We are revisiting these posts now to once again prove how careless and stupid the Washington political class is with our hard earned wealth and to show what a disgrace the latest Congressional budget agreement is. We will delve into the details of this insult to the American taxpayer next month. The budget agreement promises to reduce annual Federal government spending by tens of billions of dollars in the future years while we really need to reduce spending by trillions of dollars over the coming years. Failure to do so will eventually lead to the collapse of our financial system, our way of life and our democracy.
Reducing wasteful spending in the name of reducing the national debt burden is not hard. We have showed how to that dozens of times. We have come up with a plan that would reduce Federal government spending by $9 TRILLION of ten years.
However, the concept of living within your means and running a fiscally prudent, non-wasteful government seems to be a lost concept on politicians in Washington. That is why over the next few days we will restart the education process of how to get rid of wasteful government spending without creating hardships for the majority of Americans.
Today's retro look goes back to early 2013 to look at 30 idiotic uses of our taxpayer wealth, uses that have nothing to do with fixing our broken public education system, cleaning up and reducing the cost of energy, fixing our busted war on drugs, or remedying any other major issue facing the majority of Americans today.
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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:
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
30 More Stupid, Wastful Spending Examples And Why No American Should Pay Another Penny In Taxes
In the past week we have had to live the idiocy of Nancy Pelosi, President Obama, and other politicians who seem to think it would be a good thing for Americans to send more of their hard earned wealth to the political class in Washington. They have this sick, perverted view of reality that somehow Americans do not pay enough in taxes.
They seem to think that Americans, who work about 30% of the year just to pay off their overall tax burden, every year, do not pay enough in taxes.
They seem to think that even though they operate one of the most incompetent, wasteful, and inefficient human organizations in the world, the Federal government, Americans do not pay enough in taxes.
They seem to think even though their inept IRS organization fails to collect over $385 billion a year from tax evaders, Americans do not pay enough in taxes.
They seem to think that sending more and more personal wealth to be wasted by Washington bureaucrats does not have a detrimental impact on the economy.
They seem to think that sending more and more personal wealth to be wasted by Washington bureaucrats does not have a detrimental impact on the economy.
We have covered the insane and disgraceful spending and wasteful behavior by the Washington class many times before. The following post was the first in a series of wasteful government spending:
We did a related series of posts on why no American should have to pay another penny in taxes, given the wasteful spending that exists already in Washington:
We have also showed how painless it would be to take $9 TRILLION out of our obscene national debt, currently $16.4 TRILLION, if only Washington did their jobs and had any touch with reality:
However, just when you thought you have ferreted out all of the wasteful spending, you trip over more. I have found another source of idiotic spending that these very same politicians have presided over. Think about these when you hear any politician when they try to convince you that they need more taxes and wealth from you to make life better.
I am sure that the following stupid government expenditures had minimal, if any, positive impact on any American’s life:
#1 The U.S. government is spending $750,000 on a new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay
#2 The Obama administration plans to spend between 16 and 20 million dollars helping students from Indonesia get master’s degrees.
#3 The U.S. government has spent $175,587 “to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior”.
#4 The U.S. government spent $200,000 on “a tattoo removal program” in Mission Hills, California.
#5 The federal government has shelled out $3 million to researchers at the University of California at Irvine to fund their research on video games such as World of Warcraft.
#6 The Department of Health and Human Services plans to spend $500 million on a program that will, among other things, seek to solve the problem of 5-year-old children that “can’t sit still” in a kindergarten classroom.
#7 Fannie Mae is about to ask the federal government for another $4.6 billion bailout, and it will almost certainly get it.
#8 The federal government once spent 30 million dollars on a program that was designed to help Pakistani farmers produce more mango.
#9 The U.S. Department of Agriculture once gave researchers at the University of New Hampshire $700,000 to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.
#10 According to USA Today, 13 different government agencies “fund 209 different science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education programs — and 173 of those programs overlap with at least one other program.”
#11 A total of $615,000 was given to the University of California at Santa Cruz to digitize photos, T-shirts and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead.
#12 China lends us more money than any other foreign nation, but that didn’t stop our government from spending 17.8 million dollars on social and environmental programs for China.
#13 The U.S. government once spent 2.6 million dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly.
#14 One professor at Stanford University was given $239,100 to study how Americans use the Internet to find love.
#15 The U.S. Postal Service spent $13,500 on a single dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.
#16 The National Science Foundation once spent $216,000 to study whether or not politicians “gain or lose support by taking ambiguous positions.
#17 A total of $1.8 million was spent on a “museum of neon signs” in Las Vegas, Nevada.
#18 The federal government spends 25 billion dollars a year maintaining federal buildings that are either unused or totally vacant.
#19 U.S. farmers are given a total of $2 billion each year for not farming their land.
#20 The U.S. government handed one Tennessee library $5,000 for the purpose of hosting a series of video game parties.
#21 A few years ago the government spent $123,050 on a Mother’s Day Shrine in Grafton, West Virginia. It turns out that Grafton only has a population of a little more than 5,000 people.
#22 One professor at Dartmouth University was given $137,530 to create a “recession-themed” video game entitled “Layoff”.
#23 According to the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. military spent “$998,798 shipping two 19-cent washers from South Carolina to Texas and $293,451 sending an 89-cent washer from South Carolina to Florida”.
#24 The U.S. Department of Agriculture once shelled out $30,000 to a group of farmers to develop a tourist-friendly database of farms that host guests for overnight “haycations”.
#25 The National Institutes of Health paid researchers $400,000 to find out why gay men in Argentina engage in risky sexual behavior when they are drunk.
#26 The National Institutes of Health also once spent $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.
#27 The National Institutes of Health loves to spend our tax money on really bizarre things. The NIH once spent $800,000 in “stimulus funds” to study the impact of a “genital-washing program” on men in South Africa.
#28 According to the Washington Post, 1,271 different government organizations work on government programs related to counterterrorism and homeland security.
#29 The U.S. government spent $100,000 on a “Celebrity Chef Fruit Promotion Road Show in Indonesia”.
#30 The feds once gave Alaska Airlines $500,000 “to paint a Chinook salmon” on the side of a Boeing 737.
As always, if the political class ever resolved any major issue such as our lost war on drugs, failing public schools, high national debt, escalating health care costs, a lack of a national energy strategy, etc., we might be able to live with stupid uses of our money.
However, we get nothing in return for high levels of taxation and have to sit back and watch as the political class hands out our money to stupid projects like these.
As Forest Gump once said: “Stupid is as stupid does.” When it comes to politicians that have the nerve and chutzpah to ask us for more money via taxes after squandering previous tax receipts on these worthless efforts, when they talk like this it reinforces our view that “Stupid is as stupid talks.” These are just another 30 reasons why term limits for all Federal politicians cannot come soon enough.
The original source for these 30 stupid expenditures can be read 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:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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