The word boondoggle was recently brought to my attention after residing sleepily in that part of my brain reserved for little-used vocabularly - by a commentator on a local new site who stated that the countywide transit plan in Washtenaw was the "biggest boondoggle in the history of the nation."
Wow! Do we get a medal for that? It sounded like quite a distinction. Having trouble summoning the mental dregs that would give me a precise definition, I turned to our good friend Wikipedia:
"A boondoggle is a project that is considered a useless waste of both time and money, yet is often continued due to extraneous policy motivations."
I considered posting that maybe, you know, the Vietnam War was a slightly larger national boondoggle than the transportation planifications of the fourth-largest county in Michigan - but my more prudent side prevailed.
