$19.5 Mil to Study Effect of Climate Change on Cows.  Just when you thought the U.S. government's global warming frenzy couldn't possibly get any worse, the Obama administration announces that it's dedicating a whopping $19.5 million to study the effect of climate change on cows.  This crazy story comes via the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which is giving several academic institutions the cash to support research, education and other activities associated with climate solutions in agriculture.  The goal is to uncover the impacts of climate variability and change on dairy and beef cattle, according to an agency announcement released this week.

The Editor says...
Cows have been around longer than people, and so far the cows and the people have adapted every time their surrounding climates changed.  Also notice that "global warming" is now called "climate change", because there is no global warming at the moment.

Stimulus: $152K to Get Lesbians Ready for 'Adoptive Parenthood'.  While the White House claims its stimulus package "supported as many as 3.5 million jobs," none were yielded from a $152,000 project to ready lesbians for "adoptive parenthood."  The $833 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), commonly known as the stimulus, awarded the tustees of Clark University, in Worcester, Mass., $152,000 to interview roughly 50 lesbian couples about their adoption experiences.

Feds Spend $402,721 on Underwear That Senses Cigarette Smoke.  The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded more than $400,000 to a research project involving underwear that can detect when a person smokes cigarettes.  The University of Alabama has received two grants totaling $402,721 for the project, which so far has produced a "very early prototype" of the monitoring system, which — in its current state — fits like a vest.

The Editor says...
I doubt if the vest can tell the difference between first- and second-hand smoke.  But more importantly, who needs a device like this, and for what purpose?

$12 million to help Bengal tigers survive global warming — in Bangladesh.  Stymied in its war on global warming in the United States, the administration is taking its fight overseas and into Bangladeshi jungles to help the Bengal tiger survive the effects of climate change.  While the most numerous of all tigers, there are only about 2,500 left in the wild and 440 in Bangladesh, where the U.S. Agency for International Development is shopping around a four-year, $10.8 million to $12 million grant to help establish the "Bengal Tiger Conservation Activity."

Wasn't enrollment in Obamacare supposed to be quick and easy?
HHS budgets $150m to teach people how to enroll in Obamacare.  Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Thursday that HHS will spend $150 million to teach people how to enroll in the Obamacare exchanges, after a Democratic senator scolded her for running a poor "public information campaign."

Obama's $2.5M Hotel and 'Vehicle Rental' Tab on Last Mexico Trip.  According to recently discovered documents relating to the costs of that trip, taxpayers paid nearly $2.5 million for hotel and "vehicle rental."

Obama admin paid at least $2.5 million for hotel rooms and rental cars during one meeting in Mexico.  The Obama administration spent between $2.52 million and $2.77 million for hotel rooms and rental cars during the president's 2012 trip to Mexico for a G-20 summit, MailOnline has learned.  Government travel documents available online show that the State Department contracted with a travel agency to spend between $1,889,383 and $2,078,327 on hotel rooms alone, for the President, the Secret Service, and the rest of the State Department and White House staff and VIPs.  And rental cars for the trip cost between $630,760 and $693,836, according to a separate contract document.

New Video Slams Unbuilt Ike Memorial for $142 Million Cost to Taxpayers.  So far, the Eisenhower Memorial Committee has spent more than $30 million on the yet-to-be built monument, and the total estimated cost of the project is $142 million — three times the usual cost of presidential memorials in today's dollars, and twice what was originally proposed.

Congresswoman's Round-the-World Trip Cost Taxpayers $23K.  The House Judiciary Committee reported Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, traveled around the world on an official trip in February that cost $23,646.  The Feb. 16-22 trip on commercial flights was to Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia.

Senate Republicans quiz Labor Department on purported payments for labor unions worldwide.  Senate Republicans say the Labor Department appears to be spending millions in taxpayer dollars to establish labor unions and promote collective bargaining in foreign countries and are asking top Obama administration officials for a full audit.

Karzai's Office Gets Bags Full of C.I.A. Cash.  For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan's president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.  All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.

Shrink the Federal Bureaucracy.  The federal government simply spends too much.  It also wastes far too much.  Needless duplication and wasteful inefficiency permeate the federal bureaucracy.  For instance, the Government Accountability Office issued a report in March 2011 detailing "34 areas for consideration related to duplication, overlap, or fragmentation" and 47 additional areas "describing other opportunities for agencies or Congress to consider taking action."  A year later, only five percent of the GAO's recommendations had been fully addressed.

Feds spend at least $890,000 on fees for empty accounts.  It is one of the oddest spending habits in Washington:  This year, the government will spend at least $890,000 on service fees for bank accounts that are empty.  At last count, Uncle Sam has 13,712 such accounts with a balance of zero.  They are supposed to be closed.  But nobody has done the paperwork yet.

Another IRS Scandal; Employees Lie to Get Welfare, Food Stamps.  On the heels of "Tax Day," 24 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees have been charged with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in government benefits, including food stamps, welfare and housing vouchers.  The story comes out of Tennessee, where federal prosecutors announced this month that the scheme fleeced U.S. taxpayers out of at least a quarter of a million dollars in government benefits.  The corrupt IRS employees did it by making false statements to fraudulently obtain the benefits, which also included unemployment insurance.

Another day, another pointless and expensive experiment.
Why NASA Is Firing Cell Phones Into Space.  The space agency this week took a handful of cheap but powerful smartphones, slapped them to a gigantic rocket and blasted them into low-earth orbit to see how they'd fare.  The project, called PhoneSat, is one of those wacky experiments that seems at first to have nothing to do with science.

More about NASA -- an organization that ran out of meaningful tasks about 20 years ago.

DOJ Spent $100 Million On Conferences In One Year.  Before the sequester took effect Attorney General Eric Holder went out and warned the American people that our safety would be at risk if the budget for the Department of Justice was cut.  What he didn't tell us is how much money the department wastes every year.  Despite having four empty federal prisons, they bought another prison in Illinois for $165 million that's now sitting empty and costing $6 million a year to maintain.  They also spend $1.5 million a year to work with Hollywood.  And in 2010 alone, they spent $100 million on conferences, according to Rep. Bob Goodlatte.

Safe from Sequester: $704,198 for Gardening at NATO Ambassador's Home.  Just over a week after sequestration took effect, the State Department allotted more than $700,000 for gardening at a U.S. Ambassador's residence in Brussels, Belgium.  On March 11, State awarded a contract to provide gardening services at an "official residence" of the U.S. Mission in Belgium.

DHS Orders Bagpipes? So Much for Sequester Cuts.  Apparently the head of the Department of Homeland Security is not even trying to save the government any money.  Yesterday [4/10/2013] DHS ordered a new supply of musical instruments including bagpipes and drums.  There is music writing software included in the order as well as the many small parts that go into caring for bagpipes.

Paterson cardiologist admits to $19M in health care fraud.  A prominent cardiologist who ran medical services companies in New Jersey and New York pleaded guilty on Wednesday to orchestrating a massive fraud that subjected thousands of patients to unnecessary tests and procedures and resulted in $19 million in losses.  Dr. Jose Katz, 68, of Closter, confessed his crimes to U.S. District Judge Jose L. Linares during a hearing in federal court in Newark.

