{"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:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?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 of US Senators have documented ways in which the US government wastes our tax revenues. Two of them are Senators Jeff Flake of Arizona and James Lankford of Oklahoma. Senators Flake and Lansford have each published lists showing how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"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"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4ozh1-63176","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}