$11,000 to the Worst People in the World

We take a break from one reptile nest to examine another.

Sometimes it’s important for my mental health to turn my gaze away from the gaping maw of Ohio politics by turning my gaze to another state ran by criminals, used care salesmen and drunk fundamentalist con artists.

Today’s winner is Tennessee, one of the few states in the country that can rival Ohio in batshit leaders. For example, the state legislature just got around to removing a Statehouse bust of KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forest… last week.

For a state government ostensibly ran by fiscal conservatives, the Volunteer State recently decided to give $2.5 million in public money to promote flight vouchers to “largely out-of-state residents.”

You might think this would be justified to try to get tourists back to Nashville after the pandemic. That would be true if the pandemic ever existed in Nashville. I visited my brother in Nashville in October. Broadway, the tourist strip of honkey tonk bars, was filled with people from all over the country. Bachelorette parties were rolling around in hot tubs in the back of truck beds. Don’t forget about the mass pro-COVID concert, either.

In Ohio, our legislators would tell us to gargle on their moldy balls. Tennessee politicians must be able to feel a modicum of pain since they tried to turn public opinion in favor of an unpopular tourism program by creating one of the worst ideas I’ve heard in my life.

From Kimberlee Kruesi and Jonathan Mattasie of the Associated Press:

According to documents obtained through a public records request, the Department of Tourist Development paid an estimated $11,000 to at least 11 local influencers to post on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok touting the new program. Emails show the state had originally budgeted $30,000 for influencers.

To date, the state has spent more than $230,000 out of its $270,000 tourism marketing budget to advertise the program online. That has raised eyebrows among both Republican leaders and Democratic lawmakers wondering why tax dollars are being spent on tourists’ airfare.

Influencers are the scum of the Earth, and the Nashville Tourist Industry attracts scumbags from all over the country for Bachelor and Bachelorette parties, so this is actually a perfect relationship.

But this is what we can expect from these types of leaders. Tennessee cut $300 a week in federal unemployment insurance because their own unemployed citizens are lazy bums.

Tennessee (and Ohio) were both wrong in thinking ending that $300-a-week supplement would drive people back to underpaying jobs with no benefits. They were wrong. They’d rather hand out millions of dollars to out-of-state residents and tens of thousands of dollars to influencers. It’d be laughable if it weren’t so inhumanely pathetic.

THOSE WMDs. “We’re not allowed to hang up:” The harsh reality of working customer service… Al Lord got richer as college tuition rose; now he says it’s too damn high… Life without rust must be nice… I’m a Parkland Survivor and Qanon convinced my dad it was a hoax… Not everybody happy about skateboarding rolling into the mainstream.