Feds waste $95 billion on duplicative programs.  How many federal agencies does it take to do catfish safety inspections?  At least three, according to the Government Accountability Office, which on Tuesday [4/9/2013] released its 2013 report on fragmentation and duplication of federal programs.  This year's report — there were two previous editions of the report first requested by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. — documents an estimated $95 billion in duplicative programs that waste precious tax dollars.  That brings the three-year total of potential savings documented by GAO to $295 billion.

IRS Sits By As Inmates Collect Fraudulent Tax Refunds.  Nearly a year after Congress passed a law to stop incarcerated criminals from fraudulently receiving millions of dollars in tax returns, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) hasn't bothered creating a system to catch the offenders.

Shouldn't those employees be working?
Obama Admin Spends $21,000 on Basketball Equipment.  At least the Oval Office just plays pick-up.  The Departments of Interior and Transportation have caught the basketball fever so bad, they've dropped more than $20K on rebounding machines.

Arlington, Va.'s million-dollar bus stop looks cool, but why so expensive?  At the corner of Columbia Pike and Walter Reed Dr. in Arlington, Va., sits a stainless steel bus stop with a million dollar price tag.  Yes, that's right.  The futuristic-looking bus stop cost $1 million to build.  The so-called "super stop" boasts a heated concrete floor and a digital display board that shows when the next bus will arrive, but it doesn't do much to keep commuters warm or dry (except for their feet).

364 Billion Ways the Government Wastes Your Money.  As the White House politicized the sequester cuts amounting to $85 billion in lower federal spending, a recent GAO (Government Accountability Office) study identified "more than 1,362 duplicative programs accounting for at least $364.5 billion in federal spending every single year..." claims Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) in a letter to the White House on February 26.  Yet little publicity has been generated in the media by the GAO report to Congress [...]

Here is the GAO report:
Opportunities to Reduce Duplication, Overlap and Fragmentation, Achieve Savings, and Enhance Revenue.  We have found that agencies can often realize a range of benefits, such as improved customer service, decreased administrative burdens, and cost savings from addressing the issues we raise in this report.  Cost savings related to reducing or eliminating duplication, overlap, and fragmentation can be difficult to estimate in some cases because the portion of agency budgets devoted to certain programs or activities is often not clear.

$423,500 Stimulus on 'Correct Condom Use' Yields Zero Jobs.  The details of a stimulus grant awarded to Indiana University to study condom use have now been released on a government website.  The study, titled "Barriers to Correct Condom Use," is now completed, according to the website, and the university received $423,500 of stimulus funds to perform the study.

HUD report: Nearly $700 million Katrina rebuilding funding missing.  A report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of the Inspector General reveals that $698.5 million dollars in disaster recovery funds given to Louisiana homeowners in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were not used to fulfill the purpose of the funding — to elevate damaged homes.  According to the report, dated March 29, a total of 24,042 Louisiana homeowners who received up to $30,000 each were "noncompliant, including those that had not elevated their homes; were nonresponsive; or did not provide sufficient supporting documentation" to show that they had used the taxpayer funding to reconstruct their homes as of Aug. 31, 2012.

$700 Mil in Hurricane Recovery Funds Gone With the Wind.  In yet another example of how the Obama administration blows the nation's tax dollars, hundreds of millions earmarked for a failed housing program have vanished and the feds aren't terribly worried about recovering the lost cash.  The missing loot is part of a highly questionable Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program that liberally doled out cash to Louisiana homeowners so they could elevate and protect their houses from storms.  The feds came up with this brilliant idea after Hurricane Katrina slammed the region in 2005 because the area, especially New Orleans, got flooded.

Obama's great high-speed train robbery.  The state of California, already $28 billion in debt, is supposed to begin construction of a $68 billion high-speed rail project in July.  The state's High-Speed Rail Authority voted last week to issue $8.6 billion in taxpayer-approved bonds to build the first 130 miles of track between Fresno and Bakersfield.  But a slew of lawsuits threatens to delay the project, and state authorities still have not purchased a single acre of land on which to build the rail line.

More information (none of it favorable) about high speed rail projects.

Obama to announce $100 million for brain research.  President Barack Obama on Tuesday [4/2/2013] unveiled a $100 million initiative to unlock the "enormous mystery" of the human brain in hopes of boosting the understanding and treatment of brain disorders.

The Editor says...
Scientists are already studying the human brain, and have been for at least a century.  Basic scientific research is not the proper role of government.  Spending $100 million on such a thing, at a time when the national debt is already increasing rapidly, is irresponsible.  President Obama is spending money on problems nobody has asked him to address, simply because spending other people's money is the only thing he knows how to do.

Bread and Circuses: The Last Days of the American Empire.  The 2012 Census report of Foreign Economic and Military Aid totaled some $45 B, handed to 70 such major (and numerous minor) recipients as Pakistan, Egypt, Russia, (Russia?) Zimbabwe and the Gaza Strip.  If the U.S. is not an empire, it certainly seems to act like one.  And as Rome's empire finally exceeded its finances, so now with America.  One cannot finance an empire with deficits.

Feds Spending $880,000 to Study Benefits of Snail Sex.  The National Science Foundation awarded a grant for $876,752 to the University of Iowa to study whether there is any benefit to sex among New Zealand mud snails and whether that explains why any organism has sex.  The study, first funded in 2011 and continuing until 2015, will study the New Zealand snails to see if it is better that they reproduce sexually or asexually — the snail can do both — hoping to gain insight on why so many organisms practice sexual reproduction.

HHS Gives Planned Parenthood Orlando $2.4 Million to Fund Sex Ed for Teens.  Health and Human Services' Office of Adolescence Health is giving Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando $2,388,950 in grant funding for its "Teens Rise!" project.

Insane Government Waste and Use of Taxpayer Money:
  •   $1.5 million on designing a video game controller
  •   $100,000 on taxpayer funded comedy group tour in India
  •   $547,430 on a dancing robot that connects to an iPhone
  •   $25,000 funding a course about "How to be happy"
  •   $145,000 on a sculpture garden
  •   $25,000 on an Alabama Watermelon Queen tour
  •   $697,177 on a climate change musical

IRS knowingly sends Billions in Fraudulent Refunds to Illegal Immigrants.  A WTHR-TV Indianapolis investigative report exposes a fraudulent scheme wherein the IRS is sending $4.2 billion per year to illegal immigrants as an "additional child tax credit" for children who don't even live in the U.S.  Further, the IRS and Congress have been ignoring the scheme for years.

Pentagon handed out $419 million in improper travel reimbursements last year.  While making improvements in some spending areas, the Defense Department was singled out this week for failing to trim unnecessary travel reimbursements.  In fact, the Pentagon's internal watchdog concluded that wasteful travel spending actually grew last year to a total of $419.3 million, accounting for roughly five percent of the Pentagon's mammoth $8.4 billion travel budget.

The Economic Truth About Lying.  The U.S. Attorney in Manhattan revealed in October 2011 an investigation into Long Island Railroad workers' fraudulent disability claims adding up to millions of dollars.  As of January, 32 people had been indicted, with 16 guilty pleas involving perjury, health-care fraud and obstruction of justice.  An FBI report on financial crimes for the 2010-11 fiscal year calculated that fraudulent billing to health-care payers, Medicare, Medicaid and private health insurers is between 2% and 10% of total health-care expenditures.

