The Daily Hatch

Two Very Good GSA Waste Cartoons

April 21, 2012 by Dan Mitchell

One of my first blog posts back in 2009 featured a column about the Social Security Administration squandering $750,000 on a “conference” at a fancy golf resort in Arizona.

This is why I’m not surprised the GSA pissed away a lot of money at a Las Vegas resort. This is what people do when they spend other people’s money. Heck, this cartoon shows it better than I can say it.

Here’s a small sampling of similar outrages.

• A $423,000 study to find out that men don’t like to wear condoms.
• Disability payments to a grown man who wants to wear diapers and live as an “adult baby.”
•  The Pentagon spent $900 on a $7 control switch.
• Harry Reid’s subsidies for cowboy poetry.
• The Census Bureau’s $2.5 million ad at the Super Bowl.
• A $100,000 library grant to a city without a library.
• The IRS squandering $15 million on a P.R. campaign to improve its image.

The bureaucrats involved in all these outrages should be fired, or perhaps even charged with crimes such as malfeasance, but this cartoon reminds us that the real problem is the political class which appropriates the money that is then wasted by bureaucracies.

This cartoon was authored by Michael Ramirez, and you may know he is one of my favorites. To understand why,  see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

And this cartoon reminds us that every dollar of waste that gets publicized is just the tip of the iceberg.

I’m not familiar with Steve Breen, but he does lots of work like this, I’m sure I’ll be featuring more of his cartoons.

Thinking about all this waste, fraud, and abuse is a bit depressing, so let’s try to feel better by thinking about the ways that foreign governments squander taxpayer money, such as the UK government funding sex trips to Amsterdam, the Greek government rewarding pedophiles with disability handouts,  or the European Commission financing penile implants for senior politicians and bureaucrats.