By The Numbers - Wasting Taxpayer Around the World, Killing Freedom Domestically

On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American politician tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.

Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. 

Keep in mind that millions of Americans are suffering. Many are homeless, hungry, or in need of immediate drug addiction treatment. Think about how many suffering Americans could be better off if the wasteful spending these numbers prove could have been diverted to helping Americans rather than being wasted on useless projects and programs.

The following numbers come from the Real Clear Policy website. The details on the following numbers can be found at:

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/stream/?topic=wasteoftheday

1) The Washington political class has been overspending and wasting taxpayer wealth for decades. As a result, every year the Federal government has had to borrow money to pay for the difference between the tax revenue it collects and the money it spends. As a result, interest payments on the national debt have gotten larger and larger every year.

In 2021, the American taxpayer paid out a whopping $562.4 billion to just cover the interest payments on the debt the political class has amassed. These are taxpayer dollars that could not be spent on feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless or just reducing taxes and letting Americans keep more of their hard earned dollars.

Another way to view the $562.4 billion is that every American taxpayer on average paid over $5,000 each just to cover the interest on the debt last year. Not reduce the debt, just to cover the interest expense.

As we have proven previously, the skyrocketing national debt that Washington politicians have rung up will eventually crash the economy, our financial system and our freedom. Half a trillion dollars in interest expense a year is a good first step towards that crash.

2) The Federal government spent $112,000 in taxpayer wealth to study if different personalities prefer different types of foods, a totally useless research project. Using national averages, that $112,000 could have provided about 37,000 meals for hungry Americans. So rather than spending the $112,000 to feed the homeless, this money was spent on stupidity like this.

3) But it is just not Washington politicians that waste taxpayer wealth. The San Diego local government recently opened up its new Blue Line Trolley section of track. That's the good news. The bad news is that this new, 11 mile extension cost $2.2 billion, twice the national average for city rail projects. Plus, at $2.2 billion and 11 miles, the cost per mile for the new line was a whopping $200 million per mile. How much political corruption do you think went into $200 million a mile

4) According to a recent $25,000 research grant that was approved, the United States Mission to China will be spending American taxpayer wealth in Guanghou, China to “carry out a program to engage Hanan’s surfing community and local environmentally active social media influencers…” Seriously, we are sending U.S. taxpayer money halfway around the world to be spent on Chinese surfers?!?! Who approves this idiocy?

5) In a tribute to historically bad use of taxpayer money, back in 1978 the Federal government and Washington political class spent money on a research study that concluded, shock and amazement, that obese people ate more food than non-obese people. This study earned the National Institute of Mental Health a Golden Fleece award, an award that long time Senator William Proxmire gave out to stupid Federal spending efforts and projects. Unfortunately, 44 years later those stupid projects continue to waste taxpayer money.

6) Back in 2015, NASA spent grant money to have folks study what might happen and what reactions might be if we ever encountered aliens living elsewhere in the universe. The chance of us encountering alien life is next to zero while homeless Americans are a reality of our current world and yet Washington dollars are wasted on trash studies like this.

7) The State Department is spending half a million dollars to produce Russian TV programs in Moldova. Does anyone even know where Moldova is and why their television viewing deserves U.S. taxpayer dollars?

8) Going even further back on government's wasteful spending, way back in 1975, the government built the Hart Senate Office Building. The original estimate to complete the construction was $48 million which, in our opinion, was an outrageous amount to be spent on an office building either  in 1975 or today. Unfortunately, the final cost came in at $137.7 million for ONE building. The final cost was thus, three times the original cost. In today's dollars, that $137.7 million would be $379 million, again, for ONE single building.

9) The National Institutes Of Health (NIH) spent almost half a million dollars of taxpayer wealth to study the gamblng behavior of pigeons. The pigeons were given tokens and then the pigeons could decide whether to spend the tokens, save them or gamble them. Even the people who got the grant confessed the experiment was more of a laboratory test and probably did not have real life applications, e.g. how to prevent people from gambling excessively. Also, what were these tokens made of, solid gold? Pretty sure you can buy some cheap tokens and ordinary pigeons for far less than half a million dollars.

10) Daniel Lee was until recently the California Department of Education “Superintendent of Equity.” His salary was $180,000 a year. While we would question the need for a “superintendent of equity” position that makes three times what the average household makes, the real sin of this expenditure was that Mr. Lee lived not in California, but in Philadelphia, where he operated his own business.

