That's exactly it, Scott. In my day gig, I regularly see these kinds of bureaucratic waste stories surface about fairly innocuous things taken out of context, s

That's exactly it, Scott. In my day gig, I regularly see these kinds of bureaucratic waste stories surface about fairly innocuous things taken out of context, showing up on sites like the Examiner or the Daily Caller or Politico. They're meant to rile folks up and get them angry, because they draw traffic and such. But when you dig a little deeper, the scooplets at times don't tend to stand up to scrutiny. (An example of this from a couple of years ago, involving a "$16 muffin": http://sfbne.ws/122aqOr http://sfbne.ws/122aqOr ) In this case, the two-percent engagement number is a huge tell, because if you were to say 40,000 users or whatever it is, it wouldn't sound nearly as much like a waste of money. And if you were to put this in context of what other marketing companies pay to get on Facebook, as well as the per-user costs they were paying, especially compared to other marketing venues, you might find that this is actually the most effective form of marketing for them. (How much did they spend on TV/magazine/other forms of outreach in the past? And what was their success rate?) I'm not saying that this isn't a huge waste of money or time—it may still turn out to be, and a big one at that—but we aren't being given all of the variables here, and being asked to base this entire story on one side of the claims. Remember—in D.C. political media, sometimes you won't hear the other side of the story, so being skeptical and not taking things at face value is probably for the best.