Most of today’s post comes from the American Dream website. The operators of this website went to the trouble of documenting 60 idiotic spending programs from the American political class. I cannot vouch for all 60 expenses and their reality. However, we have already discussed a number of them that have been documented from reliable sources.
Each one of their assertions are linked to the original source of the information that you can click on to visit. Thus, I would assume that most, if not all, of these expenses are legitimate wastes of taxpayer funds, given our previous research to verify the reality of some of these expenses and the sourcing back to the original source.
Their original post with direct link sourcing can be accessed at:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/60-completely-outrageous-ways-the-u-s-government-is-wasting-money
#1 The National Science Foundation has given $384,949 to Yale University to do a study on “Sexual Conflict, Social Behavior and the Evolution of Waterfowl Genitalia”. Unbelievably, much of this research involves examining and measuring the reproductive organs of male ducks.
#2 The IRS spent $60,000 on a film parody of “Star Trek” and a film parody of “Gilligan’s Island”. Internal Revenue Service employees were the actors in the two parodies, so as you can imagine the acting was really bad.
#3 The National Institutes of Health has given $1.5 million to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts to study why “three-quarters” of lesbians in the United States are overweight and why most gay males are not.
#4 The National Institutes of Health has also spent $2.7 million to study why lesbians have more “vulnerability to hazardous drinking”.
#5 The U.S. government is giving sixteen F-16s and 200 Abrams tanks to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt even though the new president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi (a member of the Muslim Brotherhood), constantly makes statements such as the following…
“Dear brothers, we must not forget to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred towards those Zionists and Jews, and all those who support them”
#6 During 2012, the salaries of Barack Obama’s three climate change advisers combined came to a grand total of more than $370,000.
#7 Overall, 139 different White House staffers were making at least $100,000 during 2012, and there were 20 White House staffers that made the maximum of $172,200.
#8 Amazingly, U.S. taxpayers spend more than 1.4 billion dollars a year on the Obamas. Meanwhile, British taxpayers only spend about 58 million dollars on the entire royal family.
#9 During 2012, $25,000 of Federal money was spent on a promotional tour for the Alabama Watermelon Queen.
#10 The U.S. government spent $505,000 “to promote specialty hair and beauty products for cats and dogs” in 2012.
#11 NASA spends close to a million dollars a year developing a menu of food for a manned mission to Mars even though it is being projected that a manned mission to Mars is still decades away.
#12 During 2012, the Federal government spent 15 million dollars to help Russian weapons institutes recruit nuclear scientists.
#13 Over the past 15 years, a total of approximately $5.25 million has been spent on hair care services for the U.S. Senate.
#14 The U.S. government spent 27 million dollars to teach Moroccans how to design and make pottery in 2012.
#15 At a time when we have an epidemic of unemployment in the United States, the U.S. Department of Education is spending $1.3 million to “reduce linguistic, academic, and employment barriers for skilled and low-skilled immigrants and refugees, and to integrate them into the U.S. workforce and professions.”
#16 The Federal government still sends about 20 million dollars a year to the surviving family members of veterans of World War I, even though World War I ended 94 years ago.
#17 The U.S. government is spending approximately 3.6 million dollars a year to support the lavish lifestyles of former millionaire presidents such as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
#18 During fiscal 2012, the National Science Foundation gave researchers at Purdue University $350,000. They used part of that money to help fund a study that discovered that if golfers imagine that a hole is bigger it will help them with their putting.
#19 The U.S. government is giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority every year.
#20 Federal agencies have purchased a total of approximately 2 billion rounds of ammunition over the past 10 months. It is claimed that all of this ammunition is needed for “training purposes”.
#21 During 2012, the National Science Foundation spent $516,000 on the creation of a video game called “Prom Week” which apparently simulates “all the social interactions of the event.”
#22 If you can believe it, $10,000 of U.S. taxpayer money was actually used to purchase talking urinal cakes up in Michigan.
#23 When Joe Biden and his staff took a trip to London back in February, the hotel bill cost U.S. taxpayers $459,388.65.
#24 Joe Biden and his staff also stopped in Paris for one night back in February. The hotel bill for that one night came to $585,000.50.
#25 If you can believe it, close to 15,000 retired Federal employees are currently collecting Federal pensions for life worth at least $100,000 annually. That list includes such names as Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Trent Lott, Dick Gephardt and Dick Cheney.
#26 The U.S. Department of Agriculture has spent $300,000 to encourage Americans to eat caviar.
#27 The National Institutes of Health recently gave $666,905 to a group of researchers that is conducting a study on the benefits of watching reruns on television.
#28 The National Science Foundation has given 1.2 million dollars to a team of “scientists” that is spending part of that money on a study that is seeking to determine whether elderly Americans would benefit from playing World of Warcraft or not.
#29 The National Institutes of Health recently gave $548,731 to a team of researchers that concluded that those that drink heavily in their thirties also tend to feel more immature.
#30 The National Science Foundation recently spent $30,000 on a study to determine if “gaydar” actually exists. This is the conclusion that the researchers reached at the end of the study….
