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Michael Snyder
The American Dream
March 25th, 2013

 

Is there anyone better at wasting money then the U.S. government?  Despite the sequester and all of the talk about “deep cutbacks”, the federal government continues to waste money in some of the most outrageous ways imaginable.  For example, does the U.S. government really have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to study the size and shape of the reproductive organs of ducks?  Does the U.S. government really have to spend 1.5 million dollars to study why so many lesbians are overweight?  There is so much waste that could still be cut out of the federal budget, and yet the very small sequester cuts that just happened are being described as “catastrophic” by many of our politicians.  But you know what?  The federal government will still spend more money in fiscal year 2013 than it did in fiscal year 2012 even after the sequester cuts are factored in.  So if this is how much whining our politicians will do even though government spending is still going up, what would they do if we were actually forced to start living within our means at some point?  That is something to think about.  In any event, please show this article to anyone that believes that the U.S. government is actually “tightening the belt”.  Sadly, the truth is that the federal government is still wasting our money in some of the most frivolous ways that you could possibly imagine.

The following are some of the completely outrageous ways that 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”.  Try not to laugh, but 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 $100,000during 2012, and there were 20 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 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”

Here are 30 more examples of outrageous government waste from one of my previous articles entitled “Chimps Throwing Poop And 29 Other Mind Blowing Ways That The Government Is Wasting Your Money“…

#1 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.

#2 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”.  According to Fox News, 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.”

#3 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.

You can see some stunning pictures of GSA employees living the high life in Las Vegas right here.

 

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