December, 2016, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: 100 of The Worst Uses Of Taxpayer Money

It has been almost a month since Donald Trump has been elected which means at some point in the future we may run out of material to talk about. With the demise of the Obama administration, eight years worth of wasteful and excessive spending for nothing in return, foreign affairs blunders, Obama Care disasters, and assorted other administration and government blunders and screwups might end with the onset of a new administration. Trump may usher in a new paradigm of government actions that are limited, effective, cost efficient, and protective of the Constitution. If so, then this blog would run out of material to discuss and would have to be shut down.

But I doubt it. Even if Trump is truly a different type of President, he is still fighting over 500 embedded and entrenched politicians in Congress and thousands and thousands of government bureaucrats who will not go peacefully into the night for the good of the country. I wish him well and hopefully he can fix at least some of the myriad of problems the American political class creates everyday but until then, enjoy the latest political class insanity from Washington and beyond:

In late November, 2016, Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma published his second annual “Federal Fumbles” report which pointed out the “100 ways the government dropped the ball” over the past year when it came to wasting taxpayer money on stupid efforts and programs. As you read some of the disgusting wastes of money below that he uncovered, keep in mind that these are some of the reasons why we currently have about a $20 TRILLION national debt and that nowhere in the Constitution does it say these are legitimate uses of taxpayer wealth:

-The NIH funded a $2 million, multi-year study about how kids don’t like to eat food that’s been sneezed on.

-The USDA proposed a regulation to require gas stations and convenience stores to sell items like tofu, shrimp, and almond milk if they want to continue accepting food stamps.

-The NSF funded grants, totaling nearly $500K, to find the connection between religion, politics, and cemeteries in 12th-century Iceland.

- The FWS offered a $180,000 grant for an outside group to develop an effective way to count and tag sea ducks.

- The NSF gave almost $200,000 to study 500-year-old fish bones in a Tanzanian city to determine the connection between food and social status.

- The NSF paid more than $2 million to find out whether climate change has impacted China’s giant panda population.

- The OPM continues to process retirement benefits for federal employees on paper.

- The NIH spent more than $1 million on a campaign to tell mothers to prevent their teenage daughters from tanning.

- Three federal agencies have combined to spend $495,000 to support a temporary exhibit to share the best of medieval smells.

- The Medicaid has made $142.7 billion in improper payments since 2009.

- The NEA provided a $60,000 grant to a group in Los Angeles to record the family history of immigrants to post online and air on public radio.

- The NIH provided nearly $500,000 for a program to send text messages to discourage chewing tobacco.

- The NEA provided a $35,000 grant to the City of San Francisco to assist with public housing option for artists.

- GSA awarded an almost $1 million contract to provide one photograph to be cut into six pieces and hung in a new federal courthouse in California.

- The State Department entered into an almost $800 million contract for the construction of two buildings in Afghanistan with deadly electrical wiring.

- The Air Force contracted to construct a new Ministry of Defense office building for the Afghan government, a project that took five years and more than $100 million more than originally agreed to.

- The NIH provided more than $10 million for a series of studies to learn that stress plays a role in illegal drug use.

- The federal government currently operates more than 100 separate mental health programs.

- The NSF invested more than $412,000 in research on a paper arguing that glaciers are best studied using feminist theories.

- Since 2008, DEA and DOD have invested almost $100 million to purchase and modify an airplane that may never fly.

- The NEA provided $90,000 in grants to help spark a debate on gender identity and roles in American society.

- Over the last 5 years, USDA made more than $300 billion in improper payments from 18 high-risk programs.

- The US Embassy in London offered $75,000 to bring 10 people to the US to show them how Americans volunteer and give back to their communities.

- The DHS began to update IT programs in 2003 and has made little progress despite already spending $180 million.

- NSF invested almost $200,000 in a study to find out how people respond to failure.

- Duplicating research from the private sector and the Department of Education, NSF provided almost $250,000 to find the best way to use technology to educate children.

- Since 2008 NIH has awarded $3 million in grant funding for the development of a 12-episode soap opera to encourage smarter decisions to prevent HIV/AIDS.

- The DOJ authorized $70 million-twice the amount necessary-to construct Tribal prisons in Arizona.

- The USAID has invested or committed to invest over $1 billion in projects for the Palestinian government, some of which are either unusable or the local government cannot maintain.

- The ATF spent more than $500,000 for 6 unmanned aerial vehicles that were ultimately unsuitable for ATF’s purposes.

- USAID created a $24 million, multi-year program to fund the creation of energy regulations in other countries.

- BOP contracts outside medical care for its prisoners sometimes at 385 percent higher cost than other federal departments.

- The NEH spent $250,000 for a traveling classroom on prison life.

- A recent JG audit of just three Air Force contracts at one base revealed contractors are likely paid tens of millions more than they earned for work they did not do.

- The IRS operates nine separate, overlapping, uncoordinated tax fraud prevention programs.

- The BLM announced a $750,000 funding opportunity to assess the impact of fire-prevention efforts in a single Idaho county.

- The OHS has taken 11 years and more than $3 billion to overhaul how Immigration Services processes applications from foreigners seeking to live in the US, yet the JG says, “little progress has been made.”

- Congress requires DOD to operate a completely duplicative health-care plan that costs more than $1 billion a year.

- The USDA spent $2 million to fund organic farming-a $43 billion industry.

- The NSF funded multiple grants to study fairness in our court system and to determine how rulings make people feel.

- Despite a Joint Chiefs order requiring military procurements of commercial satellites through a centralized DOD Agency, individual military services spend hundreds of millions to enter into their own contracts.

- TSA spent $47,400 to create a randomizing app to direct airline passengers to either enter the left or right line at the airport.

- Over the last five years, NIH has invested more than $1.5 million to conduct a study on the different health impacts of exercise and healthy eating on immigrants in Minnesota.

- The NEA spent $35,000 to fund an exhibit to show changes in Iranian art over the last 30 years.

- The Smithsonian announced a 3-year position for a historian to help the Institute document the impact of beer on American history.

Now ask yourself these questions in light of what the Washington political class are spending your tax money on:

• Would the $2 million the NIH spent on studying snot on kids meals have been better used if it had been returned to taxpayers?
• Would the almost $100 million spent by the DOD and DEA to purchase and modify an airplane that may never fly have been better spent to treat the millions of drug addicted Americans every year of which tens of thousands die from their addictions?
• Would the $495,000 spent to support a temporary exhibit to share the best of medieval smells have been better spent to house the hundreds of thousands of Americans that are homeless at any one time in this country?
• Would the almost $500k the NSF spent to find the connection between religion, politics, and cemeteries in 12th-century Iceland have been better spent to increase research for cures for such important diseases as cancer and dementia-type diseases, diseases that place massive cost burdens on the country and its citizens?
• Would the almost $200,000 the NSF spent to study 500-year-old fish bones in a Tanzanian city to determine the connection between food and social status have been better spent for job training for the millions of Americans that are in need of updated skills in the rapidly evolving economy of today?

You get the idea. We are taxed so heavily in this country and so many suffer in this country and yet the political class always finds a way to waste our tax money and not help those in need. Obama promised that once elected he would go through the Federal budget “line by line” to ferret out wasteful spending. It is pretty obvious from the above list that this was just another broken promise or outright lie since studying why kids do not like food that has been sneezed on should have never happened in this reality if he had actually done what he promised.

That will do it for this month’s political class insanity. More to come next month for sure.

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