Your Tax Dollars at WORK

Thought For The Day  "The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets." Will Rogers 1879 - 1935  Native American cowboy, vaudeville performer, humorist, social commentator and motion picture actor.

Your Tax Dollars  At Work  As April 15 descends upon us once again, I thought it would be fitting to reflect on  the spending habits of our federal government.  There is an old joke that goes something like this: When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface, and at temperatures ranging from below freezing   to 300 degrees Celsius. The Russians used a pencil.    Even though the above story is more fable than fact, the examples listed below are as real as a heart attack and you just might have one when you discover how our elected officials have been spending your money!    The National Institute of Health  spent $387,000 to study the effects of Swedish massages on rabbits.  Uncle Sam Looking for Romance on the Web $914,000  to "explore the fascinating, often contradictory origins and influences of popular romance as told in novels, films, comics, advice books, songs, and internet fan fiction, taking a global perspective, while looking back across time as far as the ancient Greeks."   NIH Spent Over $800,000 to develop material to help parents learn how to better negotiate with their children to eat vegetables. Free Luxury Gym Memberships For Federal Bureaucrats  The federal government is all about cutting the fat, just as long as 1) the fat comes from their waistlines instead of their budgets, and 2) taxpayers are forced to pay for the whole exercise. Over $3,000,000 on a shrimp treadmill study to test whether sickness would impair the mobility of the crustaceans. It was determined that sick shrimp had less mobility and thus were more likely to not be able to avoid being caught.    $171,000 To Study How Monkeys Gamble   The researchers contend the study could "provide nuance to our understanding of free will" or even "inform treatment for gambling addiction." If scientists wanted to see a bunch of dumb primates gamble with money that wasn't theirs, they could've just gone to a congressional appropriations committee hearing.   BIRD IS THE WORD: The U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research spent $300,000 on a study that concluded the first bird on Earth probably had black feathers. FELLAS, GET YOUR GUNS: The U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research spent $681,387 on a study to confirm that a man appears taller, stronger, and manlier when holding a firearm. THAT'S ILLOGICAL, CAPTAIN: The Internal Revenue Service spent $4.1 million on a lavish conference in 2010 for 2,609 of its employees in Anaheim, California. Expenses included $50,000 for line-dancing and "Star Trek" parody videos, $135,350 for outside speakers, $64,000 in conference "swag" for the employees, plus free meals, cocktails, and hotel suite upgrades.  $175,587 for a study on the link between cocaine and the mating habits of quail. r GET IN THE HOLE! Did you know that golfers who imagine that the hole is bigger boost their confidence and accuracy? Thanks to the National Science Foundation, Purdue University, and $350,000 in taxpayer money, now you do. The National Science Foundation (NSF) launched a project in 2005 to study the oddities of the duck penis. In 2009, they funded an additional $385,000 to continue its work. The key finding of the study was that the duck penis has a corkscrew-like shape. Hoping to increase its reach with an international audience, the state department spent $630,000 "buying fans" for its Facebook and Twitter accounts. Pimping the tax code to subsidize Nevada brothels with $17.5 million And last but not least, if your wife is angry at you and you don't want her to stay that way, you might want to avoid passing along the findings of this government study: Wives would find marriage more satisfying if they could calm down faster during arguments with their husbands, according to government-funded research. Cost $335,500.