was documented early on in a lengthy congressional report (A Second Opinion on the Stimulus) that reviews the first few thousand projects. 

Among them is a $3 million turtle crossing in northern Florida, the $10 million renovation of an abandoned train station that has been shut for three decades and 10,000 dead people getting Social Security stimulus checks. Nearly $16 million went to repair dozens of seldom-used bridges in rural areas of Wisconsin, $2 million to a nonprofit that bungled a federal low-income housing program and $1 million to build a guardrail around a nonexistent Oklahoma lake.

Just last month Hillary Clinton’s longtime confidant and chief campaign strategist got $6 million in federal stimulus funds to save three jobs at his global public relations firm. A cut of the money went to one of Obama’s top Florida advisers, a Cuban-American lobbyist who pushed hard for the president in Dade County’s traditionally Republican Hispanic market.

A few months ago the Department of Defense awarded $30 million in federal stimulus contracts to half a dozen companies under criminal investigation for defrauding the government. The six firms actually got the lucrative Pentagon deals while they were under federal criminal investigation for cheating the government. 

The latest stimulus corruption was exposed recently by the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General, which conducted an investigation into how the agency is spending nearly $50 billion in stimulus funds, supposedly for crucial infrastructure projects at the nation’s key airports. 

Instead, the inspector general says in a report, a portion of the money has gone to costly and unnecessary projects that had no business getting emergency federal funding. Among them is a $14 million infusion to replace the airfield in a remote Alaska town (Akiachak) of about 650 residents located only 14 nautical miles from the state’s fourth-largest airport. Another $15 million went to replace a separate tiny Alaska town’s (Ouzinkie, population 167) gravel runway even though its harbor is equipped with a seaplane landing area.

Other stimulus-funded projects at remote facilities that didn’t qualify include nearly $5 billion for a new taxiway in Findlay Ohio, $2.2 million for a runway extension at Wilbur Airport in Washington, $2 million for an apron at Missouri’s Warrensburg-Skyhaven Airport and nearly $1 million to design a runway at a small Dover, Delaware airport. None of the facilities have commercial passenger service and have extremely limited operations, the inspector general points out. 

Additionally, four substantial grants went to recipients with a documented history of misusing government money. They include Guam International Airport Authority, Puerto Rico Port Authority, Owensboro-Daviess County in Kentucky and Pitkin County in Colorado.

While the stimulus money was injected directly to the Department of Transportation, the notoriously deficient Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) distributed the portion that went to airports, perhaps explaining the unorthodox selection process and inevitable waste of tax dollars. 

This marks several of many serious problems with Obama’s massive $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which he promised would jumpstart the economy and put Americans back to work. That has clearly not materialized, though rampant waste and fraud has surfaced repeatedly in the president’s heavily promoted plan.  

Earlier this month an investigation that reviewed thousands of stimulus programs nationwide revealed that tens of billions of dollars will likely be lost to waste, fraud and abuse by the time all the money is spent. A lengthy report (A Second Opinion on the Stimulus) lists examples of waste that include a $3 million turtle crossing in northern Florida, the $10 million renovation of an abandoned train station that has been shut for three decades and 10,000 dead people getting Social Security stimulus checks.

Weeks after getting busted for drastically inflating the number of jobs created by the scandal-plagued $787 billion stimulus, the White House is crediting the controversial spending program with saving or creating numerous jobs in congressional district that don’t even exist. 

The humiliating revelation was exposed this week by a national news outlet that examined the latest data posted on Obama’s touted (and quite costly at $18 million) government website that claims to allow taxpayers to see precisely what entities receive stimulus money and how the money is spent. It’s all part of the administration’s goal of fostering greater accountability and transparency.

It turns out that much of the information is fiction. Misidentified congressional districts, or districts that simply don’t exist, are listed as receiving hundreds of millions of recovery dollars and creating a plethora of jobs. Additionally, U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are falsely reported as creating hundreds of jobs with tens of millions of dollars in recovery funds.

Several congressional districts that don’t exist in Oklahoma are listed as utilizing $20 million to create 15 jobs and nonexistent districts in Iowa show spending $10.6 million to conceive 39 jobs. In Arizona, which has only eight congressional districts, the fictitious 15th district is listed as saving 30 jobs with $761,420 and a nonexistent Connecticut district (the 42nd) claims to have generated more than two dozen jobs with zero stimulus dollars.

A powerful Democrat who chairs the House appropriations Committee called the inaccuracies “outrageous” and “ludicrous” and demanded the data be immediately corrected. Just a few weeks ago the administration distorted by thousands the number of recovery-funded jobs in a desperate effort to show that it’s on track to meet its goal of creating 3.5 million new ones by the end of next year. 

Besides blatant fact distortion, fraud and corruption have been pervasive in the monstrous stimulus program that has so far lost millions to waste, abuse and highly questionable projects. Many of the details are laid out in scathing U.S. Senate report (A Second Opinion on the Stimulus) that tracks tens of millions of dollars in wasteful stimulus projects and predicts that at least $55 billion will be lost to fraud and abuse by the time all the money is spent.