According to reporting by Politico, Mr. Lee’s resume showed no past relationship with anything related to schools or California, and yet he held this high paying job 3,000 miles away. However, according to reports, he was a close friend with the Superintendent of Public Education in the state of California so draw your own conclusions.

11) In 2020 the National Science Foundation spent $75,000 to see how well different types of lizards hang on to trees after being exposed to leaf blowers. The intent was to see how lizards would fare in hurricanes relative to their ability to hang onto trees. You cannot make this nonsense up.

12) Apparently the state government of Connecticut needs to find out how $60 million of Federal covid relief taxpayer money was spent since they currently do not know. They have hired an outside auditing firm to track down the usage of those $60 million. This is especially needed since the FBI has arrested two city employees of West Haven for funneling a whopping $636,000 into a shell company they controlled that apparently had nothing to do with covid relief.

13) The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is probably one of the top Federal agencies when it comes to totally wasting taxpayer dollars. This has resulted in a huge number of Freedom of Information Act requests by people actually trying to find out how taxpayer dollars are spent and wasted. By law, the NIH has to respond to these formal requests in a timely manner. But alas, it has failed miserably and illegally in this matter. 

There currently are 768 pending information requests, 633 of them are backlogged, and there are 33 formal lawsuits that have been filed demanding that requests for information be fulfilled. Makes you wonder if they are that inept or that they are that corrupt when it comes to wasting taxpayer wealth.

14) The Federal government has run up the national debt to about $30,000,000,000,000, 30 trillion dollars. But the states are not much better, having run up debt of $1.5 trillion. Not included in these debt numbers are unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare at the Federal level and unfunded pension and benefit liabilities at the state level.

All of which means state pensions, Social Security, Medicare, and other political promises will eventually not be met which will crash the economy and financial viability of the country. As we have shown previously, the current debt and unfunded liabilities of all American government entities is now bigger than the net worth of the entire country, i.e. we owe more than we own, as a result of out of control and wasteful spending of the American political class.

15) The President of the United States earns about $400,000 a year. Members of Congress earn about $180,000 a year. These people make decisions that affect every American. Vito Mustaciulo is the head of New York City’s Housing Authority. He earns over half a million dollars a year, $515,000, and his decisions affect a handful of people relative to the whole country. He earns more than what the NYC mayor and New York state governor earn COMBINED.

Given the horrible record of the Housing Authority, do we really think that NYC is getting their money’s worth by paying half a million dollars to a single Housing Authority employee?

The numbers are not pretty. Taxpayer dollars have been wasted by every level of government and over a long period of time. Taxpayer wealth has been used to fund stupid research projects and has been the target of criminal fraud. Politicians have made so many promises that cannot be kept that the debt burden on the country is reaching astronomical levels which will have serious consequences quite shortly.

While politicians often lie, the numbers do not.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

 

 

December, 2017, Part 2, Political Class INsanity: Urban Violence and Wasteful Spending

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

1) Former US Senator Tom Coburn used to publish an annual list of the 100 most stupid Federal spending programs that waste taxpayer wealth. Coburn is no longer in Congress but current Senator James Lankford has continued the annual waste listings and he recently published the latest 100 Federal programs and how stupid and wasteful they are. Some examples of the waste include the following:

• In 2016, over 25,000 American families received Federal housing assistance even though they made too much money to qualify for such assistance, with one family getting Federal taxpayer housing money even though they had an annual income of $479,911.
• The National Education Agency (NEA) spent $30,000 on the production of a play called “Doggie Hamlet.”
• The National Institutes of Health (NIH) annually spends $2.5 million to care for 139 apes that were formerly used for research which comes out to a rate of $18,700 per animal per year, not very efficient.
• In Iraq, the Department of Defense somehow lost over $1 billion worth of taxpayer funded military equipment.
• Going back to NIH waste, that government agency spent $2.3 million to verify that people who exercise often lose weight.
• The NIH also spent research money confirming the reality, surprise, surprise, that men prefer dating younger, thinner women.
• Another reality that the Federal Government affirmed, is that, surprise, surprise, a $2 million study confirmed that children don’t like to eat food that’s been sneezed on.
• The EPA spent money to "immerse artists in a multi-scale investigation of transportation systems, community, and governance related to the impacts of climate change." 
• Our favorite waster of money, the National Science Foundation (NSF), spent $475,142 on a plant naming program.
• The Federal grazing program charges ranchers to allow their cattle to roam and graze on Federal land but the program is so inefficient that the Federal government pays $77.1 million more to operate the program than it collects from the ranchers getting the benefit of their grazing their cattle on Federal land.
• The Feds spent almost half a million dollars researching the sights, sounds, and smells of the medieval period, a project I cannot even begin to imagine has any societal benefit.
• The NSF spent $315,000 to research how court rulings make people feel.
• And despite the ever increasing health care costs in this country, the lack of available health care to certain geographic and income segments of Americans and our crumbling infrastructure, the Federal government spent $1 billion on hospitals and infrastructure in Palestine.

