My reaction was virtually the same as that of the New York Post’s editorial board to The New York Times’ decision to confirm—after 17 months—that Hunter Biden’s emails were “real”: “you have got to be sh*tting us.” (Interestingly enough, speaking of the Times, the illustration at the beginning of the Gray Lady’s March 11 interactive, “Where $5 Trillion in Pandemic Stimulus Money Went,” does not even take fraud into account.)
Why exactly is this irritating to the bone? First, NBC News is the very same outlet that––along with other left-wing boosters––just about a year ago hailed Congress’ passage of COVID relief as Biden’s “first legislative victory” since taking office while, naturally, blasting conservative critics in the same breath. And second—well, gee, who among us could have possibly anticipated the government mismanaging trillions of dollars?
Yes, the issue at hand is wonkier than Hunter Biden’s emails, but the mainstream media’s handling of it is just as illustrative of the sheer power of our country’s elite institutions to fabricate and disseminate narratives, preemptively bury whoppers and, if necessary, retcon undesirable accounts.
In both instances, with the Hunter Biden emails and COVID relief, more than one year has passed, but there has been zero authentic remorse whatsoever for what can only be deemed the deliberate misleading of the American public. Further, both absurdly belated reactions are little more than kabuki theater––just enough concern to still be considered more human than a rock, but not enough to offer either a practical prescription for reform or hope that things will be different next time around.
A while back, before the second round of PPP loans opened to borrowers at the beginning of 2021, I was taking in the gaudy sights of the International Jewelers Exchange in Aventura, just north of Miami. “So what’s popular these days?” I asked an Armani Exchange-clad guy in his mid-20s working his family’s stand, which was well stocked with luxury watches. Without even looking up from his iPhone, he smacked out while chewing a wad of gum, “Everything.”
“Any good deals?” I pressed. Putting down his iPhone, he stared at me with utter disbelief. “Are you kidding? This is the best business we’ve done in years.”
“How’s that possible?” I asked. This was, after all, at the height of the pandemic and amidst record-high unemployment. The guy simply responded: “Dude, PPP.” He stopped there. Apparently, PPP had become such a common form of currency that he didn’t think it needed to be further explained.
In short, all you had to do was poke around your local neighborhood to discover that Big Brother’s allegedly good intentions had turned bad.
Maybe we should sarcastically celebrate the fact that at least some portion—even if only the tiniest bit—of COVID relief reached its intended beneficiaries. The profligacy of government spending is so blatant and notorious that it hardly needs documenting. As but one example, it was recently revealed that Los Angeles dedicated $1.2 billion to a new program for fighting homelessness—and the city ended up spending $837,000 per unit. My wife, while serving at the Department of Housing and Development during the Trump administration, ardently fought against doling out any more cash to Los Angeles after it failed to use millions and millions to retrofit housing units for the disabled.
In far too many instances, a sizable chunk of taxpayer money ends up going down the drain because of gross mismanagement and/or myriad layers of middlemen who siphon off their cut along the way. If government were categorized as a philanthropy and ranked by Charity Navigator, it would undoubtedly receive a failing score and be shuttered immediately.
The worst part is that our elected officials, on both sides of the aisle, know perfectly well that this is inevitable. Fraud, waste and abuse is deemed the inevitable sunk cost of doing “business.” For the Left, these are the means to its own end, which is fostering ever-deeper government dependence by further forcing the tentacles of state power into our daily lives through policies with perverse incentive structures. For Republicans, it’s usually a matter of just dishing out the pork.
To force change, legislators must head off these astronomically large spending bills at the pass. Meanwhile, concerned citizens must use all platforms available to forge transparency by closely tracking the words and actions of our country’s elites, and then underscoring duplicity when it strikes.
Dr. Jonathan Bronitsky is Co-Founder of ATHOS. Twitter: @jbronitsky.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
