So I went to Google News and typed in "federal grant" just to see how the Chinese are indirectly investing their money.
On the first page there were ten articles. Allow me to share with you the three which, by the book's cover, appear most wasteful. I will then click on them and see if my rush judgment was correct or not:
PATH Snags $1M Federal Grant to Take Ultra Rice to Africa
Jersey City Area Gets Over $12M in Federal TIGER II Grant Money
Salt Lake City to receive $26m federal streetcar grant
For the record, I know nothing about these articles, other than what I have cut and pasted so far. (And not for the record, but for your information, I am too lazy to type out the HTML to give you the links, so if you want to read these super dull articles yourself, feel free to go to Google News on your own and search and find them).
Okay, on the rice for Africa program I observe the following. Apparently an NGO in Washington State received a $1 million grant from the US Department of Agriculture to send fortified rice to Burundi. Now, on the surface there are some obvious objections here. The Department of Agriculture itself is unnecessary and an outgrowth of the always metastasizing Eecutive Branch. On top of that, even if you accept that the Department should exist- is its role really to assist food development in Africa? I suppose if you're a proponent of the "government can fix things" school of thought, yes, this might see like a sensible idea. Theoretically the Department of Agriculture's efforts here might open up African markets for US suppliers.
Of course, the counter argument is that free, rational actors in the market would make the best decisions about what rice to export and therefore grow US business opportunities in Africa, as opposed to a government bureaucrat.
I, of course, support this approach.
What evidence does this article give in support of my theory? How about this telling quote:
The original concept, born in a food science lab in Bellingham, WA, was to fortify a staple food like rice with Vitamin A that could help prevent blindness in developing countries. The father-son inventing team, after failing to find commercial partners to help get the technology to people in need, donated the patent to PATH.
So two private actors find a product so financially unviable that they give it away and the response of the Department of Agriculture is to subsidize it and ship it off to Africa at the cost of $1 million? If I were Chinese I would be furious at this foolish use of my investment money!
(I know what you might be thinking- maybe giving this away was the rational decision, because a tax benefit was realized. But if the product was given as a donation for tax reasons, that tax motivation itself is just another form of subsidy- the feds are curtailing revenues by offering the benefit. So if that's what you're thinking- you can shove it).
Now onto the tiger in New Jersey article, whatever that might be.
Okay, first the good news. For one thing, the money is going only to the US, which is an improvement over the send rice to Burundi grant. Secondly, the money is to be used to mostly fund essentials: traffic signals constitute about $10 million of the $12 million grant (the article states 128 intersections will receive new signals, which works out to about $80,000 per intersection- presumably that is a reasonable amount). I am all for liberty and government staying out of my way, but I have no desire to live in a place without traffic lights. I'd never get any texting done.
What I do not approve of though is the federal government, through the Department of Transportation (see everything I wrote above about the Department of Agriculture) enginereering such plans. Here is a radical idea: instead of taking the money from people around the states, sending it to Washington, and then rationing it out to certain areas based on lobbying and political influence, why not just let each state stick up their own darned traffic signals? I am pretty certain voters in each state are going to want signals, and will hold their state officials responsible. And since traffic signals, unless on state lines, don't really affect interstate commerce (silence Supreme Court decisions since 1932!) this is the Constitutional course to take.
The other thing I don't like is that $2 million of this $12 million is not going to traffic signals, but this ridiculous idea:
“The project focus will be to create a residential, mixed-use, transit-oriented development with access to open space amenities in a community with a significant low-income population,” according to the DOT. “The process will also develop a formal legal framework to ensure that redevelopment is equitable.”
I am having a hard time imagining what part of the Founders' vision included a government bureaucrat in Washington pounding out North Jersey planning provisions for members of a specific economic class. Sort of sounds to me like centralized economic planning, which would make sense if your vision of the Founders involves shoving the Tsar's family into a basement and pumping them full of bullets. The whole "DOT plays planning commission" seems a bit beyond what was discussed when the States came together and agreed to form a Union.
Then we have Salt Lake and its streetcars.
According to the article:
The project calls for a 2-mile line to be built along an abandoned railroad corridor purchased by the Utah Transit Authority between 2100 South and Interstate-80.
$26 million, in case you are from the Emirates and use 100 euro notes to light your cigars, is a pretty serious amount of money.
Specifically, it's about .20 cents for each of the estimated 140 million US taxpayers. Now, of course, not all US revenues come from the income tax. Only about 50% does. So your average taxpayer is directly on the hook for a paltry ten cents (I write "directly" because of course a fair amount of corporate taxes, tariffs, and other sources of federal revenues are passed along to the public). But we will call it a dime.
You can afford a dime, right? Can you spare a dime to help out Salt Lake City, brother? We need some new streetcars.
Maybe you should not. Because, if Salt Lake needs streetcars, well then heck, I bet a bunch of other cities do to.
I Googled "federal streetcars" in Google News and guess what? Lots of places are getting street cars. Yay! Street cars for everybody!
Madison, Wisconsin just got some streetcars- neat! Stick a styrofoam cheese on the front and hop aboard for a taxpayer funded ride! Fort Worth got one too! Yeeeeee-haaw! Do you think they slap bull horns on the front of theirs? And so did Atlanta (I'm not sure what to put on an Atlanta streetcar- maybe a CNN logo? A Coca Cola bottle perhaps? Isn't James Brown from around there? Did they bury his corpse yet, or is the family still fighting over it? Well here's an idea- let's wrap some electrical tape around what's left, smash it on the front of the new A-T-L streetcar, and make a tapayer funded sexmachine- it's only a dime to feeeeeeeeeeel good about public transportation in the Peach State!). The good city of Tempe is getting some new streetcars too- be careful kids- there's a cactus on the front of that one. Everybody gets a streetcar- yay!
Of course, at the end of the day- that is a lot of dimes. And never forget- in addition to streetcars, we need to pay for traffic signals, and rice in Burundi, and economic development for targeted communities in North Jersey.
Oh brother.
Sensible libertarian views on nearly everything- except foreign affairs.