The US authorities wasted greater than $1 trillion on kooky frivolous initiatives this previous 12 months — together with by utilizing taxpayer cash to show rats into coke fiends, in response to Sen. Rand Paul’s annual “Festivus Report.’’
The Kentucky Republican’s anti-waste probe — named in honor of the day earlier than Christmas Eve vacation immortalized by TV’s basic “Seinfeld’’ — revealed the actually weird “pet initiatives’’ accredited by “members of each political events” in 2024.
Probably the most mindboggling spending line gadgets concerned the Biden-Harris administration’s Division of Well being and Human Providers, which spent $419,470 on a research to “decide if lonely rats search cocaine more than pleased rats.”
Paul’s report doesn’t notice if scientists have been in a position to decide which rats went for the blow.
Maybe extra disturbing is the greater than $2 million in authorities grants given to Cornell College over the previous two years to contaminate cats with COVID-19 — after which kill them when experiments on whether or not the felines can transmit the illness are achieved.
“Since January 2022, Dr. [Anthony] Fauci’s NIAID and the USDA have given Cornell College $2.24 million to check whether or not felines can contract and transmit COVID-19 … Not solely is that this a waste of over 1,000,000 in taxpayer {dollars}, however the experiments have led to the struggling and demise of over thirty cats,” the report states.
One other questionable use of taxpayer cash got here from the Nationwide Endowment for the Arts, which awarded a $10,000 grant to ice-skating drag queens.
The Bearded Women Cabaret – a self-described “queer cabaret arts group” – gained the dough in assist of its local weather change-themed ice-skating performances.
The so-called “Beards on Ice” present options “polar bears, drag queens, and a personality dubbed ‘Nonbinary Parental Guardian Nature’” and hopes to convey local weather consciousness to anybody attending the efficiency, in response to the report.
The State Division additionally tossed a cool $3 million for “Lady-Centered Local weather Motion” in Brazil, the report stated.
Beneath a piece titled “Ghost Cities on the Authorities’s Dime,” Rand raged that the “federal authorities spent $10 billion on sustaining, leasing, and furnishing virtually fully empty buildings.”
He additionally famous that the DHHS doled out a $5 million grant to check children Fb adverts about meals.
The NEA was additionally pilloried by Paul for spending $385,000 in federal {dollars} since 2015 on artwork shows for New York’s Excessive Line park, together with $40,000 on a 16-foot-tall pigeon sculpture that may quickly grace the favored Manhattan strolling location.
The identical company has spent $365,000 over the previous a number of years to advertise sideshows in varied metropolis parks nationwide, too, most just lately awarding a $30,000 grant in 2024 for “free” circus artwork performances.
One of many largest expenditures showcased in Paul’s Festivus waste report was a $12 million funding of taxpayer cash on a pickleball advanced in Las Vegas.
The sprawling 5.4-acre, 30-court advanced in Sin Metropolis was funded partly with cash spent by the Division of the Inside and towards the needs of close by owners, who “petitioned the town to vote towards the settlement and think about transferring the advanced elsewhere citing issues about noise nuisance, elevated visitors and parking congestion, and an total lower of their high quality of life and residential worth,” the report stated.
Paul vowed to “work with Congress and the incoming Trump administration to chop this waste” within the coming 12 months.
“As all the time, taking the trail to fiscal duty is usually a lonely journey, however I’ve been combating authorities waste like DOGE earlier than DOGE was cool,” he added, referring to President-elect Donald Trump’s new initiative to shrink the dimensions of presidency.
“And I’ll proceed my struggle towards authorities waste this vacation season.”
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