The following are 30 incredibly stupid things that the federal government is spending money on….
#1 The U.S. government is spending $750,000 on a new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.
#2 The Obama administration plans to spend between 16 and 20 million dollars helping students from Indonesia get master's degrees.
#3 If you can believe it, the U.S. government has spent $175,587 "to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior".
#4 The U.S. government spent $200,000 on "a tattoo removal program" in Mission Hills, California.
#5 The federal government has shelled out $3 million to researchers at the University of California at Irvine to fund their research on video games such as World of Warcraft. Wouldn't we all love to have a "research job" like that?
#6 The Department of Health and Human Services plans to spend $500 million on a program that will, among other things, seek to solve the problem of 5-year-old children that "can't sit still" in a kindergarten classroom.
#7 Fannie Mae is about to ask the federal government for another $4.6 billion bailout, and it will almost certainly get it.
#8 The federal government once spent 30 million dollars on a program that was designed to help Pakistani farmers produce more mangos.
#9 The U.S. Department of Agriculture once gave researchers at the University of New Hampshire $700,000 to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.
#10 According to USA Today, 13 different government agencies "fund 209 different science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education programs — and 173 of those programs overlap with at least one other program."
#11 A total of $615,000 was given to the University of California at Santa Cruz to digitize photos, T-shirts and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead.
#12 China lends us more money than any other foreign nation, but that didn't stop our government from spending 17.8 million dollars on social and environmental programs for China.
#13 The U.S. government once spent 2.6 million dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly.
#14 One professor at Stanford University was given $239,100 to study how Americans use the Internet to find love.
#15 The U.S. Postal Service spent $13,500 on a single dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse.
#16 The National Science Foundation once spent $216,000 to study whether or not politicians "gain or lose support by taking ambiguous positions".
#17 A total of $1.8 million was spent on a "museum of neon signs" in Las Vegas, Nevada.
#18 The federal government spends 25 billion dollars a year maintaining federal buildings that are either unused or totally vacant.
#19 U.S. farmers are given a total of $2 billion each year for not farming their land.
#20 The U.S. government handed one Tennessee library $5,000 for the purpose of hosting a series of video game parties.
#21 A few years ago the government spent $123,050 on a Mother's Day Shrine in Grafton, West Virginia. It turns out that Grafton only has a population of a little more than 5,000 people.
#22 One professor at Dartmouth University was given $137,530 to create a "recession-themed" video game entitled "Layoff".
#23 According to the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. military spent "$998,798 shipping two 19-cent washers from South Carolina to Texas and $293,451 sending an 89-cent washer from South Carolina to Florida".
#24 The U.S. Department of Agriculture once shelled out $30,000 to a group of farmers to develop a tourist-friendly database of farms that host guests for overnight "haycations".
#25 The National Institutes of Health paid researchers $400,000 to find out why gay men in Argentina engage in risky sexual behavior when they are drunk.
#26 The National Institutes of Health also once spent $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.
#27 The National Institutes of Health loves to spend our tax money on really bizarre things. The NIH once spent $800,000 in "stimulus funds" to study the impact of a "genital-washing program" on men in South Africa.
#28 According to the Washington Post, 1,271 different government organizations work on government programs related to counterterrorism and homeland security.
#29 The U.S. government spent $100,000 on a "Celebrity Chef Fruit Promotion Road Show in Indonesia".
#30 The feds once gave Alaska Airlines $500,000 "to paint a Chinook salmon" on the side of a Boeing 737.
