Government wastes our money then asks 'What's $55 billion between friends?'
Rand Paul would be my hero if I considered myself worthy of naming him my hero. He’s the heir-apparent to John McCain’s Resident Maverick title. He breaks with his Republican brothers when it comes to incessant warmongering, war-hawking, and policing the world; considering it a vulgar thing to indefinitely shoot Super Soakers full of cash at those weirdly named countries who are thirty-eight, taking a semester off, crashing on friends’ couches, wearing out their welcome, and just figuring things out. I kind of want to have Rand’s baby. An older boy from a richer, more progressive school told me that men can get pregnant. I figure I’ll make Senator Paul my BD because birth control makes me moody and gives me chocolate cravings.
Every year, the fine senator with half a Jew-fro publishes the Festivus Report; an airing of fiscal grievances which hearkens back to a classic Seinfeld episode. You know, the one in which George Costanza loses his cool and yells about some trifling matter, Cosmo Kramer makes some weird gestures as he speaks his lines with comedic variation on his cadence and volume, Elaine Benes tries to work out her problems related to bad choices in men, and Jerry Seinfeld—despite it being his show—is regularly outshined by much more capable actors. That episode. Jerry did have seventy-three girlfriends in nine years, so…respect. Mad respect. Guess when you’re producing and writing your own hit television program, you can make your character much more attractive to the opposite sex than real life would have it.
So yeah, $55 billion. That’s like, more money than Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates would spend on phallic shaped rockets. Among the greatest hits on the report are $36 billion in misappropriated unemployment wages and $4 billion in bad PPP loans. Guess I’m the loser for not using COVID as an excuse to take some time off, hike through Europe, study Zen meditation techniques, get hooked on opium, and find myself.
I’ll pepper in some of the more ridiculous line items in convenient bullet point form below. Seriously, try to spot the ones that are actually real as opposed to the ones I made up for a laugh so as to not dwell on it and sink into a clinical depression.
Teaching pigeons to play slot machines
Building a border wall…in other countries plagued by wars and unlawful incursions
Studying the effects a superfluity of barbecue sauce has on the self-esteem and time traveling capabilities of tachyons
Buying Afghanistan planes and summarily throwing them away
Funding for hanging art projects around NYC during some of the most stringent COVID shutdowns in the country (think about that one for a sec)
Putting ferrets through a blender to find COVID and flu vaccines
Putting in the late night hours it takes to reassure male Emperor penguins their wives aren’t out cheating on them while they are stuck incubating the eggs
Scrapping a study which concluded that no, #Blackgirlmagic is not real and restarting it with a research team who knows their place and understands the objective is to reach a different outcome if they know what’s good for them and want to hold onto their grants
Instructing Vietnamese people how not to burn their trash
A study verifying that hearing bad news decreases happiness levels
A study verifying that kids eat junk food and gain weight when exposed to it
A study verifying that things which are obvious to even those of meanest intelligence seem to fly over the heads of elected government officials, especially when gathered in their packs (some call them committees)
Teaching the French people (apparently who suffer from a devastating lack of access to books and the internet) about US culture
Giving South Korean kids a free trip to Washington, D.C.
Dropping off South Korean kids in North Korea in some jack-hole’s hilarious but wildly inappropriate idea of a prank
Flying the withered corpses of South Korean kids from North Korea to their parents in South Korea who were consoled by the fact that at least their kids got to visit Washington, D.C. before they died of malnutrition in a North Korean hospitality center
But like I said in the title, what’s $55 billion between friends? The federal government and we are friends, right? We do what friends do, like hang out together, play ball together, watch movies together, dish about cute boys together, go to sporting events together, eat the best dishes local restaurants have to offer together, occasionally ruin the friendship and make things really awkward by sleeping together, and forcibly seize massive amounts of money from each other, then when taken to task about it, playfully tilt their head to one side, shrug their shoulders, and proclaim “My bad, bro”…um, together.
I mean, we’d like to keep the friendship going because WHOAH Nellie, not being the US government’s friend leads to some really un-chill problems and restless, limbless, homeless slumber. Sleeping in and arranging piles of rubble SOUNDS like a jolly fun time, I know, but you do not want to try it. You wouldn’t want them to rethink this whole relationship, would you? (shoves you just hard enough to make sure you get the message but not hard enough to leave a mark some dumb copper would notice) WOULD YOU?!?!?!
In the meantime, let’s not get the silly idea that holding the Fed accountable and giving them consequences and getting some forensic accountants all up in they grill is any type of plan a smart person who enjoys chewing their food with their original teeth would contrive. After all, it’s their money. They earned it. They can do what they want with it and I’d like to see you try to do something about it and I’m not really in love with your attitude at the moment.
This is a government of the (powerful) people, by the (powerful) people, and for the (powerful) people, after all. If you didn’t glean that interpretation from Lincoln’s famous speech, you’re horrible at reading subtext and I’m not sure they can help you. That is, unless you’ve got a fake problem that takes an infinity-plus-infinity-plus-one level of dollars to fix. In that case, they gotcho back. Feel me, playa?
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Image taken from:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/dec/23/festivus-sen-rand-paul-airs-grievances-over-federa/