boondoggle is a scheme intended to fool (i.e. bamboozle, hornswoggle, hoodwink - other words you may have heard which are very similar in meaning) people into believing that all is well, that a dire situation is in fact under control. In this vein, the term government boondoggle is rather redundant.
If you are a visual learner, you learn by reading or seeing pictures. You understand and remember things by sight. You can picture what you are learning in your head, and you learn best by using methods that are primarily visual. You like to see what you are learning.
25-30% mixed modalities. Therefore, only 30% of the students will remember most of what is said in a classroom lecture and another 30% will remember primarily what is seen. Visual learners are those who learn by seeing. They need to see overheads, diagrams, and read text books, etc. to understand a concept.