With a $20 TRILLION national debt load, a load that comes out to over $165,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country, it makes no sense to waste money on such nonsense as identified by Senator Lankford. And even if we did want to spend this money, it should not be on such stupid, non-useful projects like those listed above. Go into any bar in America at happy hour and you could prove that men like younger, thinner women, you do not need the NSF for that. Go to any school cafeteria at lunchtime and you would easily find out that kids do not like food that has been sneezed on.

Spend this wasted money to house the homeless, feed the hungry, treat the drug addicted. Research real issues that affect many Americans such as curing cancer or Alzheimer's, not funding “Doggie Hamlet” plays. Total, total insanity and insults to American taxpayers everywhere.

2) This following piece of insanity mystifies me but also makes me respect Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, even more. Consider what he somehow convinced the politicians in Chicago to do. According to a recent article in the Seattle Times: “Chicago has offered to let Amazon pocket $1.32 billion in income taxes paid by its own workers. This is truly perverse. Called a personal income-tax diversion, the workers must still pay the full taxes, but instead of the state getting the money to use for schools, roads or whatever, Amazon would get to keep it all instead. The result is that workers are, in effect, paying taxes to their boss,” says a report on the practice from Good Jobs First, a think tank critical of many corporate subsidies.””

I am assuming that this has something to do with the reality that Amazon is going to establish a huge second headquarters location somewhere in the country and cities and counties are falling over themselves to be the location of that second headquarters location. But really, letting Amazon keep the tax money that its employees should be paying to the state and local government, kudos to Bezos, shame on the Illinois politicians who prostituted themselves out to a single company.

3) Unfortunately, we often have to check in to Chicago to see how the out of control gun violence and death rate is doing. Chicago is a city with some of the most stringent gun control laws in the country and one of the highest rates of violent crime. The politicians would prefer to continue to erode the Second Amendment rights of citizens to defend themselves vs. actually fixing the root causes of the violence that is so rampant, probably because they have no idea how to fix those root causes to the violence.

During a recent week in late November in Chicago:

• The city experienced its second most violence Thanksgiving day in recent years.
• There were 44 shootings in the city that holiday weekend.
• Eight of those shot ended up dying.
• In the month of November in Chicago, 33 citizens were shot and killed.
• Year to date in Chicago, 3,326 have been shot and 580 of those shot have died in Chicago.
• Almost 78% of those who died in Chicago this year from gun violence were African Americans but police were involved in only 1% of those shootings, killing the Black Lives Matter and liberal tripe that police officers are out of control and killing African Americans at unacceptable levels.

Horrific violence and no end in sight as politicians and liberals dicker over false statistics and no plans are ever developed to eliminate the root cause for violence.

That will do it for our second political class insanity post. No solutions for our urban woes which is becoming more and more fatal for urban residents and Washington is still wasting our taxpayer money on useless and senseless activities. More insanity to come.

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.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

October, 2016, Part 5, Poltiical Class Insanity: No Respect For John Kerry, The Eating Habits Of Drunk College Students And More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

The current monthly record for the number of posts that were needed to cover one month's worth of insanity is ten. We equaled that record last month when we needed ten days to cover one month’s worth of political class insanity. There is a very good chance that the ten day record could fall this month since as we get closer and closer to the election, the volume of ineptness grows almost exponentially. 

But today and for all of the posts this month, let’s start off with a welcome piece of honest political dialog. It comes from a State Department spokesperson. Mark Toner, who is about to start the daily State Department press briefing. In a joking matter, he makes the following quote: "Welcome to the State Department. I think we have some interns in the back. Welcome. Good to see you in this exercise in transparency and democracy." 

