TOM COBURN is a Republican senator from Oklahoma.  Every year he releases the "Wastebook," which is a collection of examples of the 100 most wasteful things the government wasted your tax money in the past year, totaling $18 BILLION.

#1.)  Moroccan pottery classes.  The U.S. has spent $27 MILLION on a project to train people in Morocco to design and sell pottery at home and abroad.  The classes suffered from language barriers with American teachers and flopped.

#2.)  Robot squirrels.  A part of a $325,000 grant was spent on a study that built a robotic squirrel to see how snakes would react to it.

#3.)  Making pennies.  In 2012, the cost to produce one penny was . . . two cents.  And even though no one uses pennies anymore and making them is clearly inefficient, the government spent at least $120 MILLION making them.

#4.)  Pet shampoo.  A pet care company in Nebraska got $505,000 from a community development block grant to help install machines that make pet shampoo and toothpaste.

#5.)  Food stamps for the dead.  At least 2,000 dead people received food stamps last year and that's just in New York and Massachusetts.

#6.)  The size of golf holes.  Purdue University used part of a $350,000 grant on a study that concluded if golfers imagined they were putting into larger holes, they were more successful.

#7.)  Better tasting beef jerky.  The Pentagon has spent more than $1.5 MILLION trying to create a better-tasting beef jerky for soldiers.

#8.)  The attractiveness of female fruit flies.  More than $900,000 went toward a study that found female fruit flies lose their looks as they get older, and are less attractive to male fruit flies.

#9.)  Food for Mars.  Even though there's no plan to send people to Mars for at least two decades, NASA spent $1 MILLION developing recipes that could be eaten on Mars . . . including pizza and vegetarian options.

#10.)  Gaydar.  A $30,000 grant went to a study at the University of Washington to test if gaydar was real.  They found people identify gay men's faces correctly 57% of the time, and lesbian women's faces correctly 65%.

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