[Bratmon]

The most obvious (to me) example is the San Francisco anti-homelessness program. The city government of San Francisco understood that

1. Homelessness is a massive problem, far larger here than most cities 2. For political reasons, the obvious solution of "Double the number of homes in the city to take people off the streets at the margin" is off the table.

As a result, they started giving massive contracts to a wide variety of NGOs that promised a wide variety of novel solutions to the homelessness tragedy.

As it turned out, the effect of basically all of those experiments was either nothing or counterproductive. But the NGOs ended up being so numerous that they have political power of their own, and are now at the same level as "teachers" as a major expense and powerful constituency for the city.

If you're one of those people who needs an opposite-political-valence example, a good one is the TSA. Totally worthless at stopping terrorists, but totally skilled at keeping itself funded.