He then burst out laughing at his own quote, indicating he also knew what a joke the Obama administration has been, especially Mr. Toner’s State Department, when it comes to cover ups, lack of transparency, denial of Freedom of Information Act requests, the prosecution of whistleblowers, etc. But at least it was a little refreshing to finally hear some actual honesty out of Washington as we see from the actual clip of the news conference:

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2016/08/when-even-the-state-department-spokesperson-cant-keep-a-straight-face-about-things-anymore-video/

With that context of honesty, let’s see what other insanity has been going down:

1) Michael Tanner, writing an article for the Cato Institute on September 22, 2016, talked about the latest iteration of the annual analysis, “Index of the Economic Freedom of the World.” The index is compiled every year by a group of 70 think tanks from around the world. It rates every country along a set of measurements that include the size of government, tax burdens, regulatory burdens, property rights, and other measures to come up with a relative measure of how freely a country’s economy functions. History has shown that the freer an economy is allowed to function, the more likely it is to grow rapidly and prosper. 

So how did the U.S. do this year? Let’s look at some history and results over time:

• In the year 2000, the U.S. was ranked as the second freest economy in the world.
• By 2009 we had lost some of our relative freedom but still ranked in the top ten countries of the world.
• In the latest index calculations, we have dropped down to number 16, sandwiched between Lithuania and Malta.
• Recall that Lithuania was once part of the USSR, an economic situation that no one would ever call free by any measurement.
• Canada ranked number five meaning that it was much easier and likely more financially attractive to do business in Canada than in the United States by a very large margin.
• Underneath the total index we see that we ranked a dismal 78th when it comes to the size of our Federal government, not surprising given the huge sizes of our Federal annual budget deficits every year since Obama took over.
• Ranking 78th on size of government now makes us worse in this area than even most of the socialist governments in Europe.
• Even more distressing, the U.S. dollar got us the top ranking in the monetary soundness measurement category as late as 2005 but since then, eleven short years later, our monetary rating has plummeted to 40th.
• When the first index was calculated back in 1980, our legal system and respect for property rights made us number one but the latest report puts our legal system and respect for property rights 27th, right next to Rwanda and Portugal.

It seems that the political class, both Republicans and Democrats, have been busy dismantling the freest economy in the world over the past few decades and making us just another run of the mill economy with higher and higher taxes, a higher and higher regulatory burden, etc. Which is a shame since the end of World War II having the freest and least burdened economy in the world created the highest standard of living in the history of mankind. But leave it to the latest set of politicians to ruin a good thing.

As our economy and economic environment has gotten more and more bogged down, we see that there are now over 40 million Americans receiving food assistance every month, we see a labor participation rate that is lower than it has been since the 1970s, we see soaring national debt, we see stagnant wages and household income levels, we see millions of Americans who have to settle for part time work when they want full time work, we see 30-40% of American households that have none or very little savings. Cause and effect? I think so, courtesy of the worst set of American politicians ever.

2) We recently reviewed the many, many failures of U.S foreign policies and strategies under the Obama administration and the latest Secretary of State of that administration, John Kerry. That post can be accessed at:

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John Kerry often ends up in this blog as a result of his inane quotes and failed policies. Today is no different. The truce/cease fire that Kerry negotiated with Russia to try and settle down the carnage and warfare in Syria, especially around the city of Aleppo, fell apart just days after it was agreed to. A convoy of humanitarian aid was headed to Aleppo when it was attacked and destroyed, killing upwards of two dozen civilians in that convoy. 

Although they denied it, the Russians and their Syrian government allies were likely to blame. As a result, the ceasefire ended almost as soon as it began and Syrian troops are massing outside of Aleppo, making preparations to attack the city, which will no doubt result in even more civilian casualties and deaths. Thus, another failure for the Obama/Kerry diplomatic skills. 

Possibly just as embarrassing, when Kerry went to the Russians to try and fix what went wrong, as reported by the Daily Caller website, “A senior Russian official said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s threat to cease all talks with Russia over Syria, amounts to an ‘emotional breakdown.’” Yes, a total lack of respect for the top international U.S. diplomat, which for this administration, is about par for the course. Pathetic and a measure of how ineffective this Secretary of State is. No one respects him, publicly accusing him of having an emotional breakdown. 

3) Let’s classify this next story as plan “oopsie.” Apparently, the Defense Department has a program that brings young Afghanistan male citizens to this country and gives them military training. The theory is that these newly trained folks will return to their native country and lead the war against the Taliban and terrorists.

