A school district in Florida is planning on giving away free iPods, using stimulus money:
The school district is using the device to reward parents of children with disabilities who fill out a 10-minute online survey. The district wants to know how well it’s connecting with the parents and how to get parents involved in their children’s education.Let's hop in the wayback machine to travel far back to a time known as "October 2009," in a mythical land known as "Minnesota":The district is spending about $350,000 in federal stimulus money for the iPods.
Source: The Lonely Conservative
Minnesota has declined to make public its list of recommended projects for the first round of broadband stimulus funding until Washington announces the lucky recipients beginning in early November. Sure, many other states have released their prioritized lists of applicants for a $7.2 billion jackpot. And sure, the secretive nature of the process seems at odds with the high level of transparency that was promised to accompany the even higher level of stimulus funding.So this iPod thing has happened in Minnesota and Florida. Makes you wonder if there was some kind of wish list or "recommended purchases" list that went out with the stimulus funds. Or maybe Apple gave a stimulus discount to any bulk orders coming in from state and local governments.A cursory review by the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota of the projects under consideration, however, indicates there’s plenty of reasons to avoid public scrutiny.
Leading the list of dubious projects is a $5.2 million proposal by the city of Minneapolis to provide laptops or iPod Touches to “underserved” residents, courtesy of taxpayers. Of course, many taxpayers would no doubt appreciate receiving an iPod Touch themselves and there’s no indication of how handing out iPods and laptops would help create or save jobs, or spur economic recovery.
Source: Big Government (Oct. 23, 2009)
Whatever the case, you can be sure there will be more of these stories surfacing...
