Stimulus funds go to the study of crack head monkeys plus other fun programs

Dry Tortugas National Park. Located 70 miles off shore, the park is almost entirely underwater and accessible only by airplane, private boat or ferry. Despite its remote location, the park will get $13,304,484 in repairs for its main above-water attraction, Fort Jefferson.   Those willing to take the 4 1/2 hour round-trip ferry ride155 aboard the Yankee Freedom II have to pay as much as $165 per person, but will discover that only 40 of the park’s 65,000 acres are dry land.  The park has the third lowest attendance (about 52,000 in 2009) out of any national park in the continental United States.

Aerospace giant Boeing received a no-bid contract worth nearly $16 million166 in stimulus money to clean up a California site it helped pollute.167 The facility, the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, was built in the 1940s, and has been used for engine testing and nuclear power work; Boeing has owned it since 1996.168 In 2007, local authorities fined Boeing $471,000 for dozens of pollution violations at the site, which poisoned wastewater and storm runoff that ended up in the Los Angeles River.169 The company is currently fighting to overturn a California law that puts strict requirements on cleanup at the site.