No Money for Air Traffic Control, But $500 million for Hamas.  Dear Leader says there's no money for airport control towers.  But that didn't stop him from writing a $500 million dollar check to the terrorists of Hamas.

Joe Biden runs up bill of $585,000 for just one night in five-star Paris hotel.  Paris may be known as the City of Light, but that title certainly doesn't mean that visitors are light on spending as Vice President Joe Biden's one day trip cost taxpayers more than half a million dollars.  When Mr Biden and his hefty entourage stayed in Paris for an evening in early February and it cost $585,000.50 for that single night.

Biden's $459,388.65 Hotel Bill.  Vice President Biden and his entourage spent a little time in London in early February during his first foreign trip of the second term of the Obama administration.  A document released today [3/22/2013] revealed that the cost of lodging in London alone was close to half a million dollars.

Sequester Joe Biden.  Vice President Biden's hotel bill in Paris — the Drudge Report headlines it at $585,000.50 for a night at the Intercontinental, not including the ride in from the airport — is prompting the futureofcapitalism.com to wonder why Amtrak's most famous passenger failed to stay at the sprawling palace that serves as the residence of the American ambassador in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.  A good question, to which we'd add our own:  What was Mr. Biden, whose only constitutional duty is to serve in the Senate as its president, doing in Paris in the first place?

Amtrak isn't good enough for him.
As VP, Biden Has Been Flying To Delaware on the Weekends.  Vice President Biden has been flying home to Wilmington, Delaware most weekends at enormous expense to taxpayers, even though he has an exclusive government-provided residence in Washington. [...] The cost of flying Air Force Two, a military version of the Boeing 757-200, amounts to about $8,800 per hour, according to the most recent federal data.  The distance between Washington and Wilmington is only about a hundred miles [...]

Unplug the electric subsidies.  Taxpayers already offset $7,500 of the cost of every hybrid through a federal tax credit at a total cost of $2 billion.  In addition, many states offer similar incentives of their own.  The 2009 stimulus bill poured $2 billion into the development and manufacture of electric-car batteries and other components, and the Energy Department's "advanced-technology vehicle manufacturing program" offers up to $25 billion in direct federal loans to electric car makers.  Moreover, $400,000 has been wasted on "education projects" to promote electric cars.

$2.7M Federal Study: Why Do Lesbians Have Higher 'Risk for Hazardous Drinking'?  The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $2.7 million to study why lesbians are at a higher "risk for hazardous drinking."  The University of Illinois has received grants since 2009 for its project, "Cumulative Stress and Hazardous Drinking in a Community of Adult Lesbians," which aims to develop "culturally sensitive" strategies to prevent lesbians from being drunks.

Obama keeps rolling the dice on green energy.  Like a desperate gambler who doubles down on a losing bet, President Obama is calling for spending $2 billion more on green energy projects.  Apparently these billions will succeed where previous billions have failed.

U.S. Spending $227,437 to Study How National Geographic Depicted Animals.  The federal government is spending $227,437 to investigate how animals have been depicted in National Geographic magazine over a span of 120 years, which federal officials say is an "innovative study" that will examine "images of animals to see how people have changed their view of the natural world."  The grant was issued March 4 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to Michigan State University to look at how animals were depicted in the science magazine from 1888 to 2008.

Obama seeks $2 billion in research on cleaner vehicles, fuels.  President Barack Obama tried to turn the page on bitterly partisan fights over energy policy on Friday [3/15/2013], focusing the first energy speech of his second term on a modest proposal to fund research into cars that run on anything but gasoline.

This is what's known as a slush fund.
Obama to call for $2 billion green energy fund.  President Obama in Illinois Friday will call for the creation of a $2 billion Energy Security Trust, which would take government royalties from offshore oil and gas leasing and use the money for research in green-energy technologies. [...] The initiative comes as Republicans pressure Obama to approve construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, a project that would carry oil from Canada to refineries in Texas.  The president has delayed construction of the pipeline because of environmental concerns.

Obama doubles down on alternative energy.  President Barack Obama is doubling down on the administration's plan to reinvest federal oil-and-gas drilling revenues into next-generation alternative energy technology, unveiled during his State of the Union address last February.

$1.8M Federal Grant Helped D.C. Make Fruits and Vegetables Available at Work.  The municipal government of Washington, D.C. received a $1.8 million federal Community Transformation Grant in 2012 to promote healthy lifestyles in the city.  Among the things the city would do with the money, as listed on its application, was increasing the "availability of fruit and vegetables to employees in their workplaces."

Government Waste Hits You Right in the Pocketbook.  Federal watchdogs have ideas for saving $67 billion a year, according to a report by a House committee.  That's without counting the sequester.  So who are these "watchdogs"?  They are the government's Inspectors General who police the departments of the government for waste, fraud and abuse.  They are the government's auditors.  They suggest ways to make government operation more efficient and to plug money leaks.

Patriots Must Be Prepared to Answer Obama's Lies and Deceptions.  Obama stubbornly refused to cut Washington spending $2.6 million training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job.  The Government Accountability Office revealed that more than half of federal employee upgrades to business-class flights are not properly authorized, costing taxpayers $146 million a year.  In 2008 and 2009 alone, Obama's Department of Justice spent $121 million on conferences for government employees.  A Senate audit exposed $18 billion in egregious government spending.

Feds let Medicare provider give away $20 grocery cards to lure patients.  The Department of Health and Human Services has given qualified approval for a Medicare provider to give away $20 grocery gift cards to induce seniors to get more taxpayer-funded health screenings, despite concerns the promotion could run afoul of federal anti-kickback laws.

Feds Spend $1.5 Million to Study Why Lesbians Are Fat.  The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $1.5 million to study biological and social factors for why "three-quarters" of lesbians are obese and why gay males are not, calling it an issue of "high public-health significance."  Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Mass., has received two grants administered by NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to study the relationship between sexual orientation and obesity.

Not so fast, Mr. President.  Since President Obama took office in 2009, money-saving ideas have continued to sit on a shelf, collecting dust.  Four years ago, there were 10,894 recommended reductions, compared with 16,900 reductions, worth an additional $30 billion, awaiting action today.  Since those "figures reflect the most conservative possible accounting" of the number of recommendations, their value is likely to be "significantly higher," the committee explains.  That's quite a contrast to the endless parade of sky-is-falling scenarios broadcast by the Cabinet during the sequestration fight over a mere $85 billion reduction in the rate of spending growth.

HHS Awards $6 Million Contract for Parking Spaces.  The contract was awarded on February 19th before the sequester took effect, but the timing could still prove embarrassing for the Obama administration.  The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the five-year lease for 1,076 parking spaces in Bethesda, Maryland, for National Institutes of Health (NIH) employees at a cost of almost $6 million.  This breaks down to $1,115 per space per year.

