Finland, Finland, Finland.The country where I want to be,
Pony trekking or camping,
Or just watching TV,
Finland, Finland, Finland.
It's the country for me.
You're so near to Russia.
So far from Japan,
Quite a long way from Cairo,
Lots of miles from Vietnam.
Monty Python, "Finland,"
1980.Monty Python's Flying Circus looked at government waste more than once. In the 1980s, I attended a lecture by Graham Chapman, who explained that the infamous "Minister of Silly Walks" character was based on a real British politician. It was someone who could do nothing, Chapman explained, so they had to repeatedly event jobs for him.
Here is some more absurdity: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is not the Finnish Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Say what?
From ABC News:
With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.
Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department's $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But two years after the loan was announced, the company's manufacturing jobs are still limited to the assembly of the flashy electric Fisker Karma sports car in Finland.
"There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle," the car company's founder and namesake told ABC News. "They don't exist here."
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