Take his daughter to work on your tax dollar

I was reading the USDA page about waste (Americans waste an obscene amount of food, much of which I’m convinced is because of government regulations about safety, labeling, quality, etc.) http://www.usda.gov/oce/foodwaste/# So as I was browsing, I saw there was a blog. I’m a blogger, so I clicked and found out it was written by a 15 year old who had gone to work with her dad, Director of the USDA Climate Change Program Office in Washington, D.C. —several states away in Michigan, since he was a government employee attending a conference with people (farmers, producers, processors) who also had flown in to Michigan from around the country slurping up fuel and leaving a huge carbon footprint in the process. http://blogs.usda.gov/2015/04/28/on-bring-your-daughter-to-work-day-a-local-student-learns-about-climate-change/

She’s been brainwashed about Earth Day and Climate Change (it’s her father’s livelihood), but what I noticed was how much money was being wasted for show. I attended many conferences in my professional life, and made wonderful friends, some still on Facebook with me, but they are opportunities for cities and hotels and invited speakers to make money and the people in the profession to add to their resume for Promotion and Tenure.

So here’s the comment I left on the blog.

I didn't know "Take your daughter to work day" was still in place. But the "cha-ching" of the cost of doing this, travel, hotel, food, conference facilities, flying people around the country to attend a conference that could easily have been done via Skype or e-mail or just reading the literature is the first thing that jumped out at me. And then the really big one: "incentives," aka my tax money. And carbon credits--what a scam. All for Earth Day, to honor Rachel Carson who killed more black children than the cross Atlantic slave trade after she got DDT off the market before there were replacements.