The Golden Turkey Awards

From 1975 through 1987, Wisconsin Sen. William Proxmire sent out monthly press releases announcing his Golden Fleece Awards, given to the most outrageous spending projects in Congress. The Senator passed away in 2005, but the concept is still with us in the form of the Golden Turkey Award given by  American Experiment.

On Thursday, Power Line Blog posted an article about the latest winner of the Golden Turkey Award.

The article reports:

This year we had some remarkable nominees: our state government paid children to play outdoors; it spent tens of thousands of dollars promoting folk remedies for covid like burning sage and eating sauerkraut; and it paid random citizens stipends of $6,000–e.g. a stripper who was paid to continue stripping.

But if you have been following the Feeding Our Future scandal, it can come as no surprise that the Minnesota Department of Education was voted this year’s Golden Turkey. I presented the award to the Department of Education at their headquarters on a cold, windy afternoon.

…One more thing: we presented the award at 3:30 in the afternoon. It says on the front of the building that it is open until 4:30 every weekday afternoon, but when we were there, the place was deserted. The Department of Education building was dark, and there was not a single car in the vast parking lot, other than ours. Is no one working at the Department of Education? Frankly, that might be an improvement. But at the very least, it suggests another area where the State of Minnesota could save money: the Department of Education’s budget.

This is the video:

It’s time taxpayers at all levels of government held their elected officials accountable for reckless spending.