“but whether it works” – Part "paying to watch grass grow" – Obama Federal Govt “working”? - Granite Grok

“but whether it works” – Part “paying to watch grass grow” – Obama Federal Govt “working”?

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”            – President Barack Obama, Inauguration, 1/20/09

grass growing$10K for cutting grass?  Or is this a case of having too much money to put into the Govt feeding trough? Sure – with all of the land that the Feds own (especially out West – why doesn’t it sell it to the States and to individuals so as to pay down, in part, our humungous debt?) I can see that – taking care of what you own.  But this?  Seriously?  Emphasis mine, reformatted:

Watching Grass Grow – $10,000

The Department of Interior’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is spending $10,000 on the project being conducted in the Guana-Tolomato-Matanzas preserve by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP).  The money will “cover the cost to monitor grasses, restore two acres as a demonstration and publish a guide on best practices for cultivating the cordgrass, known formally as Spartina alternifora”.

…”About 40,000 plugs of Spartina will be pulled individually” out of salt marsh and observers will “painstakingly document how fast it returns”.  “Where plugs of grass are removed, photos are run through computer software to figure the number of plants still standing and how much ground they cover.  A chest-high squre of PVC-like tubing with strings pulled into a grid makes it easier to track growth and thinning in the grasses.”

And they’ll be comparing how much grass was pulled out of a given area:

“If 20 percent of the Spartina is pulled out in one grid and grows back as completely as the grass in an area where only 10 percent was taken, ” the project’s restoration coordinator said “it could mean there’s no apparent effect from taking that much more”.

Science.  I bet we could do an eyeball / thumb type guess and get an optimal answer for a whole lot less.  Given our national debt of $18 Trillion, do we really wanna spend $10K on something that we could get some smart Elementary or Jr. High school kids could do?  You know, a “science project”??

Or with Common Core math, can we only expect professionals to now count that high and do fractions / percentages?

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