Do You Believe That?

       With all the horrific news around the country and around the world, here are two unrelated, humorous stories. First we have a $350 million testing tower built by NASA that on the day after it's completion, NASA closed it down. They neither want nor need it. $350 million. I suppose you could call it a jobs creation exercise. the problem with such a jobs plan is that they could just have handed out the paychecks to all those people and still saved about half the money.
       Why do you suppose they no longer need that tower, and when did they find out they didn't want it? I'll bet they never did want it. Who are the Senators and congressman in that state and district? You can be sure they had some small influence over the project.
       The other odd deal is the Keystone XL pipeline. Yes, it's still very much in the loop. Republicans are still pushing very hard for it, along with the energy industry and Democrats are still pushing hard against it, along with environmentalists. But what's odd is that, with the lower prices for oil, it's not likely to get built even if it gets approved. See, the extraction of tar sands oil is a very costly process and it would be too expensive to bring to market. But not to worry, the fight is still on and the Republicans are convinced they can vote it through after they take over Congressional control.
       So you see, politics can create jobs after all. It's just that most often the jobs they create are jobs that should never have been created in the first place. It's all sort of 'make work' spending. Do they actually create jobs? Well yes, but more importantly, they make money for politicians and their supporters.
       Sometimes it's almost preferable to get bad news rather than to get political news. No, I guess that's not true, but getting political news, as we all know, means it's gonna cost us dearly. Wouldn't it be nice if just once in a while a politician, any politician, thought about his or her constituents and not his or her backers?