We've become so familiar with government's big, hideously embarrassing failures that we're apt to forget how every single day they're doing smaller yet no-less-embarrassing things like this:
Four months after the US national debt shot past the $30 trillion mark for the first time in history, a new report from Illinois-based nonprofit American Transparency is detailing some of the foolish, fraudulent, and frivolous federal projects that have spent us into an economic ditch.
"The federal government isn't just wasting your money. They are literally ripping you off," said Adam Andrzejewski, the group's founder. "They are milking taxpayers like dairy cows."
That's an insult to dairy cows. Here's a few examples of what your hard-earned money is funding every single day:
Pigeon Slots
Cost: $465,339
Taxpayers are rolling the dice on a high-stakes study that aims to untangle the psychology of gambling addiction – by building a casino for pigeons. The National Institute of Health has sent nearly half a million dollars to uber-liberal Reed College in Portland, Ore., where researchers are taking three years to create a "self-contained miniature economy" for the school's flock of birds. The pigeons receive currency-like tokens that they can "earn, accumulate, spend, or gamble" on slot machines, Dr. Timothy Hackenberg explained in the project's abstract. But even he admits the "practical applications" of his work are few. Presumably the eye-popping budget is needed to pay for all the comped rooms, free drinks, and tiny uniforms for feathered cocktail waitresses.
As bad as it is, you almost imagine that the pigeons are probably more embarrassed by it. Like, "You're doing all of this for us? We're pigeons. What's wrong with you people??"
Transgendered Monkeys
Cost: $477,121
A Florida lab is dosing male rhesus macaques with feminizing hormones – intent on turning them trans. The experiment, funded by Dr. Anthony Fauci's National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, aims to figure out why male-to-female transgender humans suffer high levels of HIV infection. "HIV/AIDS thrives in the margins of society," reads the uber-woke project description. "No population is more affected by these social injustices than transgender persons." The scientists suspect estradiol, the hormone commonly given to transgender women, may weaken the immune system. Next up: drag monkey story hour in your local library.
Okay, look, sure, dressing monkeys up in women's clothes has always been a hoot.
But dropping nearly $500k to figure out why pumping men full of synthetic women's hormones might be unhealthy?
Bro, that's not necessary. It's self-evidently a bad idea to give men estrogen and it will obviously lead to poorer health outcomes.
There, problem solved, for exactly $0!
Star-studded COVID Handouts
Cost: $14 million
The rich got richer during the coronavirus pandemic, thanks to Uncle Sam. Bold-faced names like Kanye West, Robert Redford, and Francis Ford Coppola collected big bucks in 2020 from the COVID relief Paycheck Protection Program. West, who now has a net worth of about $6.6 billion, received $2.4 million for Yeezy, LLC, his famous sneaker company, which was valued at $2.9 billion at the time. Meanwhile, $3.04 million in loans went to Redford's Sundance Institute. Two of Coppola's companies, Francis Ford Coppola LLC and Niebaum Coppola Estate Winery, LP received a combined $8.5 million. The PPP program was created to help businesses stay afloat and keep idled workers off the unemployment rolls, but for wealthy celebrities, the forgivable loans didn't make any cents.
It does indeed make no sense at all, unless you just assume that these guys already have a ton of money and they like to get more, even illicitly, just so they can look at it.
Your tax dollars at work, people! I mean if you want to call this "work," anyway.
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