On Tuesday, the bloggers at Scientific American were up in arms about a Senator who published a Wastebook that lists 100 or so federally funded projects that he believes are a waste of money. Mostly because the good Senator picked on quails. Some of the projects look like they were victims of organizational lack of planning, such as building a wind farm where there is no wind. Having been employed on soft money for the last 6 years, I have some thoughts about this which I will share.
1. The majority of the projects in this list are small potatoes compared to the Federal Budget. Cutting programs/projects that cost less than $500,000 aren't really going to make a difference in a federal budget that runs into the trillions. I know that every penny counts but really...
2. Pancakes for Yuppies...I'm guessing yuppies don't need their pancakes subsidized. However, I'm thinking the yuppies that are served at this pancake house aren't being served by other yuppies. In fact, they are most likely being served by low-skilled minimum wage workers. The blurb in Wastebook says that it was to serve an "underserved community" I'm guessing the unemployed people who are know employed or the workers kept off of unemployment qualify as an underserved community.
3. I agree on paying dead people is wasteful. But government programs are so inefficient or understaffed. it is impossible to get dead people off any of the lists in a reasonable amount of time. It took forever to get my grandmother off the list and mail still occasionally shows up for her and she's been dead at least 5 years. The same thing is happening with my uncle.
4. We probably shouldn't be giving aid to China either...
5. There's a video game museum??? COOOOOOOLLLLLL!!!!! I want to go. Oh wait. We are talking about video game conservation being wasteful. Why doesn't the good Senator talk to the Library of Congress about how much fun they are conserving early audio recordings. Like how there are some tin tapes of President Truman's speeches that can't be played because there are no more players. Or how long did it take them to be able to play Alexander Grahm Bell's (or was it Edison?) first recordings? And given that I just did a dissertation about video games... The last line of the blurb says that the museum costs $13 for adults. Yeah, so? Universities get federal money by the bucket and you still have to pay to go. What is your point? The funds are to be used to prepare to conserve the collection. So they can write another grant to actually conserve the collection...
6. A Pakistani Sesame Street? Cool. I'm not sure what the problem is with a Pakistani Sesame Street but I'm all for early childhood education. And there's puppet shows. Peace through puppets. ;)
7. There's a magic museum! wow.
8. OOO a Wisconsin Cheese Trail. YUM!
9. Oh heres' something. $4.38 billion in War waste and fraud.... Cut that and leave my video games alone....
10. The study on how information, especially political information, spreads through the Web might actually be a benefit to you dear Senator. Considering the amount of misleading and false information found on the Web....and if someone were to say, start some kind of rumor about you...
11. I agree that duplicate programs should be combined. However, are you sure they are duplicate programs?
I agree that some of the things on the list seem somewhat silly and perhaps wasteful in the new austerity era that we should be having. However, many of these projects provide jobs or support jobs that are already in existence. For example, how much did it cost you to put this book together dear Senator? I'm sure you didn't do the research or the writing yourself. Had to hire someone I'm sure.
What I don't see is what the Senator proposes to do about this wasteful government spending. What is his solution to this? What does he propose to do? Let me guess. A study. Which will cost money.
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