Trump isn't called the Commander-in-Thief for nothing. Maybe it's time to give his, and his cronies' criminality a bigger spotlight.
Some months ago NPR did a report about the late former Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin and his Golden Fleece Award, which he issued to various examples of wasteful spending.
Proxmire’s Golden Fleece Award was issued 168 times in his career and became a highly effective public relations tool for attracting attention to some very questionable spending practices.
Some examples are listed here:
- National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded project by psychologist Harris Rubin for $121,000, on developing “some objective evidence concerning marijuana’s effect on sexual arousal by exposing groups of male pot-smokers to pornographic films and measuring their responses by means of sensors attached to their penises.”
- National Science Foundation for spending $103,000 to compare aggressiveness in sun fish that drink tequila as opposed to gin.
- National Institute for Mental Health for spending $97,000 to study, among other things, what went on in a Peruvian brothel; the researchers said they made repeated visits in the interests of accuracy.
- Office of Education for spending $219,592 in a “curriculum package” to teach college students how to watch television.
- United States Department of the Army for a $6,000 study on how to buy Worcestershire sauce in 1981.
- United States Department of Commerce (Economic Development Administration) for spending $20,000 to build a 10-story replica of the Great Wall of China in Bedford, Indiana. Begun in 1979, the money proved insufficient and the site is currently abandoned.
- United States Department of Defense for a $3,000 study to determine if people in the military should carry umbrellas in the rain.
- United States Department of Justice for conducting a study on why prisoners want to escape.
- United States Postal Service for spending over $4 million on an advertisement campaign to make Americans write more letters to one another.
- Executive Office of the President of the United States, for spending $611,623 to restore a room in the Old Executive Office Building with gold trim.
If the last item above rings a bell of Déjà vu, it should when compared to current images of the Oval Office.
The blatant, in-your-face corruption of the Trump administration is just begging for its own award and so we thought it might be fun to introduce the Golden Grift Award.
The order of magnitude of wasteful spending has grown astronomically. Every day we hear of new examples of outright corruption and thievery. Trump has by varying estimates added at least a couple of billion to his own pockets since taking office. But this does not even take into account the $8 billion in Venezuelan oil revenue deposited in an off-shore account that he controls, the funds funneled to his family through various government contracts to companies they hold ownership stakes in, the $400 million dollar aircraft gifted to him by Qatar. The crypto scams, the insider trading.
The list is too long for just one brief blog article. And each instance deserves its own close examination. And let’s not forget the scams, grifts and corruption of others in his orbit and that he has pardoned.
Each of these deserve their own Golden Grift Award.
We are open to suggestions of which instances deserve the most credit and exposure.
Remember, the election theme that worked for Bill Clinton was “It’s the economy, stupid.”
The theme for Trump’s ultimate defeat could easily be “It’s the corruption, stupid.” That certainly worked for the Hungarians as they were ousting Orbán.
Please send suggestions in the comments below.
Marty Kassowitz is co-founder of Factkeepers. As founder of Interest Factory and View360, he brings more than 30 years experience in effective online communications, social media management, and platform development to the site. He is a writer, designer, editor and long time observer of the ill-logic demonstrated by too many members of the species known as Mankind. After a long history of somewhat private commentary on a subject he totally hates: politics, Marty was encouraged to build this site and put up his own analyses as well as curate relevant content from other sources.
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