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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (73816)	9/4/2009 11:43:22 AM
From: Sully-	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Classic Video: The Million-Dollar Outhouse By John Stossel on Stossel Classics Heading to a national park this holiday weekend? As I reported before, if you go to the right one, you may have the privilege of using a million-dollar outhouse. In Pennsylvania, the National Park Service built a one-seater outhouse that looks more like a chalet than a toilet. When the government spends your money, they decide local slate isn't good enough. The slate must be imported from Vermont. They must use flower seed that costs $700 a pound. The outhouse must have windows and a porch. Why does an outhouse need a porch? And of course, the paint must be epoxy that costs $78 a gallon. When the smoke cleared, more than $780,000 had been spent to build the outhouse. How did they spend that much? Well, bureaucracy costs money. It took more than a dozen Park Service engineers and architects two years to design the outhouse. That cost over $100,000. Then to oversee the project, a supervisor from Denver lived onsite in Pennsylvania for about a year. That cost another $80,000. Then they had to get environmental approvals and meet all government construction rules. That meant hiring minority-owned firms; size requirements mandated by the Americans With Disabilities Act; and paying union-like construction wages. It adds up. And it gets worse. In Montana, the Park Service has built a four-hole outhouse. The cost: One million dollars. Give me a break. Video at link feedproxy.google.com