Skip to main content

A Christmas Gift for U.S. Taxpayers: Government Waste

Absurd things the U.S. government spends money on. Your money on. And we're more than $23,000,000,000,000 in debt.
  • The NIH and NSF are spending $1.2 million to study online dating habits
  • The State Department is spending $15.825 million on free college for international students
  • USAID is spending $20 million to teach Lao to Laotians.
  • The State Department is spending $2 million to improve TV programming in Moldov
  • The U.S. gave the Asia Foundation, which is "committed to improving lives across Asia" about $17 million. And $16.7 for international fisheries commissions.
  • The National Science Foundation spent $103,777 to teach social scientists how to apply for grants. 
  • The Pentagon sent $2,7 million in surplus military gear to police in Thetford Township, Michigan, population 7,000. 
  • The National Science Foundation spend $650,000 to see if STEM majors benefit from a college program based on social justice

The Federal Government also wasted American's tax dollars as it: 
  • Attempted to increase trust between Tunisian political parties and citizens: $2 million
  • Converted an abondoned mental hospital into DHS HQ: $2.2 billion
  • Supported "Green Growth" in Peru: $10 million
  • Fixed vehicles in New York City falsely claimed Hurricane Sandy damaged: $5.3 million
  • Increased the capacity of the Pakistani film instrustry: $100,000
  • Paid out billions from Medicare in improper payments: $48 billion
  • Taught English and IT skills at Madrassas: $150,000
  • Studied frog mating calls in Panama: $466,991
  • Paid for Goggle Scholar search in Hawaii: $51 million

The list goes on and on...


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for the comment. Will get back to you as soon as convenient, if necessary.

Popular posts from this blog

California: A Model for the Rest of the Country, Part 2

Part 1 here . On Leaving the Golden State Guest Post by NicklethroweR . Posted on the Burning Platform. The fabled Ventura Highway is all that separates my artist loft from the beach where surfing first came to the United States. Both my balcony and front patio face the freeway at about eye level and I could easily smack a tennis ball right on to the ever busy 101. Access to the beach and boardwalk is very important to a Tourist Town such as mine and I can see one underpass from my balcony and another underpass from the patio. Further up the street are two pedestrian bridges. Both have been recently remodeled so that people can not use it to kill themselves by leaping down into traffic. The traffic, just like the spice, must flow and the elites that live here do not like to be inconvenienced as they dart about between Malibu and Santa Barbara. Another feature of living where I live would have to be the homeless, the insane and the drug addicts that wander this particular...
Post a Comment
Read more

Factfulness: Ignorance about global trends. The world is actually getting better.

This newsletter was powered by  Thinkr , a smart reading app for the busy-but-curious. For full access to hundreds of titles — including audio — go premium and download the app today. From the layman to the elite, there is widespread ignorance about global trends. Author and international health professor, Hans Rosling, calls Factfulness  “his very last battle in [his] lifelong mission to fight devastating global ignorance.” After years of trying to convince the world that all development indicators point to vast improvements on a global scale, Rosling digs deeper to explore why people systematically have a negative view of where humanity is heading. He identifies a number of deeply human tendencies that predispose us to believe the worst. For every instinct that he names, he offers some rules of thumb for replacing this overdramatic worldview with a “factful” one. In 2017, 20,000 people across fourteen countries were given a multiple-choice quiz to assess basic global literac...
Post a Comment
Read more

Habits of Highly Successful Traders, Part 1

(Part 2 is here .) Trading is different than investing. Simply put, trading is short-term, investing long-term.  The goal of investing is to gradually build wealth over an extended period of time through the buying and holding (and selling at a appropriate time) of a portfolio of stocks, ETFs, bonds, and other investment instruments. Trading involves more frequent transactions, such as the buying and selling of stocks, commodities,  currency pairs , or other instruments. The goal is to generate returns that outperform buy-and-hold investing. While investors may be content with  annual returns  of 10 percent to 15 percent, traders might seek a 10 percent return each month.  Trading is hard work. Don't let anyone fool you. But if you're interested in this, it can be rewarding. However, you must have discipline and be able to follow rules. Most traders blow up their accounts. But the good ones follow certain habits. These habits can work well for investors al...
Post a Comment
Read more