NSF Under the Microscope.  The report identifies more than $1.2 billion the National Science Foundation (NSF) has lost due to waste, fraud, duplication and mismanagement and an additional $1.7 billion in unspent funds. [...] Examples of the more than $3 billion in waste and duplication outlined in the report include:
  •   $80,000 study on why the same teams always dominate March Madness;
  •   $315,000 study suggesting playing FarmVille on Facebook helps adults develop and maintain relationships;
  •   $1 million for an analysis of how quickly parents respond to trendy baby names;
  •   $2 million to figure out that people who often post pictures on the internet from the same location at the same time are usually friends; and
  •   $581,000 on whether online dating site users are racist.

Investing in Bad Science.  [Scroll down]  The master of waste, fraud, and abuse among the research-funding agencies, though, is the Environmental Protection Agency, the logo of which should be a Golden Fleece flanked by dollar signs.  EPA, with a research budget in excess of $800 million, has long been more concerned with public relations than public health.  A scheme was exposed several years that would have diverted EPA "research" funds to pay outside public relations consultants up to $5 million over five years to improve the website of the Office of Research and Development, conduct focus groups on how to polish the office's image, and produce ghostwritten articles praising the agency "for publication in scholarly journals and magazines."

Sen. Coburn targets Defense Department waste.  Senator Tom Coburn [is] blasting the Defense Department over wasteful spending.  He insists there are plenty of expenses to cut from the defense budget without hurting the military.  For instance, $1 million to send a spaceship to another galaxy, $1.5 million to cook up a new type of beef jerky, and why spend any amount of money on a 46-minute video production called "Grill It Safe" featuring grill sergeants showing off their own recipes.

Obscene Government Waste.  The government spends $1.7 billion for maintenance on empty buildings it owns, although some sources put the figure at closer to $25 billion.  The Office of Management and Budget estimates that 55,000 properties are underutilized or entirely vacant.  The federal government owns approximately one-third of all U.S. land.  It does not need more land and it could be argued that it should not own 80% of Nevada and Alaska, and more than half of Idaho.

How more than $8 billion in US taxpayers' money went to waste in Iraq.  During the course of the nine-year US presence in Iraq, at least $8 billion — or 13.3 percent of US reconstruction spending — was wasted, according to the final report released today by the Special Investigator General for Iraq Reconstruction.

Paper Which Just Laid Off A Bunch Of Employees Hysterical Over "Austerity".  First of all, if the people who run the federal agencies cannot deal with tiny reductions in future increases of budget allocation and maximize the money they have, perhaps they should be replaced with people who understand How To Make A Budget.  Start with refusing to pay for cost overruns (this could save hundreds of billions each year).  Stop funding masters degrees for people in Indonesia (16-20 million).  $500 million on a study to get 5 year olds to sit still.  Reduce overlapping programs.  Oh, and here's $25 billion a year to maintain unused federal buildings.

White House Visitors Office director received $30,000 raise in 4 years.  The annual salary for the director of the White House Visitors Office, Ellie S. Schafer, went from $70,000 in 2009 to $100,000 in 2012.  According to annual reports to Congress on White House staff salaries, Schafer was paid $70,000 in 2009, $71,400 in 2010, $80,000 in 2011 and $100,000 in 2012.  Schafer is listed by the White House on each report as the director of the Visitors Office for each year, but was also named a special assistant to the president in 2012.

Chief White House calligrapher gets paid $96,725 a year.  In all, the White House appears to employ three calligraphers for a yearly total of $277,050.

U.S. Pays $1.5 Mil to Preserve Politically Correct Graffiti.  Because it's considered defacement and vandalism, graffiti is a crime yet the U.S. government has spent $1.5 million to actually preserve some left during the hostile Indian occupation of California's Alcatraz Island more than four decades go.  Why is Indian graffiti worth preserving when local governments across the nation spend tens of millions of dollars to remove it annually?  Because, evidently, this is politically correct graffiti that has a "social significance," according to a National Park Service official quoted in a San Francisco newspaper.

Senate Audit Exposes $18 Billion in Egregious Govt. Spending.  As the nation suffers through a mind-boggling $16 trillion (and growing) debt crisis, a federal audit exposes some of the egregious ways the U.S. government has blown your tax dollars, including millions on Moroccan pottery classes and hundreds of thousands on a musical about climate change.  It would almost be unbelievable if it weren't documented in a lengthy report (appropriately titled "Waste Book 2012") released this week by a U.S. Senator who sits on the Finance, Judiciary and Homeland Security committees.  While the Obama Administration racks up record debt, many government agencies have embarked on wild spending sprees as Congress sits idly by.

High-flying Holder: Report shows AG, FBI director used luxury jets for personal travel.  Two high-tech luxury jets that the FBI convinced Congress were needed for the fight against global terrorism have instead been used to ferry around Attorney General Eric Holder and his predecessors, as well as FBI Director Robert Mueller, according to a government report released Thursday [2/28/2013].  Those officials — which included Holder and Mueller, as well as former Attorneys General Michael Mukasey and Alberto Gonzales — racked up nearly 700 "nonmission" trips between 2007 and 2011, at a cost of $11.4 million, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Sequestration doesn't cut nearly enough.  A study to learn whether or not a fish called the golden shiner can teach us about "collective action":  $5 million.  A project to design beef jerky that rolls up:  $1.5 million.  A seminar in which a topic was, "Did Jesus die for Klingons, too?" (This is a question, I can assure you, that will not be answered by any sane person):  $100,000.  These examples of absurd government spending become even more absurd when you realize these items were all part of the budget for the Department of Defense.

The FAA's unfriendly skies.  [I]n the last seven years the FAA has sent more than 18,000 of its employees to conferences across the country, including destinations such as Las Vegas.  In fiscal 2010 alone, the agency spent more than $8 million on conferences for its employees.  Three of those conferences, all held in the same city during the same three-week span, cost more than $4.5 million.

The Logic of Liberalism.  Green energy solutions have become a centerpiece of the current administration.  Hundreds of millions have been poured into green energy programs, many without a single measurable result.  Yet, the administration is convinced of the importance of green energy and is committed to further investment in this venue.

'Tens of Billions of Dollars' Wasted on Duplicate Federal Programs: Report.  A federal government watchdog said Tuesday tens of billions of dollars are being wasted because of duplicate programs run by several agencies, and more effort is needed to address a problem first identified last year.  A report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan agency, said there are 51 areas where programs can be streamlined and made more efficient.  The GAO's 428-page report identifies programs that share goals and services, and that are spread across multiple agencies.

$50,000 for Michelle's Let's Move! trip .  First lady Michelle Obama's three-day, four-city hop scotch to promote the third anniversary of her "Let's Move!" initiative that cheers healthy eating and exercise will likely cost an estimated $50,000 or more, enough to fund a few programs for kids that the White House fears the sequester will kill.

Pulling the plug on federal agencies' TVs.  I realize that each federal agency needs some cable televisions — for the agency head, the congressional affairs office, the press office and the top-tier staff (e.g., chief agency attorney), to monitor congressional hearings, etc.  But the parking lot clerk?  No way!  Ditto for front-office clerical staff.  I think they will be much more productive when there's no television blaring away in the reception area.

