September, 2018, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: A Wasteful Jobs Program, Fake News From the New York Times, CNN In Free Fall and Plastic Straw Nonsense

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) More times than I would care to mention we have reviewed hundreds of times when politicians and the government functions they oversee have wasted taxpayer dollars on stupid projects or on an inefficient and ineffective implementation of a project or both. Today we have another effort that was both expensive and stupid:

• An inspector general report recently reported that a Federal jobs program spent $90 million to place women in jobs.
• Which on the surface this does not seem too stupid until you realize that the $90 million placed a grand total of 55 women in jobs, about $1.6 million per successful job placement.
• But it gets worse since these were not even American women, they were Afghan women.
• According to the inspector general: “The United States Agency for International Development program promised to ’empower 75,000 women’ but so far has shown little progress. It is unclear whether the agency can deliver the opportunities it promised the women of Afghanistan.” 
• In 2017, the multi-year program was supposed to help 420 women find new or better work, enroll 1,968 in an internship program and have 900 graduate.
• And despite these rosy predictions only 55 women in a foreign country at $1.6 million per person got a job. This is probably the worst wasting of taxpayer money that we have seen in quite a while.

2) Not only are American politicians not often in integrity, the journalism ethics in this country are usually not much better and thus, the birth of the “fake news” phrase. The New York Time recently proved this point:

• A recent headline and associated first paragraph in the Times strongly implied that Trump’s U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley had wasted taxpayer money on $52,701 in her official, government residence. 
• If true, this would be a tremendous waste of money and an embarrassment to Haley and her boss, Donald Trump.
• And it turned out that it was true, i.e. the curtains actually did cost $52,701, but were ordered during the Obama administration, Haley and Trump had nothing to do with it.
• But the way the article was written it gave the distinct, fake news impression that the Trump administration was wasting taxpayer money on very, very expensive curtains.
• Somewhere towards the end of the article they clarified that it was an Obama era expense but by that time other left leaning news organizations had picked up only the lead paragraph and went nuts trying to prove how wasteful the Trump administration is.
• But the Times got caught on this purposefully misleading “news reporting” and had to eat crow and issue the following retraction and embarrassing correction: “An earlier version of this article and headline created an unfair impression about who was responsible for the purchase in question. While Nikki R. Haley is the current ambassador to the United Nations, the decision on leasing the ambassador’s residence and purchasing the curtains was made during the Obama administration, according to current and former officials. The article should not have focused on Ms. Haley, nor should a picture of her have been used. The article and headline have now been edited to reflect those concerns, and the picture has been removed.”

No surprise that the American public holds both the mainstream news media and those they report on in such low regard.

3) But fake news is not limited to just print journalism. It is no secret that CNN was all in trying to get Hillary Clinton elected President despite claiming that it was an unbiased news source. In fact, it was nicknamed the Clinton News Network for its obvious disdain for Trump and love for Clinton. 

Fortunately, many Americans have figured out the CNN is nothing more than a shill for Clinton, the Democrats and liberals in this country:

• According to the latest analysis from AdWeek, CNN has lost an amazing 41% market share in daytime ratings in the past year.
• In addition, it has lost an amazing 36% of its prime time market share.
• According to AdWeek: “CNN ranked No. 6 across basic cable in total prime time viewers, and No. 5 in total day this past week. Despite the top 10 finishes, the network was -36 percent in prime time viewers, and -41 percent in total day viewers vs. the same week last year.”
• They are now a very distance third in cable news,way behind MSNBC and Fox News.

Pretty sad when you think you are a major news source but sometimes you may actually have fewer viewers than “Cupcake Wars” on the Food Channel. 

4) One last piece of insanity for this month. We have previously reported on how many liberal cities and even states, i.e. California, have banned or are planning to ban plastic straws from life. In fact, in some places like California you can go to jail for giving someone a plastic straw in a restaurant if they did not ask for one. 

Which is pretty silly since in one major California town that is on the straw bandwagon, San Francisco, it is not illegal to defecate, urinate or shoot up drugs in the city streets but it is illegal to hand out a plastic straw in certain situations. To review our past discussion this issue enter “plastic straw” in the search box above.

But consider how stupid this effort is and how much of a waste it is for state and local politicians to fret about such nonsense:

• We have previously discussed the reality that the U.S. does not even rate in the top ten plastic polluters in the world.
• Now, a recent article in Reason magazine stated that 8 million metric tons of plastic make its way into the oceans of the world every year.
• But the U.S. is responsible for only 1% of that waste.
• Which means that California is responsible for only a fraction of 1% of the plastic waste going into the oceans every year.
• Which means that plastic straws in California are only a fraction of the fraction of the 1% of the plastic waste going into the oceans every year.
• Which means that plastic straws in San Francisco is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of 1% of the plastic waste going into the oceans every year.
• Which ultimately means that if San Francisco eliminated the use of plastic straws in the city it would make absolutely no difference to the oceans.

Given this reality, would it not be better for San Francisco politicians, and California politicians, focus their energy and attention on their failing schools, their crumbling infrastructure, their street defecation and urination problems, their homeless problems, and a whole lot of other real problems rather than working on a problem that even if successfully solved would have no impact on their citizens or the world? Political insanity at its apex.

That will do it for this month’s political class insanity, more sure to follow next month.

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