Millions in Wasted Taxpayer Money

Everyone is talking these days about tax cuts. One side wants to cut social spending like medicaid and welfare, the other wants to cut the budget to the military. The only thing I know for sure is we as taxpayers have been screaming for them to do this for years. Yes they just cant agree on what they think , WE want them to cut.

I think Republican senator, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma might have a pretty good place to start. His office put out a report on some of the research grants given by the National Science Foundation. I will share some of my favorites with you , but I do want to preface it by saying , while these examples are clearly ridiculous, there is of course plenty of very good and useful research that they do give grants for as well.

How about this one, 1 million dollars to the Indiana University to find out of parents respond to "trendy" baby names. Turns out they do.

2 million dollars went to Cornell University to find out if people who posted photos for the same place at the same time are likely to be connected. What do you think? I think they could have given me the money and I would have told them , yes.

Now this one could actually be a good one. I can see a use for this. 1.5 million dollars to the University of California-Berkeley to develop a robot that folds laundry! And they did it. The caveat? It takes 25 minutes for the robot to fold just one towel. (Towels are the easiest!)

And this one may just be my favorite. How about $559, 681 to find out how long shrimp can run on a treadmill. ??????

Now here is the question. Is it scarier that our government is granting money for these kinds of studies, or is it scarier that these kinds of studies are the best our young college students and the faculties can come up with?

I'll let you be the judge of that one. God Bless.