“Gaydar is indeed real and… its accuracy is driven by sensitivity to individual facial features.”
#31 In 2011, the National Institutes of Health spent $592,527 on a study that sought to figure out once and for all why chimpanzees throw poop.
#32 The National Institutes of Health has spent more than 5 million dollars on a website called Sexpulse that is targeted at “men who use the Internet to seek sex with men. The website “includes pornographic images of homosexual sex as well as naked and scantily clad men” and features “a Space Invaders-style interactive game that uses a penis-shaped blaster to shoot down gay epithets.”
#33 The General Services Administration spent $822,751 on a “training conference” for 300 west coast employees at the M Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.
The following is how the Washington Post described some of the wasteful expenses that happened during this “conference”…
Among the “excessive, wasteful and in some cases impermissable” spending the inspector general documented: $5,600 for three semi-private catered in-room parties and $44 per person daily breakfasts; $75,000 for a “team-building” exercise — the goal was to build a bicycle; $146,000 on catered food and drinks; and $6,325 on commemorative coins in velvet boxes to reward all participants for their work on stimulus projects. The $31,208 “networking” reception featured a $19-per-person artisanal cheese display and $7,000 of sushi. At the conference’s closing-night dinner, employees received “yearbooks” with their pictures, at a cost of $8,130.
#34 Do you remember when credit rating agency Egan Jones downgraded U.S. government debt from AA+ to AA? Well, someone in the federal government apparently did not like that at all. According to Zero Hedge, the SEC plans to file charges against Egan Jones for “misstatements” on a regulatory application with the SEC.
Normally, the SEC does not go after anyone. After all, when is the last time a major banker went to prison? No, the truth is that the SEC is usually just a huge waste of taxpayer money. According to ABC News, one investigation found that 17 senior SEC officials had been regularly viewing pornography while at work. While the American people were paying their salaries, this is what senior SEC officials were busy doing…
One senior attorney at SEC headquarters in Washington spent up to eight hours a day accessing Internet porn, according to the report, which has yet to be released. When he filled all the space on his government computer with pornographic images, he downloaded more to CDs and DVDs that accumulated in boxes in his offices.
An SEC accountant attempted to access porn websites 1,800 times in a two-week period and had 600 pornographic images on her computer hard drive.
Another SEC accountant used his SEC-issued computer to upload his own sexually explicit videos onto porn websites he joined.
And another SEC accountant attempted to access porn sites 16,000 times in a single month.
#35 According to InformationWeek, the Federal government is spending “millions of dollars” to train Asian call center workers.
#36 If you can believe it, the Federal government has actually spent $750,000 on a new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.
#37 The U.S. Agency for International Development spent 10 million dollars to create a version of “Sesame Street” for Pakistani television.
#38 The Obama administration has plans to spend between 16 and 20 million dollars to help students from Indonesia get master’s degrees.
#39 The National Science Foundation spent $198,000 on a University of California-Riverside study that explored “motivations, expectations and goal pursuit in social media.” One of the questions the study sought an answer to was the following: “Do unhappy people spend more time on Twitter or Facebook?”
#40 The Federal government actually has spent $175,587 “to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior”.
#41 In 2011, $147,138 was given to the American Museum of Magic in Marshall, Michigan. Their best magic trick is making U.S. taxpayer dollars disappear.
#42 The Federal government recently spent $74,000 to help Michigan “increase awareness about the role Michigan plays in the production of trees and poinsettias.”
#43 In 2011, the Federal government gave $550,000 toward the making of a documentary about how rock and roll contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union.
#44 The National Institutes of Health has contributed $55,382 toward a study of “hookah smoking habits” in the country of Jordan.
#45 The Federal government gave $606,000 to researchers at Columbia University to study how heterosexuals use the Internet to find love.
#46 A total of $133,277 was recently given to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games for video game preservation. The International Center for the History of Electronic Games says that it “collects, studies, and interprets video games, other electronic games, and related materials and the ways in which electronic games are changing how people play, learn, and connect with each other, including across boundaries of culture and geography.”
#47 The Federal government has given approximately $3 million to researchers at the University of California at Irvine to fund their research into video games such as World of Warcraft.
#48 In 2011, the National Science Foundation gave one team of researchers $149,990 to create a video game called “RapidGuppy” for cell phones and other mobile devices.
#49 The U.S. Department of Agriculture once handed researchers at the University of New Hampshire $700,000 to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.
#50 In 2011, $936,818 was spent developing an online soap opera entitled “Diary of a Single Mom”. The show “chronicles the lives and challenges of three single mothers and their families trying to get ahead despite obstacles that all single mothers face, such as childcare, healthcare, education, and finances.”
#51 The Federal government once shelled out $2.6 million to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly.
#52 Last year, the Federal government spent $96,000 to buy iPads for kindergarten students in Maine.
#53 The U.S. Postal Service once spent $13,500 for a single dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.