The Diversity Racket.  Millions of dollars in federal and local taxpayer money have been spent on a controversial "diversity" speaker who has made government workers say the "pilgrims were illegal aliens" and excused illegal immigration because the U.S. "took over what used to be Mexico."  Judicial Watch recently revealed that two federal government agencies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Defense, had hired Dr. Samuel Betances.  Both agencies spent more than $3 million on Betances' training program.  Judicial Watch obtained a videotape of Betances' speech to USDA employees through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Samuel Betances: Race Hustler on the Dole.  The Obama administration would have you believe trimming federal fat will cause a calamity.  Here's a suggestion — stop giving federal money to Samuel Betances.  Betances is the top-shelf race hustler who receives your hard-earned tax dollars to go inside federal agencies in Washington, D.C., and teach government workers that America is a racist country.  Judicial Watch obtained records of one of his looney talks at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  It contained a creepy call and response that would have made the Symbionese Liberation Army proud.

Health Dept.: Homeless Can't Eat Deer Meat.  Hunters across Louisiana are outraged after state health officials ordered a rescue mission to destroy $8,000 worth of deer meat because venison is not allowed to be served in homeless shelters.  The Dept. of Health and Hospitals ordered the staff at the Shreveport-Bossier Rescue Mission to throw 1,600 pounds of donated venison in garbage bins — and then ordered then to douse the meat with Clorox — so other animals would not eat the meat.  "Deer meat is not permitted to be served in a shelter, restaurant or any other public eating establishment in Louisiana," said a Health Dept. official in an email to Fox News.

The Editor says...
Beggars can't be choosers.  Let them eat venison, or horse meat, or road kill.  The homeless shelter is not a hotel.  We do not owe vagrants a balanced and nutritious diet.

DoD Spends $5.2 Million on "Goldfish Studies".  In an era of trillion dollar-plus annual deficits, $5 million might not seem like a lot of money.  But it's a start.  And because [Kentucky Senator Rand] Paul recognizes that there are so many other government programs that are wasteful and serve no meaningful purpose, he wants to give the president more leeway to cut them.

Insurer with NY's 'worst' record of complaints gets $340M Obamacare loan.  The New York-based Freelancers Insurance Company has been rated the "worst" insurer for two straight years by state regulators, and data compiled by a national insurance association show an extremely high rate of consumer complaints.  The firm was founded in 2008 by Sara Horowitz, who worked with Obama while he was in the Illinois state senate to launch Demos, a left-wing, New York think tank funded in part by George Soros.

DOE confirms LG Chem battery plant workers were paid not to make Chevy Volt batteries.  After a big announcement in 2010 that the plant would open and hire over 400 people, the first batteries were supposed to start being made in 2012.  Unfortunately, the plant has been sitting idle even though the company received $142 million in federal funds and was granted $175 million in tax breaks.  Only half of the 400 job have been filled, and those workers were paid about $842,000 to do other things in late 2012, including watching movies and playing board, card and video games.

FBI raids headquarters of The Scooter Store as part of $100 million Medicare fraud investigation.  More than 150 FBI agents and local cops have raided the Texas headquarters of The Scooter Store, the nation's largest supplier of mobility vehicles, after the company allegedly defrauded Medicare by $100 million.  The company is accused of harassing doctors with constant phone calls and surgery visits in order to wear them down to prescribe their vehicles to patients who do not need them.

USDA staff taught that the pilgrims were 'illegal aliens' in compulsory 'Cultural Sensitivity Training' video.  The USDA is under fire for spending $200,000 of taxpayers money on a mandatory 'Cultural Sensitivity Training' program in which employees were told to refer to the Pilgrims as 'illegal aliens' and minorities as 'emerging majorities'.

Senators raise alarm over another possible sale of taxpayer-backed firm to Chinese.  Republican senators complained Wednesday that U.S. taxpayer dollars could end up boosting the Chinese economy, following reports that a Chinese firm is leading the pack of companies bidding for a majority stake in government-backed Fisker Automotive.  The troubled California-based electric car maker, which was backed by U.S. taxpayers to the tune of nearly $530 million, for months has been looking for a financial partner.

Taxpayer dollars used to fund study tying Tea Party to tobacco lobby.  Taxpayer dollars were used to fund a study that painted the Tea Party movement as the spawn of the tobacco lobby — a premise that Tea Party leaders say is absurd.

NJ Transit workers take trip to Super Bowl on taxpayers' dime.  NJ Transit sent four employees to the Super Bowl in New Orleans — including a key rail official who was in charge of the Hoboken terminal when dozens of rail cars and locomotives, left to sit in low-lying yards, were damaged during superstorm Sandy — at a taxpayer cost of $14,505, expense reports show.

Federally Funded Chevy Volt Battery Plant Paid Workers to Play, Not Make Batteries.  It was supposed to be the center of a resurgent domestic lithium ion battery industry.  A shiny new factory in Holland, Michigan, that by the end of 2013 would produce enough energy cells to power 60,000 electric or hybrid electric cars — and the Chevy Volt would be its highest-profile customer.  Instead, after spending $142 million of a $151 million federal Recovery Act grant to set up the factory, LG Chem Michigan has yet to produce a single battery cell that can be used in an electric car sold to the public.  It gets worse.  Two of five planned production lines remain unfinished.  And rather than the 440 jobs the plant was supposed to create, less than half exist today.

Retiring Parsippany police chief to get $132K a year, state says.  The township police chief will soon retire with an annual benefit of $131,951.76, according to state Department of Treasury spokesman William Quinn.  Anthony DeZenzo filed a retirement application with the New Jersey Police and Firemen's Retirement System on Feb. 8, according to Quinn.

Report: $2 billion spent annually for Medicaid emergencies, largely for illegal immigrant baby deliveries.  Even though federal law largely bars illegal immigrants from obtaining Medicaid coverage, the program annually pays out more than $2 billion in free emergency coverage that mostly goes to illegal immigrants, according to Kaiser Health News.  The vast majority of the total emergency care reimbursements cover delivering babies, Kaiser reports.

Obama Commits Assault With Battery.  The problem here is so obvious that it shouldn't be necessary to say it:  If projects such as this made any economic sense at all, banks would be financing them.  But these schemes are far too irrational for even the most profligate of banks or the junk bonds or any other legitimate means of finance.  So the politicians rush in, falling over each other to squander the nation's diminishing treasure on yet another billion-dollar photo op.

Confidential, expensive USDA sensitivity training: 'The Pilgrims were illegal aliens'.  Footage of the United States Department of Agriculture's compulsory "Cultural Sensitivity Training" program reveals USDA employees being instructed to refer to the Pilgrims as "illegal aliens" and minorities as "emerging majorities" — at "a huge expense" to taxpayers.  The video clips were made public Thursday evening by the conservative government accountability group Judicial Watch, which obtained them through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made on May 18, 2012.

No Batteries, Just Playtime: Another $150M Strike for Green-Tech Stimulus.  In February 2010, LG Chem Michigan Inc., a subsidiary of the Korean corporation, was awarded more than $150 million in Recovery Act funding to help construct a $304 million manufacturing plant in Holland, Mich., for lithium-ion polymer batteries to be used in electric cars.  The goal was to manufacture enough electric-car batteries to equip 60,000 vehicles annually by the end of this year. [...] While employees were goofing off, the plant hadn't even reached the capability to manufacture batteries beyond test cells that couldn't be sold to the public. [...] Additionally, a project that was supposed to create more than 440 jobs didn't even reach half that goal.