That assumes they return to their country. Bill Gertz, writing for the Washington Free Beacon on September 27, 2016, reported that seven Afghan citizens that were receiving military training have disappeared from their assigned U.S. military bases and are now roaming freely within the country or the world: “During the month of September, seven Afghan students were considered absent without leave (AWOL) during international military student programs,” Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Patrick L. Evans said. Yes, seven disappeared just in a single month.

Three of the people could have possibly been involved with the bombing suspect in the recent New Jersey and New York terrorist bombings. Mr. Girtz reports that the authorities are investigating connections to see if these three people, trained militarily by our own armed forces, were somehow involved in the attacks.

The seven Afghan military trainees disappeared from U.S. training facilities around the country. You cannot get much more insane than this: bring foreigners into this country from a hotbed of terrorism, give them military training and then lose them.

4) Sometimes stories we cover are just plain stupid when it comes to government spending priorities and this is one of them. This kind of story, and tens of thousands like them, are the reasons why no American rich or poor, should pay more in taxes to the Federal government until there is some kind of financial discipline installed in the Washington bureaucracy.

Before we review this insanity from the Fix This Nation website, keep in mind that:

• Millions of Americans go hungry every day.
• At any time during the year, hundreds of thousands of Americans are homeless.
• Every day, our veterans are not getting the medical care they were promised and need.
• Every day, likely hundreds of Americans die from drug addiction.

Now, read the following disgraceful use of $50,000 of taxpayer money and decide whether a better use of that money would be for those suffering Americans listed above or simply better not to have spent it at all:

• The National Institutes of Health is going to spend $50,000 to study how much snacking drunk college students do.
• Over a two year period, researchers will track the drinking and eating binges of 175 freshmen at the University of Kansas.
• They want to study the ridiculous hypothesis that drinking alcohol may lead to unhealthy eating.
• They also want to see if heavy drinking leads to the infamous “Freshman 15” weight gain theory.

Seriously, how idiotic is this study? I can answer their research questions right now:

1. Heavy drinking does lead to unhealthy eating. No college student ever said “give me a Budweiser and a side of broccoli.”
2. By definition, alcohol is heavy in calories so drinking a lot as a freshmen adds to one’s body weight.

No need to waste $50,000 anymore, research questions answered.

Now, in a $4 TRILLION Federal budget, $50,000 is a tiny rounding number. However, this type of spending insanity is done hundreds of thousands of times every year by the Federal bureaucracy as the bureaucrats try to justify government jobs that are useless. This type of small insane ways to waste money multiplied over and over eventually leads to a $20 TRILLION national debt.

And while $50,000 may not be a lot to a massive Federal bureaucracy, it is a lot to a few unlucky Americans who need a meal, a roof over their heads, some needed medical care, of some drug treatment if that $50,000 was directed at the truly needy in this country.

Another day of depressing insanity from the American political class. And even more depressing, more insanity tomorrow.

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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

December, 2015, Bonus Post, Political Class Insanity: Wastebook 2015

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

• NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
• The stock market is stalling.
• Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
• The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
• Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
• 45 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
• Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets.
• Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
• Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
• The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
• Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
• Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.

Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing, saying and wasting. Today we are focusing solely on the latest publication in the government Wastebook series. For years, former Senator Tom Coburn combed through Federal government spending to annually find the 100 most outrageous ways that the Washington political class waste taxpayer wealth. 

That tradition continued this year, operated by Senator Jeff Flake since Coburn is no longer in the Senate. The insanity and idiocy of the spending, however, is just as outrageous and insulting to hard working, tax paying Americans as ever. As we have asserted in previous years when we reviewed past Wastebook examples, no American, rich or poor, should ever pay another penny in taxes until this type of rampant nonsensical spending is eliminated by the Federal government and those that operate it.

In light of the release of the upcoming Star Wars movie, this year’s issue is entitled, Wastebook 2015, The Farce Awakens. And what a farce it is, especially in light of the problems facing Americans that we listed above.

1) One study by the National Institutes of Health paid university researchers $1 million to study the effects of monkeys running on treadmills. Some of the findings included documenting how some of the monkeys vomited and defecating while exercising on the treadmills. I can think of no reason in the world why we need to study monkey treadmill behavior. If the justification of the $1 million is to study how treadmill use affects humans, than do the study on humans directly, why on monkeys?

