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Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

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Dos Equis:

--- Quote from: blacken700 on August 06, 2014, 12:48:59 PM ---
YOU DID

Vote.

Fortunately, there are groups like Judicial Watch and others that try and shine the light on these things 

--- End quote ---

I didn't say anything about voting for a particular party.   ::)  Judicial Watch pursues Democrats and Republicans. 

Soul Crusher:
http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/06/medicare-wasted-millions-on-hiv-treatments-for-patients-who-didnt-have-hiv


 >:(

Dos Equis:
Wasted! Feds spend millions of tax dollars getting monkeys drunk


By Drew Johnson - The Washington Times -
Thursday, September 11, 2014

There’s a whole lot of drinking going on in the name of government science, and some watchdogs think it’s the American taxpayer who is getting hammered.

Right now the National Institutes of Health is spending $3.2 million to get monkeys to drink alcohol excessively to determine what effect it has long term on their body tissue.
 
NIH also has handed out $69,459 to the University of Missouri to study whether text messaging college students before they attend pre-football game tailgates will encourage them to drink less and “reduce harmful effects related to alcohol consumption.”

And the government’s premier research arm has doled out money in recent years for research on binge-drinking mice, inebriated gamblers and pilots seeking the sensation of flying drunk — on a simulator of course.

NIH defends such expenditures on the grounds that these research projects help those they fund improve their “potential to develop into a productive, independent research scientist.”

In an email to The Washington Times, the NIH pointed out that the goal of the Missouri text message project wasn’t just to save the lives of coeds but also to empower “promising predoctoral students to obtain individualized, mentored research training from outstanding faculty sponsors while conducting dissertation research in scientific health-related fields relevant to the missions of the participating NIH Institutes and Centers.”
 
In other words, it’s the sort of stuff that gets scientists excited.

But with 50,000 grants totaling $24 billion each year at taxpayer expense, NIH has some spending watchdogs and lawmakers in Congress wondering whether it has become a drunken spender that has wandered too far astray from its core mission.

“The National Institutes of Health has an outrageously large budget and gives away money with no real consideration of whether the projects being funded are of any value to taxpayers,” said David Williams, president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, a think thank focused on waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer moneys.

For its use of American tax dollars to study inebriated pilots, mice, monkeys and students, the NIH wins this week’s Golden Hammer, a weekly award from The Times aimed at highlighting examples of questionable or wasteful spending.

Congress created the NIH to develop “knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life and reduce illness and disability.” But taxpayer advocates question whether many of its projects today really meet that mission.

“This is an agency that wastes our tax dollars to determine whether cutting the ovaries out of prepubescent rabbits causes them to have heart attacks, if physical activity can alleviate erectile dysfunction in obese men and what’s the best way to reduce tobacco use in Indonesia,” Mr. Williams said, citing some of his favorite examples. “Some of the projects the NIH funds are absolutely embarrassing.”

Alcohol and other vices have long been a favorite of NIH research grants.

Between 2008 and 2010 the NIH granted Yale University and Arizona State University a combined $154,688 to determine if drinking excess amounts of alcohol leads to losing more money while gambling.

To perform the study, researchers plied 21- to 30-year-old volunteers with enough alcohol for them to become legally intoxicated. Researchers then measured how well the twentysomethings performed gambling on video poker machines while drunk compared to when they were sober.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/11/golden-hammer-feds-spends-millions-to-study-drunke/#ixzz3D7iKmoWM

headhuntersix:
This is why I laugh when they tell us we have to cut defense spending and that our 'benefits' are to high compared to the civilian sector. First off, the uniformed side has very little to do with the budget processes that waste all this cash. The same assholes wasting money in the DOJ or HHS are the same in the DOD. The civilians run all this shit. We waste more money doing stupid shit, buying crap that doesn't work and going on trips that are way unnecessary. We could buy a new carrier with all the wasted trips they send people on.

Dos Equis:
$39,643,352 worth of NIH funding that could have gone to the Ebola vaccine
By Elizabeth Harrington
Published October 17, 2014
Washington Free Beacon

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has spent more than $39 million on obese lesbians, origami condoms, texting drunks, and dozens of other projects that could have been scrapped in favor of developing an Ebola vaccine.

“Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready,” said NIH Director Francis Collins, blaming budget cuts for his agency’s failure to develop a vaccine for the deadly virus.

However, the Washington Free Beacon has uncovered $39,643,352 worth of NIH studies within the past several years that have gone to questionable research.

For instance, the agency has spent $2,873,440 trying to figure out why lesbians are obese, and $466,642 on why fat girls have a tough time getting dates. Another $2,075,611 was spent encouraging old people to join choirs.

Millions have gone to “text message interventions,” including a study where researchers sent texts to drunks at the bar to try to get them to stop drinking. The project received an additional grant this year, for a total of $674,590.

The NIH is also texting older African Americans with HIV ($372,460), HIV and drug users in rural areas ($693,000), HIV smokers ($763,519), pregnant smokers ($380,145), teen moms ($243,839), and meth addicts ($360,113). Text message interventions to try to get obese people to lose weight have cost $2,707,067.

The NIH’s research on obesity has led to spending $2,101,064 on wearable insoles and buttons that can track a person’s weight, and $374,670 to put on fruit and vegetable puppet shows for preschoolers.

Click for more from The Washington Free Beacon

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/10/17/3643352-worth-nih-funding-that-could-have-gone-to-ebola-vaccine/

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