posted December 17, 2013 09:42 AM            

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., on Tuesday released his fourth annual "Wastebook," a catalog of questionable government spending that is, at best, pretty wacky (funding for "Popular Romance Project" -- $1 million) and, at its worst, infuriating (continuing pay for Army Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter -- $52,000).
Other Wastebook highlights:

-- $325,525 for National Institutes for Health to study 82 couples and conclude marriages are happier when wives calm down quickly during arguments.

-- $1.9 million for "lifestyle" coaching for the Senate staff, including the "benefits of a good night's sleep."

-- $10,000 for the National Endowment for the Arts to support PowerUp, which features more than 50 linemen, electrical technicians and Austin energy employees "in a choreographed 90-minute dance with bucket trucks, cranes and field trucks and a set of 20 utility polls, all set before a live audience."

And yes, there are pictures. See page 32 of the Wastebook. A copy is attached.

http://washingtonexam iner.com/from-the-wacky-to-the-infuriating-sen.-tom-coburns-annual-wastebook-catalogs-government-waste-in-lean-times/article/2540821

posted December 17, 2013 10:46 AM            

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“To be surrounded by sixty people who make your life miserable is to be at a family reunion. But to be surrounded by 600,000 people who make the whole world miserable is to live in Washington DC. 
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― Jarod Kintz

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posted December 19, 2013 08:36 AM            

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The "pillownauts" are 11th on Coburn's list.

Coburn points out that during the government shutdown, 97 percent of NASA's employees were deemed non-essential and stayed home. Meanwhile, the agency this year paid 20 people a salary of $18,000 each to lie around so that NASA scientists could study how astronauts' bodies would change during a weightless space flight, perhaps to Mars.

"No manned space mission to Mars, or anywhere else, are planned," Coburn said.

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posted December 19, 2013 09:15 AM            

Yahoo News Special Report: The Pentagon's doctored ledgers conceal epic waste

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This is the second installment in a series in which Reuters delves into the Defense Department's inability to account for itself. The first article examined how the Pentagon's record-keeping dysfunction results in widespread pay errors that inflict financial hardship on soldiers and sap morale. This account is based on interviews with scores of current and former Defense Department officials, as well as Reuters analyses of Pentagon logistics practices, bookkeeping methods, court cases and reports by federal agencies.

As the use of plugs indicates, pay errors are only a small part of the sums that annually disappear into the vast bureaucracy that manages more than half of all annual government outlays approved by Congress. The Defense Department's 2012 budget totaled $565.8 billion, more than the annual defense budgets of the 10 next largest military spenders combined, including Russia and China. How much of that money is spent as intended is impossible to determine.

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