2) The National Science Foundation (NSF) is always a main source of idiotic projects and wasteful spending that have nothing to do with real science and real world issues. Previous wastes of taxpayer money from the NSF can be seen at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/06/national-science-foundation-wasting.html

This year the NSF stepped up with studies to see if a koozie does in fact keep beer cold (it does, rejoice!), conducted wine classes to teach minors how to make wine to the tune of $853,000, and gave the Department of Agriculture $68,129 to spend on a craft beer, wine, and spirits training program…..in Vietnam.

3) The Department of Transportation spent $77,000 on anti-drunk driving public service announcements where fake drunk men criticize women’s looks. One of the announcements filmed a fake drunk guy telling a woman that “plastic surgery would do wonders for your jaw structure and definitely your nose” and another one had a fake drunk man telling a woman she would “be cuter with the lights off.” Huh, how does this type of sexist, insulting behavior fix a drunk driving issue?

4) A California professor landed an amazing $5 million to throw “commune” dance parties for young “hipsters” to try and get them to stop smoking. Party attendees were actually paid $5 a week to attend these taxpayer sponsored parties. Getting people to stop smoking is a noble effort but spending $5 million in a single location in California is not the way to do it because 1) it is a stupid idea and 2) even by some miracle it was successful, it is not transferable to the larger population, not at $5 million per location.

5) Fat seemed to be a theme in this year’s wasteful spending since in one study, $17,500 was spent to pay college students to wear fat suits for “weight sensitivity training” and $200,113 was spent to develop a “fat detector” that guesses a person’s body mass index by looking at their face. Really, weight sensitivity training and a fat detector, are you kidding me?

6) The EPA spent $15,000 to create a device that monitors how long hotel guests spend in the shower. Again, to what purpose? If hotels want to know how long people shower, then let the hotel industry pay for the device’s development.

7) Some government financed researchers spent a disgusting $2.6 million to try and craft the perfect tweet. They concluded that the best way to get retweets is to include phrase, “pls retweet.” Over $2 million for this nonsensical common sense finding.

8) $707,000 was spent on a study to start a “shrimp fight club” that resulted in 34 bouts with mantis shrimp.

9) $853,000 was spent on a “sing along brunch party” involving 80 people who sang tunes from Annie to promote a farmers’ market. No farmers’ market anywhere is worth $853,000 in taxpayer wealth.

10) Within a $5 million Department of Agriculture grant, tailgating kits were made that included a koozie, apron, and a food thermometer for University of Nebraska football fans.

11) Back to NSF waste, it also spent $1,200,000 which resulted in a life size Pac-Man game on a basketball court and another $899,000 was spent studying “the social interactions of guppies.”

12) NASA spent $1.2 million testing “microgravity” on sheep which they even admitted was a “niche” project and even though they already know that bone density decreases while in space and the likelihood they will be sending sheep to Mars is minimal.

13) The Department of Housing and Urban Development gave away $210,000 to a dog clothing company that makes a dog vest with an ”exclusive double Velcro closure.”

14) Back to the NSF (are we seeing a trend here?), $276,194 was spent trying to figure out how unattractive people find attractive mates. Their conclusions? Be friends for a while first, information that is critical to the well being of the country.

15) $50,000 was spent by the State Department for a Do-It-Yourself festival in Moscow, Russia.

16) $780,000 was spent to study pizza addiction, a malady that I would think is far less destructive than meth or heroin addictions, two problems that actually deserve studying.

17) $2.1 million was spent promoting tourism in Lebanon even though the State Department strongly advises against visiting due to ongoing terrorist and security issues.

18) $3 million in “bus security grants” was given to companies operating luxury charter buses and limousines, including a self-hyped “nightclub on wheels.”

19) $104.4 million was paid to subsidize low income public housing for high income people. 

20) $175,000 was spent to develop a smartphone app that lets you know who caught the fish you are currently eating.

Rather than spending $175,000 on that fish smartphone app, maybe that money would have been better spent on the millions of Americans that go hungry every day. 

Rather than spend a million dollars to see how monkeys behave on a treadmill, maybe that money could have been spent to give our veterans the medical care they were promised but not receiving. 

Rather than spend $780,000 to study pizza addiction of college kids, that money could have been spent to save the lives of addicts who die to the tune of over 40,000 a year due to their addiction.

Rather than spend $104 million to help high earning Americans live in low income taxpayer subsidized housing, maybe that money would have been better spent to find shelter for the millions of homeless Americans.

