Deep Thought

Sometimes I think it'd be more fun to be a liberal. Though I guess "progressive" is the current label, now that "liberal" puts a bad taste in everyone's mouth. The idea is the same though: you proclaim yourself smarter and more compassionate, then you devise ways to gain power, which, don't worry, you're compassionate, and take our money, which, look we're too dumb to spend it properly anyway. Sweet job.

Anyway, sometimes they put their big heads on display, and the result is usually entertaining:

Behold, the Bush Administration in chart form: Federal spending on paper shredding has increased more than 600 percent since George W. Bush took office. This chart, generated by usaspending.gov, the U.S. government's brand spanking new database of federal expenditures, shows spending on "contracts for paper shredding services" going back to 2000. Click here for the full, heartbreaking breakdown. In 2000, the feds spent $452,807 to make unpleasant truths go away; by 2006, the "Cheney Effect" had bumped that number up to $2.9 million. And by halfway through 2007, the feds almost matched that number, with $2.7 million and counting. Pretty much says it all.

Well, says it all, yes. It says that the outsourcing of paper shredding has grown. The chart doesn't show that the biggest growth has been at the IRS. In fact, the expenditure for IRS paper shredding is much larger than all the others combined.

Which of Bush's secrets is the IRS shredding, do you suppose? Couldn't have something to do with hundreds of millions of tax forms now, could it? Chances are that the growth of shredding contracts at the IRS isn't due to a large growth in the number of tax forms processed. It says that contracts have increased, that's all.

And look at how easy this progressive big brained thinking is to do. In the same government database you can find a shocking trend:

This is a graph of government expenditures on toiletries. Notice anything? Like shocking growth up until 2004, when it peaked? Could it be that these staggering quantities of toiletries were used to spruce-up the government up until the 2004 election, after which contracts were slowly abandoned so as not to draw too close scrutiny from big brained progressives? Of course that's what it was. And they talk about John Edwards and his $400 haircuts!

See how easy? How about this: in 2006, facing a Democrat majority, the Bush White House invested heavily in material handling equipment in an attempt to actually move the government. The plan was for the newly arriving congressmen to find an empty city when they showed up for the first day on the job. Don't believe it? Look at the graph:


Absurd, you say. This can't be. We know that this is not a proper interpretation of the graph because the government was never moved.

Oh, wasn't it? No, I suppose not as far as you know, it wasn't.


via: BoingBoing