#54 In 2011, the Air Force Academy completed work on an outdoor worship area for pagans and Wiccans. The worship area consists of “a small Stonehenge-like circle of boulders with [a] propane fire pit” and it cost $51,474 to build. The worship area is “for the handful of current or future cadets whose religions fall under the broad category of ‘Earth-based’, which includes Wiccans, druids and pagans.” At this point, that only includes 3 current students at the Air Force Academy.
#55 The National Institutes of Health once gave researchers $400,000 to study why gay men in Argentina engage in risky sexual behavior when they are drunk.
#56 The National Institutes of Health once gave researchers $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.
#57 The National Institutes of Health once spent $800,000 in “stimulus funds” to study the impact of a “genital-washing program” on men in South Africa.
#58 The National Science Foundation recently spent $200,000 on a study that examined how voters react when politicians change their stances on climate change.
#59 The Federal government recently spent $484,000 to help build a Mellow Mushroom pizzeria in Arlington, Texas.
#60 At this point, China is holding over a trillion dollars of U.S. government debt. But that didn’t stop the United States from sending 17.8 million dollars in foreign aid to China in 2011.
As a bonus, we will throw in the following additional insane wastes of U.S. taxpayer money from a December, 2011 CBS News website posting, courtesy of Senator Tom Coburn’s Wastebook 2011 publication:
#61 $30 million to help Pakistani Mango farmers: This was part of a four-year, $90 million effort to boost hiring and sales among Pakistani businesses funded through the U.S. Agency for International Development.
#62 $765,828 for pancakes: Federal funding went to the Anacostia Economic Development Corp to build an International House of Pancake franchise (and train its workers) in an "underserved community." The underserved community, however, turned out to the a toney area of Washington D.C. - Columbia Heights, which is termed "one of Washington's more desirable neighborhoods."
#63 $120 million in retirement and disability benefits to Federal employees who have died: The Inspector General for the U.S. Office of Personnel management found that "the amount of post-death improper payments is consistently $100 million - $150 million annually, totaling over $601 million in the last five years."
#64 $652,740 to create an Oklahoma "visitor's center": The scenic highway that runs from Talihina, Oklahoma to Mena, Ark., already has three visitor's centers, but this federal grant would create a fourth. The abandoned rock house that the government proposes to turn into a new visitor's center will cost more than 14 times the median value of a home in the area. That would be bad enough, but the Talimena Drive area is in good shape, while the rest of eastern Oklahoma's roads could use some serious attention. The area ranks 8th in the nation for its number of "structurally deficient" bridges.
#65 $113,277 for video games: The International Center for the History of Electronic Games got the money to conduct a detailed conservation survey of video games.
#66 $484,000 for pizza: A private developer was giving Federal grant money to build Mellow Mushroom Pizza Bakers, an Arlington, Texas, outlet known for its tongue-in-cheek references to drug and hippie culture.
#67 $100,000 for a celebrity chef show in Indonesia: The Washington State Fruit Commission asked for the grant to help promote their fruit and cooking recipes in "an emerging market."
#68 $10 million for Pakistani Sesame Street: We must really love the Pakistanis. We must have a close and trusting relationship with the country that somehow managed to miss the fact that Osama bin Laden was living within spitting distance of a Pakistani military base for years. Because, after funding the Pakistani Mango growers, the government felt it needed to spend some time and money remaking big bird and the other Sesame Street characters into a show called "SimSim Humara" for the Pakistani market.
#69 $550,000 for "Rockin' the Kremlin: A documentary on how rock and roll contributed to the end of the cold war.
#70 $702,558 to bring television to Vietnamese villages: No, it wasn't just for the sitcoms. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University wanted to know how television affects family formation and reproductive health. So where better to study the problem than 14 remote Vietnamese villages, where the government paid to bring the televisions and gas generators, because, of course, these villages also don't have electric power?
That is enough of this political class nonsense and waste for this month. If it did not cost us so much of our personal wealth, the antics and waste of our politicians would actually be quite funny. But they are not. They waste our tax dollars, erode our freedom, provide unfair advantages to certain individuals and companies in the marketplace, and are just plain embarrassing.
If you added up most of these 70 instances, just a sample of government waste, you would end up with over $300 million in waste. This number does not include the $1 billion in armaments given to Egypt, the $1.4 billion spent every year to satisfy the First family, or the millions of dollars spent every year on White House staffers, which would bring the total waste to about $3 billion a year, plus or minus.
This wasted $3 billion in taxpayer wealth could have been used for the following purposes, all of which are infinitely better than measuring duck genitalia:
- It could have operated White House tours for American families, kids, and schools for just over 3,100 years.
- It could have funded about 25% of the new money Obama wants to spend on infrastructure without raising taxes or increasing the national debt.
- It could have given a rebate of $26 back to every single American family, helping to fill up the family car with gas one time, given how high the price of gas has risen during this administration.
- It could have been used to fund research and remedies for the REAL issues facing Americans today including a failing public education system, a lost war on drugs, a non-existent national energy strategy, sky high health care costs, and more.
This type of behavior is why term limits and other political process changes, as outlined in “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” are required as soon as possible. Until these abuses are cleaned up, no American, rich or poor, should pay another penny in taxes. Anything else is insanity.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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