Issues
But Will it Work on Congressmen?
Our Golden Fleece award travels to its rightful home, Washington, D.C., where the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded $25 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to build machines that think like humans.
Today, an NSF spokesperson explained, some computers “…rival the raw processing power and memory of the human brain…Yet, a three year old child can identify a door knob better than an intelligent machine can.”
Golden Fleece Award – Issue 67
This week’s Golden Fleece Award, with 5 platinum stars, goes to our own beloved Guv Kitz.
Never before have we granted an award for winning another award. But this one is special because, for his leading role in blowing more than $305 million of your dollars on Cover Oregon, Governor Kitzaber has won Citizens Against Government Waste’s May Porker of the Month Award.
We trust that the Guv will proudly and prominently display both trophies, on a base of goose feathers and raw bacon, on the Governor’s Mansion mantel.
Golden Fleece Award – Issue 66
This week’s Golden Fleece Award goes to the Department of State. Remember how they couldn’t afford sufficient security for the brave men who died defending our consulate in Benghazi, Libya?
Do you think that if they’d taken the $400,000 they blew on a statue of a camel to grace the front yard of our embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan they could have saved those lives? Just wondering.
Golden Fleece Award – Issue 64
This week’s Golden Fleece Award, which is presented with a silver barf bag, goes (not with pride) to the National Science Foundation, which has awarded $742,000 of your tax dollars to Washington State University to test differences in breast milk around the world using breast milk and “infant fecal samples.”
All we can say in this family publication is “Yuck.”
“There’s (sic) no more cuts to make”
– Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
We guess that when Ms. Pelosi said this she didn’t know that the U.S. Agency for International Development is blowing $3 Million to help folks in Tonga, Vanuatu and other Pacific Islanders adapt to climate change.
In awarding these dollars that you so generously contributed, “Special consideration will be given to proposals that benefit women.”
Gosh, we didn’t know that women had a tougher time adapting to climate change than men – and we are genuinely sad to learn it.
We’re Number One!
Again we award the coveted Golden Fleece Award to our own beloved Cover Oregon, which has gobbled up and spit out over $300 Million of tax dollars for its ObamaCare exchange and has signed absolutely no Oregonians through its platinum website.
Know what this means, fellow Beaver Staters? That we’re number one in the U.S. in exchange non signups. Yes – 44 Oregonians have signed up through daunting paper forms, tin cans on strings and other Salem-based modes of communication. Through the website – zero.
We wonder what kind of reward we’ll get!
The Sound of Your Money on Its Way to the Sewer
A Golden Fleece atop a silver toilet is awarded to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which blew (should we say “flushed down?”) $98,670 to buy and install a single-hole outhouse!
OK, so it was a Romtec 1011 “Aspen Single.” Don’t you just adore the 1011? And it was built in Roseburg.
And did we mention that the BLM (really you the taxpayer) paid to ship it 2,500 miles to Alaska?
Question of the day: Couldn’t they have done with the $9,999 model featured in Romtec’s catalog? We guess they just “eliminated” it from their consideration.
Golden Fleece Award – Issue 59
Let’s all go green!
Wouldn’t it be “green” if we used Sunlight to power the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport? The Feds were all over this brainstorm like a bulldog on a pork chop.
In 2012 The Washington wizards promised $100,000 annual savings once they installed solar panels on the airport’s parking garage.
Today one quarter of the panels sits under tarps because none of these geniuses figured that nothing good comes from reflecting the sun into pilots’ eyes.
The final reckoning on this boondoggle was $3.5 million. It looks like the only “green” here was the dollars they looted from your wallet!
Golden Fleece Award – Issue 58
For the fist time ever Lane Solutions presents a Future Golden Fleece Award! Not a cent has yet been spent by Uncle Sugar, but we’re confident that he will blow billion of your bucks on this ingenious project.
The Pres has announced that he’s building seven “climate hubs,” including one in Corvallis, that are going to teach his rural serfs how to survive water shortages, forest fires, pests, (except government types after your money) floods and more. That’s right – he’s going to stop the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse right in their tracks!
And he’s going to work his magic in seven states. Is it just a coincidence that his Senate buddies are in reelection trouble in some of them?
The D.C. wizards claim that the 2011-13 drought cost the economy $50 Billion. We wonder what this bit of idiocy will cost?
Golden Fleece Award – Issue 57
A Fleece Car Named Desire
Remember the cliché “Once burned, twice shy?” The wizards in Rose City government have turned that into “Once burned, let’s see if it’ll happen again.”
In 2009 the Portland City Council approved spending $20 Million to buy six new streetcars from United Streetcar. Cost overruns and delays forced them to cut the deal to five cars.
The order for five was filled more than a year late. Did that make the Council wary of tossing your bucks to United? Heck no. Now they’re buying a sixth car!
The only good news coming out of this United fleecing is that Portland is owed $350,000 in delay penalties at the rate of $300/day. Unfortunately, this is more than offset by the $3.6 Million Portland has spent extending oversight contracts.
Fleece on, United, fleece on!