I think you get the idea. So many Americans are suffering today and every day yet the Washington political class spends and wastes money on efforts that will have no immediate impact on the millions of suffering Americans and in most cases will have no impact EVER for any American…. except the college professors or universities that got the taxpayer money for such stupid and vanity projects.

There should be two strict criteria that need to be met before any taxpayer money is doled out, as we listed them in our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government:”

1. Unless the proposed project significantly affects the lives of a significant amount of citizens in at least five states, the Federal government and taxpayer has no right or duty to fund it.
2. Unless the funding is directly going to address the major issues of our times , i.e. homelessness, poverty, high healthcare costs, major illnesses, leaky borders, failing public education, and drug addiction, then no money should be forthcoming for any other proposal. By “directly” I mean that the connection to these major issues can be simply explained in twenty words or less.If it takes 21 words or more to explain how a proposal affects these issues than it is to be considered BS and discarded. 

Studying and funding how ugly people end up marrying attractive people and other such nonsense is a big reason why our national debt is over $18 TRILLION and why real issues never get resolved. President Obama promised he would go through the Federal budget “line by line” to wring out wasteful spending. Wastebook 2015 proves that he has lied, again, since the Federal budget still can supply a Wastebook author enough material to write a book.

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:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

January, 2015, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: A Billion Dollars Spend For Nothing, Shoveling Taxpayer Manure In Oregon, and More,

It is the beginning of both another year and another month which means it is time to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. For regular readers of this blog, you know that as 2014 progressed, the insanity, stupid quotes, ineffective governing and legislating, and general incompetence of our politicians seemed to accelerate as the year grinded on. No major issues got addressed, never mind resolved. Obama Care’s implications across the entire country and entire economy continued to unfold in disaster after disaster. Our foreign policy, or what was passed off as a foreign policy, was in tatters. Terrorism was on the march across the world. Veterans were dying because the Federal government could not fulfill the medical and health care promises those brave veterans were promised. The national debt hit a mind boggling $18 TRILLION. 

And our President continued to play golf and go on political campaign swings like no other President ever did. Congress narrowly missed becoming the least productive Congress of all time. Billions were spent and wasted on the November elections to elect people that did not deserve the time of day never mind billions of dollars. Racial division spread across the country, a division that was fomented and spread by those in office with something to gain. 

And guess what? Over this week you will see nothing has changed except the calendar. The political class is still out of control, the government entities that they rule over are bloated and ineffective, and the quality of life and freedom in this country continues to deteriorate. Hang on, it is going to be a bumpy next seven days or so. 

1) Very few government projects end up well, either missing their budgets by a significant amount or never delivering what was promised or failing in both areas. Nowhere was this behavior more evident in the recent announcement from the National Institutes of Health that after ten years of work and the expending of $1.3 BILLION, the National Children’s Study has been cancelled. 

The reason for the cancellation was that the study was deemed “flawed” and too expensive to continue: “Based on the working group’s findings and internal deliberation, I am accepting … findings that the NCS is not feasible,” said NIH Director Francis Collins in a December announcement of the program’s termination. “I am disappointed that this study failed to achieve its goals. Yet I am optimistic that other approaches will provide answers to these important research question.” Would have been nice if they had realized this before ten years and $1.3 billion had been wasted for nothing in return. 

Are they saying that after ten years they woke one morning and said, “Whoopisie, just realized this project is a bust.” Horrible project management skills. The study was supposed to be a multi-decade tracking research effort to study children’s health over time. But Nigel Paneth, a professor of epidemiology and pediatrics at the University of Michigan, was involved with designing the study from its start had the best summation of the entire effort: “It was mismanaged, from the conceptual idea to actualization in the field.” Mismanaged from start to finish, sounds about right for the Federal government. 

How many kids could have received vaccines with that $1.3 billion? How many families could have gotten health insurance for their kids for $1.3 billion? If we have learned anything in this blog over the years, the more complex a government effort is, the more likely that the politicians and bureaucrats are going to screw it up in one or more ways. $1.3 billion is a lot of money to waste for nothing in return. 

And I bet no one got fired for wasting $1.3 billion. 

2) An article on the website www.cnsnews.com, written by Lauretta Brown, on December 16, 2016 discussed a grant from the Federal government’s National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The article investigated whether an approved grant of almost $200,000 to pay a video game designer to design a game about “consensually slapping her girlfriend in the face” was actually going to be paid out with taxpayer money. 

