We’ve seen the use of stimulus funds mainly to go to non-stimulating efforts, such as bloc grants for states to paper over budget shortfalls and for road work that merely accelerated projects already planned.  How about spending money to tell people not to buy products?  New York City didn’t miss a chance to fund its nanny-state efforts with Porkulus funds, reports the Washington Times:

New York City is pouring hundreds of thousands of federal dollars into television ads telling people they’re better off knocking back a glass of seltzer water or fat-free milk than chugging a soda — part of hundreds of millions of dollars from President Obama’s economic stimulus package devoted to getting Americans to change their behavior by eating more veggies, kicking cigarettes and picking up dumbbells.

In the latest spot, part of a $870,000 stimulus-funded “Pouring on the Pounds” campaign, a narrator warns that while it may seem harmless to have “midmorning soda, a sweetened tea at lunch, a frozen coffee drink in the afternoon and a couple of sodas at dinner” – but it’s not.

“That many drinks a day can add up to a lot of extra calories and all that sugar can bring on serious health problems, including obesity, which causes type 2 diabetes, heart disease and even some cancers,” the narrator intones over images of a gangrene-infected foot and a paramedic attempting to shock an overweight man back to life with defibrillator pads.

Backers say the campaign is a worthy use of federal money that will pay off in a healthier population. But opponents called it a “grotesque” use of taxpayer dollars that has little to do with getting the economy back on track — the stated goal of the stimulus.

Seth McLaughlin also notes that the Big Apple has used its stimulus money to stimulate people into exercising and to promote tobacco-free environments.  Hasn’t Mike Bloomberg’s laws ended smoking yet?  If those laws don’t stop it, then how will federally-funding nag ads help?

Once again, the use of Porkulus funds demonstrate the folly of handing a blank check to government, as well as the notion that government uses capital more efficiently than the private sector.  How many jobs were saved or created by wagging fingers at New Yorkers over their soda choices?  If the ads were at all effective, the result would be less commerce, and therefore fewer jobs.  The best-case scenario would be that New Yorkers ignored the ads altogether, laboring under the apparent delusion that they already knew the consequences of their diet choices and would continue to make those themselves instead.

Taxpayers will have to eventually pay back the Porkulus funds, with interest.  When they do, the capital that could have gone into investments that produce actual growth will instead go to our creditors for their investment and their growth.  Like Cash for Clunkers, we borrowed from the future, but unlike Cars for Clunkers, we got nothing for our trouble — no new car, no new private-sector growth, no economic recovery.  All we apparently got was a game of Kick the Can with state budgets and a series of ads telling taxpayers just how stupid government considers them to be.  What a bargain!