White House Twitterer should look hard at recovery.gov

President Barack Obama is the first president to use taxpayer money to pay federal employees to Tweet. A Tweet on Thursday suggested Obama’s so-called jobs act would be good for Florida.

The Twitterer pointed us to the government’s recovery.gov site where we could learn more about where $800 billion or more went from Stimulus 1. Try figuring out where your taxpayer money went by using that boondoggle. Sidenote: sub-recipients aren’t required to report.

There’s a neat map full of digital push pins. You can click over to a list of state projects, but it’s impossible to tell exactly what was done with our money.

General descriptions like “neighborhood stabilization” are used. Some grants went to arts organizations. One grant went to a company named Big Fish Holdings LLC, but there’s nothing to tell us what Big Fish did with the funds. Boca Ballet Theatre Company got $25,000. Maybe they bought a lot of tutus.

ADT Security Services in Boca Raton got $95,587. Isn’t ADT the largest security company in the nation? No way to tell what was done with that $95,587 in taxpayer money, at least if you rely on the government website.

I have no idea if the grants and contracts were used responsibly. Maybe they did a lot of good. It’s just impossible to tell based on information the government provided on the site the official Twitterer recommended.

Money for children’s programs and for the vulnerable is understandable. However, if you scroll through the massive list of Florida companies and organizations that got taxpayer money, you’ll end up totally confused.

I would wager there’s a Solyndra-like scandal buried in the disbursements for every single state.

The official White House Twitter guy might want to refrain from sending taxpayers to recovery.gov. We got enough headaches already.

To learn about Stimulus 1 in your state, grab a bottle of aspirin and head to recovery.gov.