ROCKVILLE — Montgomery County has apparently solved every major problem facing residents and can now focus on the final frontier of government excellence:

Buying Chinese-language recycling ads on Bloomberg Television.

Yes, Bloomberg.

The channel people put on when they want to watch bond yields, oil futures, and a man named Chad explain why Argentina’s currency is having a nervous breakdown.

One Montgomery County resident says he repeatedly saw a county recycling commercial airing entirely in Chinese during the afternoon, prompting the obvious question:

Who the hell approved this media buy?

Apparently somewhere inside county government, a communications consultant stood up in a conference room and said:

“Gentlemen, we need to reach Chinese-speaking residents about recycling.”

Reasonable.

Then someone else said:

“Excellent. Let’s put it on Bloomberg TV at 4 p.m.”

And instead of being escorted from the building, that person apparently got a purchase order.

This is Montgomery County government in its purest form: take an ordinary public-service message, run it through seventeen departments, sprinkle it with “community engagement,” hire somebody with a PowerPoint, and eventually spend taxpayer money reaching an audience small enough to fit inside a Bethesda Whole Foods elevator.

County officials may argue that multilingual outreach is important.

Fine.

Nobody is mocking multilingual outreach.

We are mocking the apparent belief that Bloomberg viewers are one incorrectly sorted yogurt cup away from environmental collapse.

Imagine the target profile.

Chinese-speaking.

Montgomery County resident.

Watching Bloomberg Television.

At 4 in the afternoon.

Has somehow survived life in America without learning what the blue recycling bin does.

Marketing agencies call this “precision targeting.”

Normal people call it finding six guys and buying television ads for them.

And this is exactly why taxpayers get suspicious whenever government says it needs more money.

Because eventually someone discovers the budget contains $47,000 for the Strategic Multilingual Cardboard Awareness Initiative for Viewers of Emerging-Market Debt Coverage.

Meanwhile, residents are paying some of the highest costs in the region while county government keeps finding inventive new places to shove nickels into a wood chipper.

Canton Cat supports recycling, incidentally.

I recycle constantly.

You throw away chicken.

I retrieve chicken.

No consultants.

No television campaign.

No language-access coordinator.

Zero taxpayer dollars.

At press time, Montgomery County was reportedly preparing its next outreach campaign:

Portuguese-language composting ads during overnight cryptocurrency coverage.

Because apparently the trash isn’t the only thing being recycled.

So are the bad ideas.