waste fraud and abuse

The National Book festival, the annual one-day celebration of books, authors, and reading hosted by the Library of Congress, will be held next Saturday on the National Mall in Washington. This will be the festival's 10th anniversary.

As might be expected from an event that promotes reading and book-buying, the festival gets a good deal of private support, but it still relies on federal dollars. So I want to do ask again this year what I asked last year when the festival occurred: From a budget perspective when the deficit is a concern, does this qualify as waste, fraud, and abuse?

Here's what I said in last year's post:

This op-ed from Friday's The Washington Post about the failure of the current version of the dollar coin to become a circulating coin brought back lots of memories.

In 1999 and 2000, I headed the team that was hired by the U.S. Mint to increase consumer awareness of the new "Golden Dollar" coin.  The was the coin with Sacagawea and her child that replaced the much-reviled Susan B. Anthony dollar.  Thanks to it's color and design, not to mention an aggressive (and eventually award-winning) marketing campaign, the Golden Dollar was embraced by consumers.  Within 3 months consumer awareness -- which was all we were hired to do -- was at 85 percent and people were lining up for hours outside Wal-Mart stores to get them.