Over the years, the federal government has been heavily scrutinized for its incessant wasteful spending. However, the following scientific study is absolutely mind-blowing. While the waste of American tax dollars comes in a variety of shapes and sizes (such as unnecessary funding of the Public Broadcasting System), some of the most shocking ways they literally throw away your hard-earned dollars are in the name of science.
Before we go further, it is worth noting that waste typically comes from agencies and government departments attempting to find creative ways to spend their budgets so they don’t get cut the next year… Hence $200 toilet seats and $1000 hammers. However, nothing is filled with more waste than government grants, grants explicitly about ‘research.’ I mean, think about this, there is essentially no end to the list of critical idiotic topics that can be studied, and as a result of this diligent quest for knowledge, we can all sleep soundly at night knowing that shrimp can run on a treadmill.
Think that sounds bad? It gets worse.
The other night I was surfing the Internet when I came across a Fox News story about a new survey on ‘questionable spending’ by Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ). While several jaw-dropping examples were cited, such as the millions of dollars spent to study whether or not a human could outrun a dinosaur, or the different ways 33 various types of wet animals shake dry, the following study stood out for obvious reasons…
Enjoy.
Via Fox News
The most cringe-worthy item highlighted by the report was a study — part of a $1 million National Science Foundation grant to Cornell University — for which researcher Michael Smith had a bee sting him roughly 200 times on 25 parts of his body and rated how much it hurt.
His penis was one of those parts.
According to the report, the researcher grabbed the bee by the wings and “pressed against the desired sting location.” The stinger “was left in the skin for 1 minute, then removed with forceps.”
Yes, you read that correctly; the government wasted $1 Million to study if it hurts to be stung by a bee. I wish I had known, I would have taken the $1 Million and told the government that bee stings to the genitals hurt badly. I wouldn’t have even had actually to get stung to come to that conclusion.
And yet some people actually wonder why we are in debt. This nonsense really stems from us not holding our government officials accountable. With this in mind, it is long overdue that we begin pressuring our elected officials and demanding they stop this insanity. If they refuse, see to it that we vote them out of office.
Flake has introduced the bill to ensure federal dollars are not wasted on what he called lesser priorities.
Kudos to Senator Flake for bringing this to our attention. We need more watchdogs like him, and remember; this is an election year. Imagine the waste that could be uncovered if we had ten Senator Flake’s.
Hopefully, the bill he introduced will pass and is enforced, but I fear the reality will be much different. This type of waste is usually payback for big campaign donors, and our members of Congress are beholden to them.
Remember, this is an election year. It is an opportunity to send a message that those members of Congress that perpetuate this type of waste should be made to ‘buzz-off’ before the government dinosaur becomes too big to outrun.