Report: Michigan battery firm misused $150M U.S. grant.  A Michigan-based company slated to produce lithium-ion polymer batteries for electric vehicles has instead kept production overseas, has failed to meet job targets outlined in a $150 million grant from the federal government, and has been reimbursed by the government for $842,000 in wasted work time, according to a U.S. Department of Energy Special Report released Wednesday [2/13/2013]. [...] The agency said employees "spent time volunteering at local non-profit organizations, playing games and watching movies during regular working hours."

Jet-setting Panetta most expensive defense secretary, with $32,000 tab per weekend trip.  As Leon E. Panetta ends a decades-long Washington career capped by his service as defense secretary, he has said repeatedly he is ready to get back to his family's bucolic walnut ranch off the central coast of California.  But over the last four years, while serving a CIA director and defense secretary, he already has been spending a lot of time there, continuing a cross-country commute back to Monterey, Calif. nearly every weekend on the taxpayer's dime.

Colorado Energy Office Misspends Millions in Stimulus Funds.  The Colorado Energy Office (CEO) misspent millions in stimulus funds and could not account for a variety of other financial statements, according to a new audit from the Colorado state auditor.  The CEO, charged with administering energy funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and a host of other energy initiatives, "was unable to demonstrate that $252 million spent over the past six years was spent cost-effectively," the report concluded.  More than half of that amount, roughly $144 million, came from Recovery stimulus monies distributed between the 2009-2012 fiscal years.

Government spends millions on resort for retired research chimps.  The National Institutes of Health, the government's medical research arm, is spending about $12 million annually to care for the chimps currently and formerly used for research, some of it for a retirement sanctuary in Louisiana where the animals are housed.  And the agency is soon in danger of reaching a $30 million cumulative spending cap that Congress set for the retirement home, dubbed Chimp Haven.

Swept Away.  A United States minesweeper ship that crashed into a coral reef due to inaccurate Navy maps will have to be cut into small pieces and removed in order to prevent harming the ocean's ecosystem, according to the Navy and other reports.  The $277 million USS Guardian, a Naval warship that clears waterways of mines, crashed into a coral reef near the Philippines earlier this month.

Car buyers reject electric cars, but Obama won't quit spending on them.  The market has spoken.  People don't want unreliable short range transportation.  Electric cars are a fine place to cut the budget.

Medicare improperly paid $120M to ineligibles.  Illegal immigrants and prison inmates received more than $120 million in Medicare services from 2009-2011 despite federal law that makes them ineligible for the program, according to two new reports from the HHS inspector general.  The issue, according to the reports, is timing.  When Medicare is alerted that someone is incarcerated or undocumented, its contractors help prevent payments from going out the door.  But often, Medicare's databases aren't up to date, and improper payments go out.

Auditors: $230 million in Labor Dept. grants had no criteria for success.  You'd expect a program to help train workers in new skills would have grades to measure how well the students learned.  And you'd expect the program itself to be graded on whether it actually helped those students find employment after they graduated.  But that's precisely what a Labor Department jobs program failed to measure for grants it made in 2010 and 2011, auditors say.

Benghazi/Fast and Furious: The Real Scandals Underlying Both.  Though conservatives are often loath to admit it, small and limited government is not remotely consistent with U.S. troops stationed around the world.  Taking nothing away from the correct belief in peace through strength, it would be nice to hear a defender of the military status quo explain how we're made safer through our implicit defense of some of the richest nations on earth.  After that, if a strong economy is necessary for maintaining peace through strength, how is our economy strengthened by all the money spent, not to mention human capital expended, on protecting South Korea and Japan?

Audit: Taxpayer money used to pay for $222K renovation to official's bathroom.  [WSB-TV] has obtained photos of a costly renovation of a government official's bathroom.  Channel 2's Scott MacFarlane secured images inside the office at the Washington headquarters of the U.S. Interior Department.  The renovation was done on the interior secretary's private office bathroom.  The bathroom is approximately 100 square feet and cost about $222,000 to renovate, making it more expensive that [sic] many homes.  MacFarlane obtained photos of the renovated bathroom through the Freedom of Information Act.

Investing in Foreign Countries.  The House Energy and Commerce Committee released a report Thursday [1/17/2013] that shows much of the money in a Department of Energy renewable-energy grant program has gone to foreign companies and has failed to produce many jobs.  "American Taxpayer Investment, Foreign Corporation Benefit" examined the grants the Department of Energy has awarded through its "Section 1603" green-energy grant program.  "Nearly one-quarter of this federal grant funding went to the U.S. operations of a handful of large European and Asian renewable energy corporations," the report said.

Terror haven Somalia likely to get taxpayer cash.  It was only two years ago that then-CIA Director David Petraeus testified before Congress on the dangers posed by Somali terrorists [...] Today the U.S. is preparing to formally recognize the Somali government, paving the way to send taxpayer dollars to the place that will forever be associated with "Black Hawk Down," where a U.S. Army Ranger was dragged through the streets in 1993.

The 'Sandy Relief' Bill Passes.  It's a $50.7 billion bill with $17 billion in actual Sandy relief.  Two thirds of the money in that bill has [nothing] to do with Hurricane Sandy.

New York Fires Auditor Who Found Abuse of Federal Hurricane Sandy Funds.  No good deed goes unpunished in New York as the state has abruptly cut off a contract with the independent auditor who found that the city and state had been wasting federal money meant to be spent on Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts.  Thomas Sadowski, the fired consultant, told the Times Union that he was escorted out of the building when he visited the New York Office of Emergency Management shortly after he filed his report on November 17.

Taxpayers Unwittingly Hand Over $137 Million to Unions.  U.S. taxpayers are footing the $137 million bill for federal employees to perform union work while on the clock at their government jobs, according to Professor Mallory Factor in the Wall Street Journal.  The practice, known as "official time" is enshrined in the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA), according to the Workforce Freedom Initiative (WFI), and lets government officials do work for unions while being paid by the taxpayer.

Taxpayers pay for Bill Clinton's Cinemax, Jimmy Carter's Dish Network.  Bill Clinton is a multimillionaire, but you're paying for the Cinemax in his office.  That's just one eyebrow-raising expense a former occupant of the White House has been allowed to put on the taxpayer tab every year, even though every living ex-president is quite wealthy.

Feds fund $100,000 video game featuring female climate change 'superhero'.  A new video game featuring a black alien female superhero delivered to Earth to fight global warming is about to hit the market thanks to a $100,000 grant from the Obama administration.

Ex-Im Bank Funds Green Jobs Overseas.  The U.S. Export-Import Bank recently steered hundreds of millions of dollars in federal loans to Spanish green energy conglomerate Abengoa, which happens to share an advisory board member with the bank.  The Ex-Im Bank approved a $78.6 million direct loan to Spain-based Abengoa in December.  It also approved a $73.6 million direct loan to a wind farm in Uruguay, which is owned by Abengoa.

