Ad-nauseum Rehash: Those in high places are either the last to understand or just plain wicked. They are acting as if they believe the path to prosperity consists in redistributing the earnings of the working poor to favorite son corporations. It never worked in history, and there is no logical reason why painting it green should make it more successful. Evoking the broken windows fallacy, they say it creates jobs. What it really does is displace productive resources. Rather than investing in R&D, companies employ grant writers and lobbyists. The result, in caricature, is expensive junk.

That said, the USDA has money burning a hole in its pocket. It won’t trim its budget to scale down a government whose expenditures far outpace its revenues. Instead, it “is seeking applications for grants that will be awarded to organizations to help rural businesses create jobs and spur economic development.” Why doesn’t somebody apply for a grant to go into business shutting down the grant program?

In a similar vein, the NC Youth Advisory Council has some money burning a hole in its pocket. It’s got a gateway drug for kids in the form of mini-grants. It will give them a taste of the easy money that kept Ayn Rand’s villains comfortably numb to reality. Awards will be given to “youth organizations associated with nonprofits or governmental agencies [that] benefit youth-directed community projects.”