{"id":63176,"date":"2015-12-09T07:25:11","date_gmt":"2015-12-09T12:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=63176"},"modified":"2015-12-09T06:32:04","modified_gmt":"2015-12-09T11:32:04","slug":"63176","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=63176","title":{"rendered":"“Your Tax Dollars At Work”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some in Congress do seem to care about our taxes being wasted. This year, a number of US Senators have documented ways in which the US government wastes our tax revenues. Two of them are Senators Jeff Flake of Arizona<\/a><\/em> and James Lankford of Oklahoma<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Senators Flake and Lansford have each published lists showing how the US government wastes money out the wazoo. Each list documents approximately 100 real \u201cwinners\u201d funded by the Federal government.<\/p>\n

Some examples?<\/p>\n

\u2022 Organizing craft festivals in Russia.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Handing out \u201ctailgating\u201d packages before the Nebraska-Wisconsin football game.<\/p>\n

\u2022 A different \u201cDRC\u201d \u2013 the DARPA Robotics Challenge \u2013 that absolutely cratered. (This quote from Senator Flake\u2019s blurb about the event should raise a chuckle from TAH readers: “If the DRC hadn\u2019t been so rife with slapstick, it would have put everyone to sleep.”<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\u2022 Funding the construction of a building at a cosmetology college.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Producing and distributing bar coasters.<\/p>\n

\u2022 DoD\u2019s adventures with gas stations and empty buildings in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

These are just a few of the 100 “winners” listed by Senator Flake.\u00a0\u00a0Some are repeated in Senator Lankford\u2019s list; but the overlap between the two lists doesn\u2019t seem to be total.<\/p>\n

Yeah, this is funny – in a “laughing to keep from crying” kinda way. It\u2019s our freaking tax money<\/u> being wasted.<\/p>\n

Senator Flake documents around $133.6 BILLION<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 in apparent waste. (It wasn\u2019t as easy to extract costs from Senator Lankford\u2019s list, so I passed on trying to do that.) That\u2019s approaching the budget of the entire Department of Veterans Affairs.<\/p>\n

As the late Senator Everett Dirksen reputedly said: “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you’re talking real money.” And since Uncle Sam\u2019s as broke as an E3 with 3 kids and a stay-at-home spouse a week after payday, well . . . every dollar counts.<\/p>\n

Senator Flake\u2019s list can be found here<\/a><\/em>; Senator Lankford\u2019s can be found here<\/a><\/em>. If you have the time reading them is worth your while – for as long as you can stand to read either.<\/p>\n

But maybe give them a pass if you\u2019re having a bad day, or are having blood pressure issues. Punching a wall or computer screen kinda smarts, and raising your blood pressure too high can be bad news indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some in Congress do seem to care about our taxes being wasted. This year, a number … “Your Tax Dollars At Work”<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,220,213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teh-stoopid","category-the-floggings-will-continue-until-morale-improves","category-your-tax-dollars-at-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}