Issues
First It Was Bunny Massages and Now – Doggy Pictures!
That’s right – those brainiacs at the National Institutes of Institutes of Health (“NIH”), who scorched $387,000 of your dollars giving Swedish massages to rabbits, have now blown another $371,026 to discover that mothers have the same reaction to pictures of their dogs as they have to pictures of their own kids!
Having nothing better to do, NIH geniuses hooked mothers up to MRI brain scanners, showed them photos of their dogs and kids and got the same reaction to each. A giant leap for mankind’s knowledge, wouldn’t you say?
And for this they receive yet another well deserved Golden Fleece Award.
We know who really needs the brain scans, don’t we?
Pretty Soon it Adds to Real Money!
This week’s Golden Fleece Award goes to that champion of Golden Fleecers, the U.S. government, which, in 2014, made $124 billion in “improper payments.”
“Improper payments” include tossing your money to someone who shouldn’t get it, sending the wrong amount to the right person, or just plain losing it.
These blown bucks are spread over 124 programs, but the champion is the Earned Income Tax Credit. This gem of a scheme, which takes your tax dollars and gives them to people who work but don’t earn much money, threw 27% of its payments down a rat hole.
The Government Accountability Office calls this mess a “material weakness in internal control.” We call it “sad but highly predictable.”
Does This Make You Hopping Mad?
This week’s Golden Fleece Award, presented with a furry dunce cap, goes to the National Institutes of Health, whose director claims that an ebola vaccine “probably” would be a reality if his agency just had more of your dollars.
He did, however, manage to scrounge up $387,000 to pay for a study featuring the effects of Swedish massages on 18 New Zealand White rabbits. Some lucky bunnies got four 30 minute massages a day!
The results (drum roll, please)? Massages given immediately after exercise are better than delayed massages – as we always say, a relaxed bunny is a happy bunny.
HHS Bureaucrats Put Wings on Your Bucks
This week’s Golden Fleece Award, presented with a bronze statue of a hog slopping up at the trough, goes to the U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services, whose executives spent $31,000,000
of your dollars on 7,000 first and business class flights between 2009 and 2013.
Federal employees can fly business or first class on flights lasting more than 14 hours, but only 1,400 of the 7,000 met this condition.
Some of these bureaucrats claimed they flew first or business because a non-federal source paid for their tickets.
We have news for these high fliers: A “non-federal source” paid for every last ticket they scarfed up. That source was taxpayers, who worked for the dollars these bureaucrats gave wings to.
What About “Stupidism”?
This week’s Golden Fleece Award, presented with a Big Bowl of Stupid, goes to the U.S. Dept. of Education, which over three years awarded $20,396,892 of your dollars to boards of education to fight “all of the –isms…”, including racism, ableism, orientation, etc.,” according to New York school official Velma Cobb. Hey, Velma – in case you missed it, “orientation” is missing an “-ism.”
This unicorn hunt is funded under Title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which deals with school desegregation. Period. Desegregation came, but Title IV lives eternally to fight such nonsense as “ableism.”
Now – How about a grant to eliminate “Stupidism?”
How to Scorch $10.4 Million
This week’s Golden Fleece Award goes to the U.S. Agency for International Development, for tossing $10.4 million of your dollars to Malawi to “empower” girls to use birth control to, among other things, prevent HIV.
We’re all for helping these gals, but, as cnsnews.com reports, “such efforts have failed in the past.”
So what if they failed? So what if, as cnsnews.com reports, “…the increase in the use of modern family planning services in Malawi has not resulted in any significant decrease in HIV…” ?
Always remember the battle cry of the Liberal (er, Progressive): “If a program fails – double down on it.”
Here, Kitty Kitty
This week’s Golden Fleece Award goes to the National Science Foundation, which tossed $856,000 of your dollars to the University of California Santa Cruz to train wild mountain lions to walk and run on a treadmill.
Why? To measure their oxygen consumption.
“It took three years to find a facility that was willing to try,” explained one prof. We think that’s because there’s only one facility stupid enough to try.
We just want to know who was the first guy who tried to coax a mountain lion onto a treadmill.
We hear he’s now affectionately known as “Old Lefty.”
Golden Fleece Award – Issue 82
A Grateful State Department Thanks You for Your Contribution!
This week’s Golden Fleece Award, with a wagon full of horse pucky, goes to The State Dept., which is blowing $450,000 of your earnings to teach Afghan women to play cricket with players from Pakistan and India.
Let’s see – Pakistan and India have fought four wars since 1947 and are currently in a fragile ceasefire. Most Afghanis seem to hate anyone from a different tribe or country.
Yeah! That’s the ticket – Let’s put ‘em all together and give them wooden bats. Our advice? Put the Bomb Squad on the sidelines!
Oh, and we were kidding – the State Dept. did not thank you.
But It Only Cost $7,006 per Illegal!
This week’s Golden Fleece Award goes to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which blew about $29 million of your bucks on prescription drugs for 4,139 illegal aliens.
That’s $7,006.52 per illegal. Didn’t these government gurus ever hear of generic drugs? We guess not. But we do know that, for American taxpayers, this was a tough pill to swallow.
Come On – It’s Just $40 Million!
This week’s Golden Fleece Award, with a gift card for 12 free waterboardings, is presented to the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who issued a 6,000 page report on the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding.
The cost? $40 million. And did we mention that, during the five years they spent on it, they interviewed not one CIA employee?