Two interesting reports came out last week on programs that received a lot of emphasis from the Obama administration. One dealt with “countering violent extremism” and the other with preventing “human trafficking” of American Indians. At first blush, they seem to have little in common but the reports show they actually were quite similar.

In regards to “countering violent extremism:”

A federal government watchdog said Thursday that there is no way to know if President Obama’s “Countering Violent Extremism” program has made the U.S. any safer, six years after it was launched.

The multi-agency initiative began in 2011, and sought to reduce threats from groups with extreme political views, as well as radical Islamist groups like the Islamic State. The effort was intended to provide resources to communities that might be the targets of violent extremists, and also tried to identify people “who may have started down a road to violent extremism.”

But a new report from the Government Accountability Office said there was no way to “determine if the United States is better off today than it was in 2011.”

“This is because no cohesive strategy with measurable outcomes has been established to guide the multi-agency CVE effort,” it said.

The report said that without any plan to measure outcomes, “partner agencies have been left to develop and take their own individual actions without a clear understanding of whether and to what extent their actions will reduce violent extremism in the United States.”

And human trafficking of American Indians:

Government officials have no idea how many Native American victims of sex trafficking have been helped by federal programs aimed at the problem, a congressional watchdog reported Friday.

“The Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security administered at least 50 grant programs from fiscal years 2013 through 2016 that could help address Native American human trafficking,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report said. “However, the total number of Native American victims who received services under these grant programs is unknown.”

There is no way of knowing what, if anything, these programs accomplished because their purpose was never to accomplish anything larger than keeping leftwing activists on the payroll in non-profits so they could be mobilized for political ends.

The “countering violent extremism” program is a political ploy designed by the Obama administration to divert attention from the threat posed to America by radical Islamists in our midst. It sought to propagate the idea that militias, the Tea Party, the sovereign citizen movement, Second Amendment activists, etc., were the same threat as radical Islam. The money, however, as best one can tell from grant applications, didn’t end up in Alabama to keep good ol’ boys from flying the Confederate battle flag, it ended up going to various imams and mosques. The article on the human trafficking of American Indians indicates there have been two —  two! — prosecutions of such offenses since 2013. This is hardly an epidemic with hundreds of victims in need of services.

I hope that the Trump administration makes as part of its mission uprooting the left’s farm team  — a large network of nonprofits paid for by federal grants, which do nothing but keep left-wing activists from having to find real jobs.