In Lieu of Doing Something
The economy is in the toilet, the government has fucked the market so hard through laws and regulations that the chances of it recovering grow slimmer with each passing day, and unemployment keeps rising due to businesses failing. If you're an unemployment agency what can you do? Obviously you can't make jobs, only private industry can do that (I'm referring to actual jobs that create wealth). What would be the next best thing? How about giving $14,000 worth of capes to the unemployed:
Workforce Central Florida spent more than $14,000 on the red capes as part of its "Cape-A-Bility Challenge" public relations campaign. The campaign featured a cartoon character, "Dr. Evil Unemployment," who needs to be vanquished.
That's much easier than actually doing something.