Wastebook 2012 (dollars, examples, government, Senate)

[uggabugga]

130+ pages of disturbing reading.

some highlights:

Examples of wasteful spending highlighted in “Wastebook 2012” include:


• Tax loopholes for the National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL) and Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) – professional sports leagues that generate billions of dollars annually in profits ($91 million in taxes)

• Moroccan pottery classes (part of a $27 million grant from U.S. Agency for International Development)

• Efforts to promote caviar consumption and production ($300,000)

• Robotic squirrel named “RoboSquirrel” (part of a $325,000 grant from the National Science Foundation)

• Promotion of specialty shampoo and other beauty products for cats and dogs ($505,000)

• Corporate welfare for the world’s largest snack food producer, PepsiCo Inc. ($1.3 million)

• Government-funded study on how golfers might benefit from using their imagination, envisioning the hole is bigger than it actually is ($350,000)

• “Prom Week,” a video game that allows taxpayers to relive prom night ($516,000)

2012 Wastebook [pdf]

[wutitiz]

$30,000 grant of taxpayer dollars to study whether 'gaydar' was real.
Wastebook 2012: From Gaydar to gamer geezers | WashingtonExaminer.com

A $30,000 grant from the National Science Foundation helped pay for a study by researchers at the University of Washington and Cornell University finding that not only is Gaydar real, it is actually often accurate. Researchers “conducted experiments in which participants viewed facial photographs of men and women and then categorized each face as gay or straight,” according to The New York Times. After viewing the photos for just 50 milliseconds “participants demonstrated an ability to identify sexual orientation: overall, gaydar judgments were about 60 percent accurate.”