Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Some Suggestions for Future Budget Cuts

As I wrote yesterday, I think the government shutdown is stupid. But so long as people are listing things that are no longer operating (that, it follows,we usually pay for), let's see if we can find some things we fund that we can all agree are a giant waste of time and money.

Government social media presence--Twitter, Instagram, etc. Why on God's earth do we pay people to update the First Lady's Twitter account or the White House Instagram feed? I'm sure the WH has a staff photog--and they should for history's sake, I think--but real time updates of what is going on in the Oval Office is no more useful than the pic of what my friends had for brunch on Sunday. At best it's useless, at worst it's propaganda. Chuck them.

The DEA: Seriously, they are worthless. Drugs are cheaper and purer than they've been at any point over the last 20 years. Billions of dollars absolutely and unquestionably wasted, not to mention the lives ruined and lost in the process. Kill it.

E-Verify: Doesn't work, costs a lot of money, is a blatant privacy violation, and is going to cost jobs when false positives reject American citizens from jobs for which they are eligible. This last bit will be due to some administrative snafu, which comes standard with any government program. We don't need a national ID.

Child Soldier Subsidies: No, really. Congress passed a law in 2008 banning financial and military support to regimes that actively use child soldiers. The White House just waived that ban for three countries that use child soldiers on Friday. Here, for once, it's perfectly reasonable to say "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!"

There are plenty more, but even the most strident good government type has to admit we spend too much money on government that ranges from banal to deplorable. Surely we can cut some of this.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

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