2012: The Year of Taxpayer 'Green' Waste.  The past year was a dismal one for the passé idea that government would use taxpayer dollars responsibly, and that was nowhere more evident than with President Obama's initiatives to promote "clean" energy technology companies and projects with so-called "stimulus" funds and other public money.

Obscure federal office doles out millions to trade groups like Christmas tree growers.  The Prune Bargaining Association scored $99,429 this year to "provide crop insurance education and to educate specialty crop producers on effectively negotiating marketing contracts" and "managing market risk."  [And] The San Joaquin Valley Winegrowers Association won $36,000 to help grape growers for California's wine industry learn how to apply for federal crop insurance and deal with "production management, crop marketing and financial risk."

Billion-Dollar Flop: Air Force Stumbles on Software Plan.  For the United States Air Force, installing a new software system has certainly proved to be a wicked problem.  Last month, it canceled a six-year-old modernization effort that had eaten up more than $1 billion.  When the Air Force realized that it would cost another $1 billion just to achieve one-quarter of the capabilities originally planned — and that even then the system would not be fully ready before 2020 — it decided to decamp.

The Next Taxpayer Bailout: The Federal Housing Administration.  The Federal Housing Administration (FHA), hit hard by the collapse of the housing bubble, is still making risky loans on the taxpayers' dime, and may need a bailout in 2013.

Obama Claus Gives You 90 More Days To Collect Your $50,000 Reparations Check.  No, you don't need a potted plant and you don't even to be black or even Hispanic; as long as you are a woman (or related to one) and you fill out the forms correctly, you can collect the money because nobody will verify your information. [...] Legally, nobody CAN verify any information; the law was written to make it impossible for the people looking at the claim forms to verify that their information is correct.

Why Are Taxpayers Paying Union Officials' So Much?  Taxpayers are forking out $4.8 million for 35 union officials at the Department of Transportation.  But the beneficiary here isn't the taxpayer, it's President Obama, who is raking campaign cash from these unions. [...] That means taxpayers are actually paying for union efforts to shake down taxpayers for ever higher salaries and benefits for government workers.

Five-Point Action Plan for President Obama to Reduce Violence by the Mentally Ill.  [Point #5]  Eliminate the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency (SAMHSA).  SAMHSA is the epicenter of what is wrong with the American mental-health system.  SAMHSA actively encourages states to engage in mission creep and send the most seriously ill to the end of the line.  They provide massive funding to organizations that want to prevent mentally ill individuals from receiving treatment.  They have nothing positive to show for their efforts in spite of a massive bureaucracy that meets and meets and meets and never accomplishes anything.

Green Graveyard: 19 Taxpayer-Funded Failures.  While there's speculation over which federally supported green energy company may be the next to declare bankruptcy, plenty have already gone belly up.  In one of the most extensive compilations to date, Heritage has identified 19 bankrupt green energy companies — unable to make it even with the $2.6 billion in financial assistance and incentives the government promised.

Solar firms probed for possible 'misrepresentations' in getting public money.  Three of the country's most prolific installers of residential solar panels are under federal investigation to determine if they inflated the cost of their work to increase the payments they would receive from the government, according to government and industry officials familiar with the probe.  SolarCity, SunRun and Sungevity have received subpoenas from the Treasury Department's office of inspector general for financial records to justify more than $500 million in federal grants and tax credits the firms tapped for performing work.

Ramping Up Government Control of the Energy Sector.  If insanity consists of "doing the same thing over and over and expecting it to come out different," President Obama is surely mad.  He has spent four years funding green energy start-ups that have failed, one after another.  Now he wants to spend the next four years funding green energy firms that are again likely to fail.

New documents reveal lavish spending at government-subsidized travel-promotion agency.  Promoting travel to America can be expensive — especially if Uncle Sam is footing most of the bill.  Documents exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller show extensive waste and mismanagement at the public-private partnership Brand USA, a government-backed travel-promotion agency established in May 2011 under Travel Promotion Act of 2009 to encourage foreign travelers to visit the United States.

Brand USA Scandal Deepens.  KTS Business Consulting's recent audit of Brand USA — the government-subsidized corporation created by Congress to promote United States tourism that has been dogged by allegations of cronyism and waste — obtained by the Free Beacon shows a company without vision, motivation, or oversight.  The audit found "a majority of the staff did not have any idea what the mission" of Brand USA was and that "all staff was in limbo as to what type of organization the Brand USA is."

Barack H. Obama is giving away F-16 jets to a middle east dictator.
Lawmakers question gift of 20 F-16s to Morsi's Egypt.  Key lawmakers expressing concerns about the Obama administration's plan to send 20 F-16 fighter jets to Egypt, where new President Mohamed Morsi's allegiances are as uncertain as his grip on power.  Under a foreign aid deal signed in 2010, when Morsi's U.S.-friendly predecessor Hosni Mubarak was in charge, the U.S. is giving the planes to Egypt's air force, which already has more than 200 of the aircraft.

Does Egypt Need Advance Aircraft?  The announcement that 20 F-16s are being given to Egypt, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer, should be of interest to senators already uneasy about the president's widely reported choice of Susan Rice for Secretary of State, replacing the retiring Mrs. Hillary Clinton.

DOD Green Energy Project to Pay Off in 447 Years.  In a mind-boggling example of government waste, it will take the U.S. Navy an astounding 447 years to benefit from a costly green-energy project that's supposed to save money by lowering utility bills.  Like many other failed renewable energy experiments, the Navy project was funded with money from President Obama's $787 billion stimulus, the fraud-infested disaster that was supposed to jump start the economy and put Americans back to work.  Instead, big chunks of money have gone to wasteful projects [...]

Department of Everything.  The threat of our national debt can be defeated by reviewing every department, every program, and expenditure within the federal budget, including at the Department of Defense (DOD). [...] This report examines five areas of the Pentagon budget that have little to do with national security where taxpayer dollars could be saved and deficits reduced without impacting our national security.

Wind Turbine Projects at Long-Range Radar Sites in Alaska Were Not Adequately Planned.  Completing a wind study would have provided 611th CES personnel the information necessary to determine the most advantageous location at which to build the turbine.  Because 611th CES personnel did not complete a wind study at Tin City before construction, the turbine is located in an area with turbulent winds, and therefore, according to 611th CES personnel, produces sporadic, unusable power.

Bankrupt Obama-stimulus recipient goes to the highest bidder, the highest bidder being China.  The problem here is that in the case of A123 Systems, a manufacturer of lithium-ion batteries for electric cards, the Obama administration spoon-fed hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money into what they assured us was a guaranteed-successful endeavor at ushering in the glorious green-energy revolution and leading us down the path of ostensibly necessary energy independence.

Feds spend half billion dollars designing facility they haven't built yet.  Imagine spending your life savings to design your dream home, only to discover your blueprint was too small to fit all your furniture and family.  That's essentially what the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration did, leaving taxpayers with a jaw-dropping bill and nothing to show for it yet.

Feds handing NYC kids $30 million for free lunches as Sandy aid — whether they need it or not.  Whoever said there's no such thing as a free lunch has never dined with Uncle Sam.  Even as the nation teeters on the edge of the fiscal cliff, the feds have found $30 million in extra lunch money to shower on city schoolchildren in the name of hurricane relief.

