American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan

One of the resident wingnuts brought up a portion of the recovery package that is supposed to support honeybees — of course, you consider the source and presume that you are dealing with more manufactured outrage over something silly. Little did I know. Yesterday evening, I found out exactly what she was talking about (column by Michael Hiltzik in the LA Times):

What in heaven’s name does Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have against honeybees?

That question haunted my days after I saw the Kentucky Republican on TV fulminating about a provision he found in the proposed government stimulus package. The provision, he said, would provide $150 million for “honeybee insurance.”

“This is nonsense,” he said, as if he took it personally. You had to think he got stung as a kid or maybe caught a local swarm in the act of recruiting aphids for Al Qaeda.

So I resolved to get to the bottom of this scandalous expenditure.

Hiltzik provides some more background here, so make sure you go read it all, but here is the good part: