Two years ago, I posted a mildly inappropriate photo of an old guy protesting Obama’s faux stimulus.
I should have realized that no amount of satire can match the real-world stupidity of government. Here are some details, courtesy of an NBC station, about some squalid waste.
The NBC Investigative Unit has raised questions about two grants totaling nearly $1.5 million dollars distributed to the University of California San Francisco. The money was part of the federal stimulus program and went to studies into the erectile dysfunction of overweight middle aged men and the accurate reporting of someone’s sexual history. …According to the grant, a good portion of the study will “Improve the accuracy of responses to questions,” specifically questions about a person’s sexual behavior. …The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit discovered that for $1.2 million dollars, taxpayers funded a study that included 200 videotaped interviews at $6000 per interview. …Kovaleski then asked about jobs. “How many jobs did this $1.26 million dollars create?” “Well I can’t really say,” Sheehy said. “There were eleven researchers hired on the job, two consultants. Well I can’t say. This has not been evaluated for job creation.” The number Sheehy quoted during an interview with NBC Bay Area did not match information on recovery.gov, the government’s website for stimulus funds. According to the site, the grant produced 0.85 jobs. “It does make you scratch your head and wonder,” Amey said, “Wait a second taxpayer dollars went to a sex study that barely funded less than one person.”
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I realize government spending is inherently wasteful, but even I’m shocked. Does it really cost $6,000 to interview someone?!?
Heck, I’ll interview overweight middle-aged men about erectile dysfunction and only charge $5,000 a pop. Actually, I don’t think I could do that without throwing up. Not because of the stories from the old guys, which probably wouldn’t be pleasant, but because I don’t believe in using the coercive power of government to steal from fellow Americans.
This may be even more absurd than the Social Security Administration giving disability payments to a 30-year old man because he wanted to wear diapers and live as an “adult baby.”
But I still think the all-time silliest waste of taxpayer money comes from Greece, where the bureaucracy demands stool samples from entrepreneurs who apply to set up online companies.
This Takes “Sucking on the Public Teat” to a Disturbing New Level
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I’ve made reference to the public teat or government teat a handful of times, including posts about moochers in France and Ireland, as well as posts about Senator Conrad and the Small Business Administration.
But now we’re going to move from metaphors to…well, you’ll see.
It’s probably been at least 20 years since I read Time, but I couldn’t help but notice the controversy over the recent cover story about breastfeeding. I don’t have a strong opinion about the right age to wean a kid, though there’s something about this photo that triggered my “ick” reaction.
But that’s not the point of this post. Instead, I want to share this Obama-Clooney parody sent to me by a softball buddy.
This also earned an “ick” when I saw it, but I also found it quite amusing. Like most normal people, I like when pretentious elitists are the targets of scorn and derision. And can you think of two people more out of touch with the real world than Barack Obama and George Clooney?
They truly are limousine socialists, as the parody states.
That being said, I wonder whether the positions should have been reversed. Whoever created this presumably is mocking Obama for sucking up (no pun intended) Hollywood money.
But perhaps Clooney should have been the child in this image. He and his Tinsel-Town colleagues are definitely part of the “1 percent,” but they figure they can stay in the good graces of the left by providing protection money and a bit of glamor-by-association for the political elite (rather appropriate since Washington is sometimes called Hollywood for ugly people).
One hopes that Hollywood leftists eventually will wake up and realize that they’ll be victimized by class-warfare tax rates. Indeed, that’s already happened with Jon Lovitz. And let’s remember that Ronald Reagan supposedly became a supply-sider because he learned there was no point in making more than a couple of movies each year when top tax rates were confiscatory.
But I’m not holding my breath in expectation of a big shift.
P.S. Don’t forget that Obama may become a film star after he leaves the White House, at least according to the person who put together these amusing movie images.
P.P.S. There doesn’t seem to be any risk of me becoming a limousine liberal. My one movie role was apparently so forgettable that I won’t be leaving Washington for Hollywood any time soon.
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