Creativity in government

Remember the American Rescue Plan Act in 2022? ARPA was supposed to help states recover from Covid. $350,000,000,000 worth of what many  said would become a boodle for the favored. Thank goodness it would all end soon, the money had to be all spent by the end of 2024.

But the Biden administration quietly changed those rules in late 2023 to give state and local governments more time to spend their American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds. Critics say it’s a change that could transform an already wasteful and unnecessary bailout into an open-ended slush fund for those governments.

That change, which was announced in the Federal Register (which documents the doings of executive branch agencies) in November but otherwise given little fanfare, will give state and local governments until the end of 2026 to decide how to spend their remaining ARPA bailout funds.  Reason

Not to spend it, but to decide HOW to spend it.  But look how some Sacramento NAACP leaders were caught diddling Covid funds:

Suspended Greater Sacramento NAACP president Betty Williams and an executive officer appear to have used their own businesses to manage a multi-million dollar county-sponsored pandemic-era food delivery program, according to financial filings obtained by The Sacramento Bee. Sacramento Bee

Hiring themselves, too. I’m sure you join me in my joy that scammers like this now have at least another two years to rip us off.

And a House committee is checking out the State Department (again):

House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., is probing the State Department over its apparent coordination with environmental groups pushing to shutter global coal power.

“Documents produced to the Committee reveal that the State Department sought and received feedback from leftist environmental groups on the [PPCA] and enabled those groups to influence U.S. foreign policy,” Comer wrote to Blinken. “These documents raise significant concerns that confidential information related to U.S. foreign policy, energy policy, and national security policy, have been shared with these groups, including in off-the-record meetings with Envoy John Kerry.” Officials specifically discussed joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), a group the U.S. formally joined in December.

“The PPCA announcement was the latest example of Envoy Kerry and the Biden Administration taking actions under the guise of climate advocacy that undermine our economic health and threaten foreign policy priorities while avoiding congressional scrutiny,” he continued.  Fox News

Note 20% of our power still comes from coal.

Last, but not least:

In stunning testimony late last year, Michael Morton — who serves as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 6 science liaison to the EPA Office of Research and Development (ORD) in Washington, D.C. — admitted that he didn’t author a key July 2021 email sent from his email address. That email called off a scientific review of health risks associated with chloroprene emissions which are at the center of an ongoing federal lawsuit with vast economic implications.

“I didn’t write that,” Morton told lawyers for synthetics manufacturer Denka Performance Elastomer (DPE) during a deposition in November. “I didn’t say that. For – for that part, I didn’t – I don’t know that, so I don’t know who wrote that,” he added when pressed on the email.

In February 2023, the Department of Justice filed a federal lawsuit against DPE on behalf of EPA, seeking to compel the chemical maker’s LaPlace facility — the so-called Pontchartrain Works Site which represents the only U.S. plant to produce neoprene, a synthetic rubber common in military equipment, wetsuits and medical technology — to reduce emissions of chloroprene. Chloroprene is a liquid raw material emitted during neoprene manufacturing. Fox News II

Let’s just make it easy: the government is trying to shut down a plant, which among others, supplies the defense industry. Part of its justification is based on an email… which seems to be fabricated by the Feds. How ingenious… if you don’t have evidence, fabricate it.

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Biden, COVID-19, Government Incompetence