My years of blowing through govt. monies
I was just reading some of the garbage that is in the stimulus package, and part of that is $335 million to teach kids about STDs.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem teaching kids about contemporary issues including STDs, with parental agreement. But I’ve been on the receiving end of these types of funds, and I guess I’m just going to spill it.
If some of my old colleagues have found their way here and consider me a Benedict Arnold, so be it. They know what I’m going to say is true, because we joked and complained about it from time to time.
In a previous life, I was the marketing director for a non-profit agency that served teenagers. I also got roped into doing some other programs to stimulate parent-teen communication and help at-risk kids.
Our funding came mostly from state (Illinois) and federal grants. Some of the programs were worthwhile, such as the medical care aspect (helping pregnant teens, giving their babies health care until age two, school physicals, etc.).
Others were a huge waste of time and money. In my opinion. They all had ridiculous names made of acronyms, such as PUPPY (making up an example), Pushing Up Peppy Positive Youth. The programs were all supposed to help reduce teen pregnancy, substance abuse, and substance abuse during teen pregnancy.
Good goals, and perhaps I’m being too harsh.
I won’t go into detail about other programs. One of the programs that I ran featured a theater troupe of at-risk kids (read into that what you want). In order to justify the grant money, I had to recruit these kids and make the troupe.
I basically bribed them with junk food and soda. That’s why they joined the group, not because it was fun or they wanted to learn acting and singing. They came for the donuts. I knew it, but I had to have some bodies in the group.
And the whole thing was a disaster, though I tried harder to make that group work than I’ve ever tried anything. I even got an intern from the theater department at the university, brought in my mom for some singing lessons (she was a singer and former teacher).
Nothing worked. These kids weren’t interested in putting together a performance. They wouldn’t learn their lines and thought it was all a big joke.
This nightmare went on for a couple of years, and I guess after I was gone from the place. (I don’t want to give the impression they were bad kids; they weren’t. They simply weren’t interested in anything but the junk food.)
And every three months, all of the staff would write these bullshit quarterly reports for the government, to tell what a great job we were doing, and to justify more money. I learned the art of bullshit at that place, how to say nothing in 30 pages.
Maybe I’m being a pessimist, and perhaps something someone did had a positive effect. It just always seemed like such a waste of money to me, even then. (And then I was still basically a socialist, or at least very, very far to the left.) It’s possible that we spent a million dollars and one kid didn’t get pregnant because of our work.
But I really doubt it, and I have my reasons that have to remain private.
Another bit of pure waste: all of these programs with silly names had a budget, based on what the government funding was. Part of the money went to things like rent (to the agency), office supplies and so on. Part of it was for salaries and benefits. The rest was for program expenses, such as the donuts.
Each program director knew exactly how much money s/he had for the year and tried to plan accordingly. But there were so many times I scrimped along, doing without things we really could have used in the program. The director would say not enough money. Basically she had all of us not spend, do without…and then a few weeks before the fiscal year ended, we had to spend up all the money we hadn’t spent.
It was almost always in the thousands of dollars, sometimes several thousand. It was like we were given a shopping spree at the grocery store - someone gives you a cart and says “Spend x amount in two weeks.”
But the time when you needed certain things has passed, and you end up buying crap. I remember once buying this very deluxe office chair, just trying to spend the money. I didn’t need that chair. My old chair was just fine, although this one was super comfy. We ended up with computer programs nobody used, even computers.
The reasoning on this craziness was that if you didn’t spend all of the money, the next year, they’d cut your funding. Use it or lose it. But in our case it was do without all year long, then throw money away on useless junk that goes into a closet and is never seen again.
So when I saw the expenditure for STD education, it brought me back to the waste and bullshit of some of what we did. To be clear, the whole place was NOT a waste, and good things were done. There were times I was really proud to work there; and then times I was just sad to see tax dollars flushed down the drain. People in America worked hard to pay Uncle Sam those dollars.
Michelle Malkin breaks it down pretty well here.
I’m really in a sad state over some of the things BO has already done. I have no problem with disagreeing with some of his ideas and actions. But somehow it just all feels like the flim-flam man has returned, and that makes me horribly sad.
It’s as if he’s trying to please everyone, and in fact, he may be making a huge mess that cannot be undone.
I don’t even find much joy in the crazy entertainment our governor has become.
Maybe I just have some winter blahs.
