Issues
See Jesus In Toast – Just $3.5 Million
Once again we present our Golden Fleece Award for waste of taxpayers’ money to the National Institutes of Health which, according to Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ), torched $3.5 million studying “Seeing Jesus in toast: Neural and behavioral correlates of face pareidolia.”
In case you were wondering, “face pareidolia” is what causes people to see Jesus, Elvis or The Virgin Mary in objects like toast, pizza or bed sheets.
According to Kang Lee, lead author of this nonsense, “I think probably this is first time we are actually telling people: ‘This is OK for you to see Jesus on toast.’” Sure it is, Kang. It’s perfectly normal.
Taken A Cruise Lately? You Paid For a Few
Today we award our Golden Fleece for government waste of your money to the Dept. of Defense (DOD), where Air Force and Navy personnel swiped their government credit cards for an extra $293,600.
What did they get for this theft? $69,000 for cruises; $73,950 for exotic dance clubs and prostitutes; $48,250 for gambling; and $102,400 for admission to entertainment events.
And You Thought They Were Just Protecting The Environment
Our Golden Fleece Award for government waste of money you worked for goes this week to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for allowing two of their “public servants” to charge $14,985 of “fitness memberships” on their EPA credit cards.
The same Office of Inspector General Risk Assessment discovered:
- “None of the 18 transactions reviewed complied with all 14 internal controls tested”;
- The blocks to eliminate charges from “high risk Merchant Category Codes” failed;
- Other instances of noncompliance.
No wonder these EPA clowns blew through $8.1 billion of your tax dollars last year.
Care For Another Smuttynose, Sir?
We present this week’s Golden Fleece Award for government waste of your money to “public servants” at the Dept. of Agriculture, who tossed $750,970 to New Hampshire’s Smuttynose Brewery. Thanks to your tax payments, good ol’ Smuttynose will get 3 new brew tanks and matching sewer connections.
Pepperoni Pizza – The New Gateway Drug!
Today we award a supersized Golden Fleece Award for government waste of money to the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) for cooking $780,000 of your bucks to figure out that pizza may be as addictive as crack. Their study sample? 100 University of Michigan undergrads, who completed a survey on addictive foods.
So these NIDA braniacs sampled college kids, who probably live on pizza, collected their speculation on addiction, and passed it off as research. Think they should retake Stats 101? If they ever took it in the first place, that is.
Asparagus Makes My WHAT Smell?
Thanks to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) we now know the answer to this intriguing question. It’s your urine.
And it only cost $3 million of your tax dollars to verify what Ben Franklin figured out a long time ago: yes, you can smell your “Asparagus Pee.”
For this magnificent government waste of your money we honor NIH with its 7th Golden Fleece Award.
The World At 7:00 – For Just $455,000
This week’s Golden Fleece Award for government waste of your money goes to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the University of California Irvine for scorching $455,000 of your tax dollars to figure out what people around the world are doing at 7:00 p.m.
Surprise! They discovered that at 7:00 people are pretty much doing what they did last night at 7:00!
But blowing $455,000 wasn’t enough for NSF. So they’re going to toss another $454,866 after it for a follow up study. Absolutely brilliant!
California’s Choo-Choo Follies
Today we award our coveted Golden Fleece Award for government waste to the California High-Speed Rail Authority – the geniuses in charge of building The Golden State’s bullet train from San Francisco to Anaheim.
The first 118 mile segment of this Choo-Choo To Nowhere is already projected to run $3.5 to $4.5 billion over its $6.4 billion budget. And it’s 7 years behind schedule. And they haven’t acquired rights to over half the land they need to lay track on.
The only thing “high speed” about this government disaster is the destruction of your tax dollars.
Slurred Songs From Smashed Birdies
The trophy case at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has got to be full of Golden Fleece Awards for government waste. But here’s one more.
These brainiacs tossed $5 million of your hard earned bucks to Oregon Health & Science University to figure out if drunk birds slur their songs.
The short answer: Yes. Next question: Who gives a (insert your favorite word here)?
We label this whole thing “Birdbrain.”
Wanna Buy A Nice Used Ice House?
According to Sen. Jeff Flake, in 2011 Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish blew a $289,000 Dept. of Housing and Urban Development grant on buying an ice house. Their goal? Provide ice for fishermen. But they soon discovered that refurbishing this pink elephant was economically unfeasible.
What to do? Return the $289,000? Nooo….
So they spent another $700,000 to tear the first ice house down and build a new one – which nobody needed then, needs now or will ever need.
Said observant fisherman F.J. Campo, “I guess it’s what you would call a catastrophic screw-up on the parish’s part.” We call it another Golden Fleece of taxpayers.