{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-american-holiday-british-bloggers/", "An American Holiday for British Bloggers", "2017-04-11", "2017", "2017-04", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Rand Paul", "P000603", "www.paul.senate.gov", "paul", "https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul released the latest edition of The Waste Report, an ongoing project cataloguing egregious examples of waste within the U.S. government.\n\nIt\u2019s unlikely the United Kingdom would top anyone\u2019s list of regions of the world that need a better understanding of the United States. Yet, once again, Dr. Paul\u2019s Waste Report covers American taxpayers footing the bill for such a learning program.\n\nYou can find out more in this week\u2019s Waste Report HERE or below.\n\n****\n\nWaste Report readers will recall last year\u2019s \u201cA Better, More Peaceful Understanding of Waste,\u201d where we discussed the U.S. Embassy in London spending $90,000 to foster better understanding with the United Kingdom.[1]\n\nWell, it turns out they are at it again. Late last year, our Embassy in London offered a grant worth as much as $75,000 to help bring as many as 10 \u201csocial media journalists and bloggers\u201d to the U.S. to explore \u201cAmerican values and cultural issues that shape the American identity and deepen U.K. youth audiences understanding of the United States in the 21st century.\u201d[2]\n\nThe grant opportunity mentioned sending the bloggers to visit \u201ccities such as Charleston, Orlando, Dallas, San Francisco, and Chicago\u201d[3] to learn about American issues and themes \u2013 in other words, a real American experience, funded by the U.S. taxpayer. With firsthand experiences in these cities, the bloggers presumably would be better able to convey Americanism to their audience across the pond.\n\nAll that would make sense if this were 1890 or even 1990, but, as The Waste Report has noted before, thanks to the Internet, 24-hour news, and affordable air transportation, our understanding of the U.K., and theirs of the U.S., is not lacking.\n\nIn fact, nearly 4 million Brits visit the U.S. each year, and 1.2 million visit more than one state.[4] These people probably do not need their bloggers\u2019 input to have an American experience, as they have their own or at the least have a high probability of knowing someone who does.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T21:37:32Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-american-holiday-british-bloggers/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.0466622188687325, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}