Today's government waste report comes courtesy of the Washington Free Beacon:
The National Institutes of Health is spending roughly $200,000 on a study of tweets about electronic cigarettes.
The project, "Toward Fine-Grained E-Cigarette Surveillance on Social Media," will analyze hashtags and "follower-friend connections" of people talking about e-cigarettes online.
Operating on the premise that the popular smoking cessation products are harmful, researchers say it is necessary to document what is being said on Twitter and Reddit for one year.
"Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) have emerged as the main smoke-free alternative to regular cigarettes over the past few years," according to the grant for the project. "While the ongoing healthy scientific debate about their long term health effects and their suitability for smoking cessation are important, in this project, we propose computational approaches toward fine-grained surveillance of specific themes, factors influencing message popularity, and demographic variations."
Great. So while Congress considers raising the national debt ceiling yet again, potentially crippling the nation's finances for future generations, Americans are paying to figure out what e-cig smokers like to post on Twitter.
We the People need a solution that doesn't run through the federal government, and Article V of the Constitution provides just that solution.
An Article V Convention of States can propose constitutional amendments that force Congress to take a hard look at the nation's finances, reduce the debt, and keep taxes under control. The national government has proved incapable of making tough financial choices, so the states and the people must step in and do what must be done.
