Taxpayer Dollars Wasted On
A total of $3 million was granted to researchers at the University of California at Irvine so that they can play video games such as World of Warcraft. The goal of this "video game research" is reportedly to study how "emerging forms of communication, including multiplayer computer games and online virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life can help organizations collaborate and compete more effectively in the global marketplace."
$1 million of U.S. taxpayer money was used to create poetry for the Little Rock, New Orleans, Milwaukee and Chicago zoos. The goal of the "poetry" is to help raise awareness on environmental issues.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave the University of New Hampshire $700,000 to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs spent $175 million during 2010 to maintain hundreds of buildings that it does not even use. This includes a pink, octagonal monkey house in the city of Dayton, Ohio.
$1.8 million of U.S. taxpayer dollars went for a "museum of neon signs" in Las Vegas, Nevada.
$35 million was reportedly paid out by Medicare to 118 "phantom" medical clinics that never even existed. Apparently these "phantom" medical clinics were established by a network of criminal gangs as a way to defraud the U.S. government.
The Conservation Commission of Monkton, Vermont got $150,000 from the federal government to construct a "critter crossing". Thanks to U.S. government money, the lives of "thousands" of migrating salamanders are now being saved.
In California, one park received $440,000 in federal funds to perform "green energy upgrades" on a building that has not been used for a decade.
$440,955 was spent on an office for former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert that he rarely even visits.
One Tennessee library was given $5,000 in federal funds to host a series of video game parties.
The U.S. Census Bureau spent $2.5 million on a television commercial during the Super Bowl that was so poorly produced that virtually nobody understood what is was trying to say.
A professor at Dartmouth University received $137,530 to create a "recession-themed" video game entitled "Layoff".
The National Science Foundation gave the Minnesota Zoo over $600,000 so that they could develop an online video game called "Wolfquest".
A pizzeria in Iowa was given $60,000 to renovate the pizzeria's facade and give it a more "inviting feel".
The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave one enterprising group of farmers $30,000 to develop a tourist-friendly database of farms that host guests for overnight "haycations". This one sounds like something that Dwight Schrute would have dreamed up.
Almost unbelievably, the National Institutes of Health was given $800,000 in "stimulus funds" to study the impact of a "genital-washing program" on men in South Africa.
The National Institute on Aging supplied the RAND Institute with $610,908 so that it could survey people throughout 120 countries in order to discover the determinants of life satisfaction and well-being throughout the world. It sounds like a noble effort; unfortunately, Gallup already has a poll that accomplishes more or less the same thing worldwide.
$60,000 of federal funds was apportioned to conduct a tree census and inventory in the city of Henderson, Nev. According to the Henderson City Council, there are 1,348 acres of "undocumented tree assets" in Henderson and 15,000 trees that have no recorded data other than a GPS location. The goal was to generate a tree maintenance plan.
William Hopkins, at Agnes Scott College, and researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center utilized a portion of $592,527 in federal funding last year to discover the origins behind chimpanzees and their desire to throw food and feces at passersby. After taking MRIs and performing multiple cognitive tests on the chimps, researchers determined that chimps with better feces-throwing skills had better communication skills than other apes.
$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."
$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. $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. $484,000 for pizza: A private developer was giving federal grant money to build Mellow Mushroom Pizza Bakers, an Arlington, Tx., outlet known for its tongue-in-cheek references to drug and hippie culture. $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." Can you spell "Boondoggle?" $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. $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. $550,000 for "Rockin' the Kremlin: A documentary on how rock and roll contributed to the end of the cold war. $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 t.v.s and gas generators, because, of course, these villages also don't have electric power? The full listing of 100 outrageous ways the federal government wasted your tax dollars in 2011 can be found here. But Coburn rightly notes in a preamble to his report that the biggest waste of our money may be on Congress itself, which recently recorded a 9% approval rating - the lowest in history. The fact that some member of Congress had to propose (and convince colleagues to approve) these projects gives a glimpse into why.
