Issues
Golden Fleece Award – Issue #46
This week we award what’s really a “Golden Lamb” Award – Because the money you earned and your “Public Servants” in Salem wasted wasn’t that much. If it weren’t your money it’d be worth a laugh.
In case you were about to shed a tear for the Beaver State’s cheese industry, don’t bother, because the Oregon Cheese Guild has scored a cool $50,000 to produce videos featuring cheese farmers, cheese experts and cheese history. We hope they’re not too “cheesy” (sorry).
Remember that old ad “Is your dog getting enough cheese?” Maybe they could blow some more bucks by running their video on pay TV’s The Dog Channel!
Golden Fleece – Issue #45
This issue we step outside Oregon to award a Golden Fleece with Lead Dunce Cap to The National Institutes of Health.
These “public servants” have taken a cool $653,190 of money you earned and tossed it after a program to convince female “light smokers” to kick their habit.
What’s wrong with that? Plenty. Your money is going to Parana. No, it’s not in Arizona. It’s in Brazil! That’s right – the Feds are blowing these bucks on Brazilian women because they want to create a culture-specific program to separate these senoras from their addiction to the noxious weed.
Relax, Brazilian lady puffers – Help is on the way – courtesy of your amigos the American taxpayers.
Golden Fleece Award – Issue #44
This week Lane Solutions’ coveted Golden Fleece Award, presented to a government entity that wastes humongous amounts of your money, goes to Obamacare, which is blowing $20 Million to create and run TV ads educating Oregonians on the wonders of Cover Oregon, the online shopping mart for health insurance, money to pay for it and free pizza and ice cream (just kidding on that last).
To the sounds of mellow folk singers and strumming guitars Oregonians will be introduced to Obamacare, which commands all Americans to buy health insurance by next January 1 or pay a fine.
Soon our dewey Salem based folkers will yield to the Portland hip-hop duo “Lifesaves,” who’ll tout the wonders of Cover Oregon to the younger set.
Yes, readers, it takes a cool $20 million to ”… create a positive vibe associating the (Cover Oregon) brand with Oregon’s cultural identity.” No doubt the crooners and hip-hoppers will be sporting Birkenstocks, crunching vegan granola, and flashing their Oregon Trail cards.
Golden Fleece Award – Issue #43
$175 Million – And Nothing to Show For It!
This issue’s Golden Fleece Award, surrounded by solid gold brocade (we’ll do the same for anyone who wastes $175 Million of your bucks), goes to the Columbia River Crossings Managers.
Yup – $175 Million of your dollars dumped straight into the Columbia River. Most of it shoveled to consultants who weren’t bright enough to figure out that a bridge with only 95 feet of clearance is too low to allow passage of many (most?) cargo ships up and down the river!
Be glad this turkey is gone. If it weren’t we’d be paying more in mitigation costs for upriver manufacturers. How much more? These geniuses wouldn’t tell us.
But don’t be too hard on these dedicated public servants. In our minds it takes one heck of a lot of talent to totally blow $175 Mil.
Golden Fleece Award
Lane Solutions proudly presents this issue’s Golden Fleece Award with a Silver Star (awarded to any government department that blows $10 Million or more of your money to (big drum roll, please) the OREGON EMPLOYMENT DEPARTMENT!
These are the 1400 public servants who doled out $1.5 Billion in unemployment checks last year (again – your money).
Investigations revealed that this gang had wasted about $30 Million on computer software that (surprise, surprise) doesn’t work! Oh, well, it was just $30 Million. And it wasn’t even their money. Sort of makes you wonder about the $1.5 Billion, doesn’t it?