GREAT MOMENTS IN GOVERNMENT

Daniel Mitchell


You won’t know whether to laugh or cry after perusing these stories that will be added to our “ great moments in government” collection.
For instance, did you realize that American
taxpayers were saddled with the
responsibility to micro-manage agriculture in Afghanistan? You’re probably surprised the answer is yes.
But I bet you’re not surprised that the money was flushed down a toilet. Here are some excerpts from a report on how $34 million was wasted.
American agricultural experts who
consider soybeans a superfood…have
invested tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer
dollars to try to change the way Afghans
eat. The effort, aimed at making soy a
dietary staple, has largely been a flop,
marked by mismanagement, poor
government oversight and financial waste,
according to interviews and government
audit documents obtained by the Center
for Public Integrity. Warnings by
agronomists that the effort was unwise
were ignored. The country’s climate turns
out to be inappropriate for soy cultivation
and its farming culture is ill-prepared for
large-scale soybean production. Soybeans
are now no more a viable commercial crop
in Afghanistan than they were in 2010,
when the $34 million program got
started… The ambitious effort also appears
to have been undone by a simple fact,
which might have been foreseen but was
evidently ignored: Afghans don’t like the
taste of the soy processed foods.
Sadly, this $34 million boondoggle is just the
tip of the iceberg. It’s been said that
Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires.
Well, it’s also the graveyard of tax dollars.
…the project’s problems model the larger
shortcomings of the estimated $120 billion
U.S. reconstruction effort in Afghanistan,
including what many experts depict as
ignorance of Afghan traditions,
mismanagement and poor spending
controls. No one has calculated precisely
how much the United States wasted or
misspent in Afghanistan, but a…special
auditor appointed by President Obama the
following year said he discovered nearly
$7 billion worth of Afghanistan-related
waste in just his first year on the job.
I’m guessing that most of the $120 billion was
squandered using traditional definitions of
waste.
But using a libertarian definition of waste
(i.e., money that the federal government
should not spend), we can easily calculate that
the entire $120 billion was squandered.
Let’s now discuss another example of
American taxpayer money being wasted in
other nations. I’ve written previously about
the squalid corruption at the Export-Import
Bank, but Veronique de Rugy of Mercatus is
the go-to expert on this issue, and she has a
new article at National Review about “a
project in Brazil that, if it goes bust and the
Brazilians can’t pay the American contractor,
your tax dollars will end up paying for.”
And what is this project?
…an Export-Import Bank–backed deal to
build the largest aquarium in South
America…the taxpayer exposure is
$150,000 per job “supported.” Some
people in Brazil are rightly upset about
this. The Ex-Im loan may have lower
interest rates and better terms than a
regular loan, but this is probably money
the indebted and poor Brazilian
government can’t afford. …a real problem
with the Ex-Im Bank: On one hand, it gives
cheap money to large companies who
would have access to capital markets even
in its absence. But on the other hand, it
encourages middle-income or poor
countries to take on debt that they
probably can’t afford, whether the
products purchased are “made in
America” or not.
Gee, aren’t we happy that some bureaucrats
and politicians have decided to put us on the
hook for a Brazilian aquarium.
But let’s try to make the best of a bad
situation. Here’s a depiction of what you’re
subsidizing. Enjoy.
Subsidized by American taxpayers
I hope you got your money’s worth from the
image.
Perhaps I’m being American-centric by
focusing on examples of bad policies from the
crowd in Washington.
So let’s look at an example of government
foolishness from Germany. It doesn’t involve
tax money being wasted (at least not
directly), but I can’t resist sharing this story
because it’s such a perfect illustration of
government in action.
Check out these excerpts from a British news
report on over-zealous enforcement by
German cops.
A one-armed man in Germany has
received a full apology and refund from
the police after an overzealous officer
fined him for cycling using only one arm.
Bogdan Ionescu, a theatre box office
worker from Cologne, gets around the
usually cycle-friendly city using a modified
bicycle that allows him to operate both
brakes – one with his foot. But on 25
March he was pulled over by a police
officer who, he says, told him he was
breaking the law. Under German road
safety rules, bicycles are required to have
to have two handlebar brakes. After a long
argument at the roadside, the officer
insisted that Mr Ionescu’s bike was not
roadworthy and issued him with a €25
(£20) fine.
At least this story had a happy ending, at
least if you overlook the time and aggravation
for Mr. Ionescu.
Our last (but certainly not least) example of
foolish government comes from Nebraska,
though the culprit is the federal government.
But maybe “disconcerting” would be a better word than “foolish.”
It seems that our friends on the left no longer think that “dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” In a very troubling display of thuggery, the Justice Department dispatched a bureaucrat to “investigate” a satirical parade float.
Here’s some of what was reported by the
Washington Times.
The U.S. Department of Justice has sent a
member of its Community Relations
Service team to investigate a Nebraska
parade float that criticized President
Obama. A Fourth of July parade
floatfeatured at the annual Independence
Day parade in Norfolk sparked criticism
when it depicted a zombie-like figure
resembling Mr. Obama standing outside
an outhouse, which was labeled the
“Obama Presidential Library.” The
Nebraska Democratic Party called the float
one of the “worst shows of racism and
disrespect for the office of the presidency
that Nebraska has ever seen.” The Omaha
World-Herald reported Friday that the
Department of Justice sent a CRSmember
who handles discrimination disputes to a
Thursday meeting about the issue. …The
float’s creator, Dale Remmich, has said the
mannequin depicted himself, not President
Obama. He said he is upset with the
president’s handling of the Veterans
Affairs Department, the World-Herald
reported. “Looking at the float, that
message absolutely did not come through,”
said NAACP chapter president Betty C.
Andrews.
If you look at the picture (and other pictures
that can be seen with an online search), I see
plenty of disrespect for the current president,
but why is that something that requires an
investigation?
There was plenty of disrespect for the
previous president. And there as also
disrespect for the president before that. And
before that. And before…well, you get the
idea.
Disrespect for politicians is called political
speech, and it’s (supposedly) protected by the
First Amendment of the Constitution.
That’s even true if the float’s creator had
unseemly motives such as racism. He would
deserve scorn if that was the case, and
parade organizers would (or at least should)
have the right to exclude him on that basis.
But you don’t lose your general right to free
speech just because you have unpopular and/
or reprehensible opinions. And the federal
government shouldn’t be doing anything that
can be construed as suppressing or
intimidating Americans who want to
“disrespect” the political class.
P.S. Since we’re on the topic of politicized
bureaucracy, we have an update to a recent
column about sleazy behavior at the IRS.
According to the Daily Caller , there’s more
and more evidence of a big fire behind all the
smoke at the IRS.
Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer
hard drive was “scratched” and the data
on it was still recoverable. But the IRS did
not try to recover the data from Lerner’s
hard drive, despite recommendations from
in-house IRS IT experts to outsource the
recovery project. The hard drive was then
“shredded,” according to a court filing the
IRS made to House Ways and Means
Committee investigators.
Gee, how convenient.
I used to dislike the IRS because of the tax
code. Now I have an additional reason to
view the bureaucrats with disdain.
P.P.S. One last comment on the controversy
surrounding the parade float. Racism is an
evil example of collectivist thinking. But it is also reprehensible for folks on the left to
make accusations of racism simply because
they disagree with someone.