I'm surprised that absolutely nobody has picked up the story of Tom Harkin's $10 million+ electric bus program for Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which was recently scrapped and sold at auction for a grand total of $30,000.
Here's the original story from the Cedar Rapids Gazette.
And here's the GovDeals.com web page showing that all nine buses sold for $30,000.
The nine buses had, combined, less than 200,000 miles on them. Yep, that's right. All had less than 25,000 miles. Three had less than 10,000 miles of service.
From the Gazette story:
So goes the final chapter in the city's grand experiment in electric-powered buses, a venture that floundered from the start before going bust a few years ago — but not before $2.65 million in mostly federal dollars was spent to buy the nine buses and another $7.5 million in federal funds went to support and operate the program.
But who was able to come up with the money for the buses and the program?
The media would never tell you that story.
According to Citizens Against Government Waste, just from 1996:
$6,150,000 added by the Senate for projects in the state of Senate appropriator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa): $4,280,000 for equipment and facilities for buses; $1,200,000 for the Cedar Rapids hybrid electric bus consortium
More than $10 million dollars divided by less than 200,000 miles = OVER $50 A MILE!!!
Why isn't anybody hammering Tom Harkin about this?
2 comments:
On the govdeals.com page and upon further inspection of the driver's station in the last photo, one will see a Rockwell Vision display box on the right side. Vision was Rockwell's attempt to get into precision agriculture (GPS, controllers, etc) in the late 90's.
Kinda funny, as Rockwell is no longer producing the Vision system and is out of the precision ag business altogether.
Birds of a feather flock together...
i emailed these stories to the republican candidates who are running against Tom when these went up for sale. only 1 candidates office replied with a typical form letter thanks. now im on all of the mailing lists from these douche bags and Tom will get easily re-elected to his 80th term..... republicans in Iowa are serious slackers.
Post a Comment