On April 23, 2013, the National Endowment for the Arts said it was awarding $24,000 to the Polytechnic Institute of New York University for a grant to: “To support the production and exhibition of video games created by the Different Games Fellows. The four fellows are artists/game-designers who will be selected from a group of women, people of color, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ community members groups who find themselves marginalized both as designers and characters in video games.” 

Subsequently, in 2014, the Different Games website announced who these federally-funded fellows were. One of those named, was Anna Anthropy, who “is a game creator, writer, artist, teacher, historian and gay witch. She makes games about polyamory, kink, Dan Savage, space adventures, and is currently using government money to make a game about consensually slapping her girlfriend in the face.” 

Seriously, we are possibly going to pay a self proclaimed witch to develop a video game about slapping her girl friend? Who approves these types of projects and why are they even considered? And do not call them art, they are self satisfying ego trips. 

Again, it is a question of very bad government priorities. Would that taxpayer wealth be better spent feeding the hungry or sheltering the homeless in this country or building a slap the girl friend video game that nobody would ever likely use? Insane and pathetic. 

3) Manure and the Federal government seem like a likely pairing and they serve as the basis for the next piece of insanity. Writing in the Washington Free Beacon on December 10, 2014, Elizabeth Harrington told her readers that: 

• More than five years after the passage of Obama’s economic stimulus package, taxpayer dollars have finally ended up in an Obama so-called shovel ready project.  
• You remember the stimulus package. It was billed as a way to bring America into the “21st century.” 
• To do that 21st Century miracle, stimulus money will now be used to remove wild horse manure off of public lands in Oregon at a cost of $60,000. 
• According to a recently awarded contract, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will pay $58,650 to load, haul, and dispose of manure from a corral in Burns, Oregon: “Manure shall be wind-rowed, piled if necessary, loaded, and hauled to a site for a beneficial use. If there is no beneficial use for the manure, then it shall be legally disposed of in a landfill or by another approved disposal practice.” 
• Shovel ready is an apt description of this wasteful spending in so many ways. 

The stimulus package was about recovering from the Great Recession, a recession that ended five years ago. How shoveling manure five years after the recovery started has anything to do with economic policy and strategies is impossible to comprehend. 

But it gets worse. The BLM contract is good through September 2015, with four option years. This means that economic stimulus funds could be spent on hauling horse manure until 2019, ten years after the recession ended. Shoveling manure with taxpayer money under the guise of economic policy, sounds like a typical government program. 

4) One last insult and piece of insanity for today. A recent report from Pew Charitable Trusts estimated what states receive back the most Federal spending support per person. Their research looked at and included such Federal expenditures as retirement benefits nonretirement benefits, grants, government contract purchases, and salaries and wages of Federal employees. 

Below is their final list of the top ten states ranked by government spending per capita: 

1. Virginia -- $16,710 

2. Maryland -- $15,684 

3. Alaska -- $14,375 

4. Hawaii-- $13,752 

5. New Mexico -- $13,213 

6. Maine -- $12,104 

7. Alabama -- $11,743 

8. Connecticut -- $11,527 

9. West Virginia -- $11,496 

10. Mississippi -- $11,469 

No real patterns or insults here. The top recipient states include northern states and southern states, wealthier states and poorer states, eastern states and western states. 

The real insult is when you consider the fact that the District of Columbia is tops for Federal spending per person living in the region at an amazing $73,920 per person. Yes, the Washington political class has allowed themselves and their work and living environment to receive four and half times more Federal support than the top state, Virginia, receives. The D.C. area receives more than six times Federal support than what the tenth rated state, Mississippi receives. Imagine what the ratio is of D.C. to the 50th state rated by Pew. 

We are certainly living in a disconnected government/citizen world. Washington politicians get high salaries and great benefits for basically working part time job hours but ensuring that taxpayer wealth flows to their physical location in obscene amounts. The nation’s citizens struggle to find decent jobs, feed their families, and live a decent life while they are overburdened by the taxes they pay for the Washington political class’s lifestyles, comforts, and work environment. We are truly living through a “Hunger Games” nightmare today in this country. 

That will do it for today, the sixth day of political class insanity for this month…and we are still not done. More insanity tomorrow but it will be difficult to beat today’s nonsense and insults: wasting money on studies that never occur, paying for video game development that involves slapping a girl friend, shoveling horse manure in Oregon with taxpayer dollars under the dubious guise of fixing the national economy, and living the Hunger Games life in D.C. Insane.

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:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w