U.S. Government Lends $105M to Brazil — to Build an Aquarium.  The U.S. Export-Import Bank, an agency of the federal government, is lending $105 million to the Brazilian state of Ceara to help build an aquarium in its capital city of Fortaleza.  "An anticipated tourist attraction, the aquarium will boast four floors housing 25 large tanks containing approximately 15 million liters of water and showcasing 500 marine species and 35,000 individual specimens," the Export-Import Bank said in a press release.

China bids today on yet another failed Obama energy loan recipient.  You won't hear much about it elsewhere today.  But from some downtown Chicago law offices will come the distinct sound of one more nail being driven into the coffin of Barack Obama's green energy giveaway loans.  A123 Systems will be auctioned off.  It's a Michigan lithium ion battery maker which declared bankruptcy back in October, the same day it cashed another $1 million check from the crack Obama investment team.

Battery maker that received stimulus money could be sold to Chinese company.  A bankrupt battery manufacturer that was a cornerstone of President Obama's effort to make the United States a global leader in clean-energy technology could end up in the hands of a Chinese company when it goes on the auction block Thursday [12/6/2012].

Electric Cars: The Environmentally Friendly Way of Losing Money Since 2009.  A Congressional Budget Office report released in the fall tells Obama what the rest of us have known for some time:  Your bet on electric cars wasn't an investment, but a gamble; a dumb gamble.  And now you've just come up snake eyes.

Questions surround $55 million program to cut violence in Chicago.  On a chilly afternoon this fall, teenagers across Chicago's South Side were busy at work, earning $8.75 an hour to hand out fliers with a message of non-violence.

State Department Spent 4.5 Million for Embassy Art, Had No Money for Benghazi Security.  Remember Benghazi only happened because the State Department had no money for security.  And the military had no money for planes. [...] Things that the State Department did have money for?  Mosque renovations, promoting environmental awareness in Baghdad, and 4.5 million for Art in Embassies.

Drone crashes mount at civilian airports.  The U.S. Air Force drone, on a classified spy mission over the Indian Ocean, was destined for disaster from the start.  An inexperienced military contractor in shorts and a T-shirt, flying by remote control from a trailer at Seychelles International Airport, committed blunder after blunder in six minutes on April 4. [...] The drone crashed at a civilian airport that serves a half-million passengers a year, most of them sun-seeking tourists.  No one was hurt, but it was the second Reaper accident in five months — under eerily similar circumstances.

Washington Proposes $1 Trillion Bailout for Delinquent Student Loans.  America's now-nationalized student loan industry just reached a value of $1 trillion, according to Citigroup, growing at a 20 percent-per-year pace.  Since President Obama nationalized the industry (a tacked-on provision of the Obamacare bill), tuition has gone up 25 percent and the three-year default rate is at a record 13.4 percent.

DHS Flushes Away Almost Half a Billion on Unused Radios.  In short, bureaucrats flushed another $430 million down the drain.  That's almost as much as the $535 million Obama stole from taxpayers to pay off his fundraisers at Solyndra.  Yet no one is screaming for the conspicuously incompetent Janet Napolitano to be fired; hardly anyone even seems to care.  The DHS, like most everything federal, is primarily a gigantic boondoggle, the purpose of which is to spread our money around [...]

The Debate About Tax Rates:  The federal government consumed less than four percent of GDP in 1930, 9.8 percent in 1940, and 16.2 percent in 1948.  By 1965, the number had climbed to 25 percent of GDP, and it hit 30 percent in 2000.

Pentagon spends $1.5 million to develop its own jerky.  The goal, officials say, was to make a beef jerky that was more like a Fruit Roll-Up — tastier and cheaper — than than the traditional grocery store fare.  The project, however, cost taxpayers $1.5 million and is unlikely to improve battlefield performance.

Obama spent $29M building port that can't be accessed because it was 'shovel ready'.  President Obama sought to fund "shovel ready" projects with the 2009 stimulus, so the federal government spent $29 million in taxpayer money to dig a port in Alaska that has no roads connecting it to other towns. [...] Construction of a road to connect the "port" to the nearest town two miles away won't begin for years, but the federal government is now committed either to losing the money spent already or having to lay out even more cash to build that road.

White House Announces $6 Billion to Promote Clean Energy — in Asia.  The White House announced the federal government will spend $6 billion over four years for a "sustainable energy future" plan with Asian countries that involves loaning tax dollars to other countries to increase their purchasing power for U.S. technology, services and equipment.

At SEC: Porn Surfing Down, Waste Up, Stunning Disregard For Basic Computer Security.  An internal investigative report of the SEC's Trading and Markets division has been recently been reviewed by Reuters. [...] The sheer irresponsibility on display here springs from the sort of irredeemable carelessness that comes with spending other people's money (taxes) and operating without any credible oversight or accountability (a large percentage of government entities).

Battery company got $1M from Energy Department the day it filed Chapter 11.  The Energy Department has supported A123 Systems, Inc., which produced batteries for electric vehicles, through thick and thin.  The company received a $946,830 payment, part of a larger grant, on the day it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in mid-October.  The company revealed the Oct. 16 payment in a letter this week to Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and John Thune (R-S.D.), who have questioned federal financing for the company.

Govt Funded Climate Models Continue Abysmal Performance.  Government bureaucrat-scientists and their expert "global warming" climate models, based on levels of atmospheric CO2, continue to prove an astounding incompetence — billions of taxpayer monies wasted on failed computer simulations that can't predict global temperatures.

Demand Congress Audit Every Federal Agency.  The misappropriation of taxpayer funds at the Las Vegas GSA training conference stinks worse the deeper we dig.  The now-infamous expenditures include:
$147,000 on airfare and posh lodging for conference organizers
$3,200 for a mind-reader
$6,300 for commemorative coin sets
$75,000 for a training exercise on how to build a bicycle
[...] This is just one scandal and it took 2 years to finally be exposed.

Green War.  [Scroll down]  For example, the report notes a $14 million Air Force construction project to convert three Alaskan radar stations from diesel to wind energy.  The project was begun without any assurances it was properly planned or would result in any cost savings.  The Navy is also spending $170 million to convert parts of its fleet to algae-based biofuel, which currently costs $15 a gallon or four times the cost of conventional fuel.  The Defense Department spends more than $15 billion on energy annually and is the largest consumer of energy in the federal government.  Alternative fuel could potentially save taxpayers significant amounts of money.

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2013 by Andrew K. Dart

    2002 Federal Education Spending in the Top Seven Departments

    Department of Education                      $46,324,352,000
    Department of Health and Human Services      $22,858,490,000
    Department of Agriculture                    $11,896,064,000
    Department of Labor                           $6,364,200,000
    Department of Defense                         $4,749,222,000
    Department of Energy                          $3,625,124,000
    National Science Foundation                   $3,230,812,000

• A boat for a volunteer fire department in Virginia ($350,000)
• A computerized car-towing system for Washington, D.C. ($300,000)
• Eight large-screen plasma televisions for an emergency operations center in suburban Maryland ($160,000)