Up a Tree: $74,000 to Fund a Treehouse Museum
Did you know there is something called the Institute of Museum and Library Services? Did you know that the U.S. government operates it?
I didn’t. But then I read about the Elizabeth Stewart Treehouse Museum. It has been given a grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences. The grant totals $74,470.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity to do even more of what we already do well,” Treehouse Museum Director Lynn Goodwin said.
I wonder what it is, precisely, that they already do well. I wonder why my tax money was needed to do it even better.
There were 160 grants. There were 481 applications. How much money was involved? $18,777,552. That money was used to fund all sorts of things. I’m not sure what.
The treehouse museum money will be used to fund theater arts programs. Teens will learn how to use puppets. Then there is the professional Treehouse Troupe acting group. Professional means “gets paid.”
Your tax money helped the troupe remain professional.
This is the sixth time that the folks at Treehouse have received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
There are of course lots of professionals at the Institute of Museum and Library Services. It takes skilled people to decide which organizations get these grants.
“We wanted the community to celebrate with us,” Goodwin said. “It’s so lucky to have such community support.”
I know I shall celebrate.
How about you?
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Published on May 24, 2012. The original is here.
Most traces of this boondoggle have disappeared, including the story in the local newspaper that I linked to. But the story is preserved in Wastebook 2011.
The facts about this grant were even more ludicrous than what I reported.
Wastebook was an annual report compiled by the staff of U.S. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. I can think of few better uses of staff time. The book traced 100 boondoggles as bad or worse than this one. This was #86.
The Treehouse Museum in Ogden, Utah received a $74,000 federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, in part, to encourage youngsters to learn the art of puppetry.According to the grant summary, the federal funds will be used to finance a variety of theater arts programs, including providing the "opportunity for young teenagers to work with an internationally acclaimed puppeteer to produce three puppet programs for family audiences."
Museum staff will develop four "ParticPlays" for elementary students making field trips to the museum. The goal of this project is to ensure that "participants develop leadership and communications skills as they learn techniques in storytelling and puppetry."
This grants marks the sixth time The Treehouse Museum has received a grant through this program. The Treehouse was chosen from 481 applicants that were competing for 160 grants. In total, the Institute of Museum and Library Services distributed $ 18,777,552 to fund these types of programs across the country.
Coburn served from January 2005 to January 2015.
This was posted in 2015 on the website of Citizens Against Government Waste.
From 2008 until he retired from the Senate in January 2015, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) provided an invaluable resource for taxpayers by publishing compilations of the worst wasteful spending. Between 2011 and 2014, the annual publication was called “The Wastebook.” The October 2014 version of this report revealed an $856,000 grant to train mountain lions to walk on treadmills, $414,000 spent on an Army video game designed for recruitment purposes that was already more than $25 million over budget, and $46,000 for a snowmobile competition in Michigan.
The Wastebook was picked up by Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, who will retire in January.
When I wrote Ron Paul's newsletters in the second half of 1976, I wrote a column every other week: "Where your tax money goes and goes and goes. . . ." I was imitating Sen. Proxmire's monthly Golden Fleece Award. But Coburn's Wastebook was the winner in the boondoggle-reporting sweepstakes.