The Grinch that steals your tax money

Editorial by Jacksonville Daily News, December 20, 2013.

The Grinch is alive and well in Washington, D.C., stealing your tax money for the most ludicrous things.

Sen. Tom Coburn, a medical doctor from Oklahoma, has published his annual “Wastebook,” revealing 100 examples of wasteful spending of taxpayer’s money by the federal government.

The total comes to nearly $30 billion, which the senator claims is only a fraction of the hundreds of billions of wasteful government spending each year.

The list is enough to kill your Christmas spirit whether you are a Republican, like Coburn, or a Democrat.

A few examples:

Looking for Romance: The National Endowment of the Humanities — that’s right, you the American taxpayer, ante up for this unnecessary government agency — forked over nearly $1 million 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.”

We’re sure you will rest easier tonight knowing you paid for that!

Stay calm and carry on: A total of $325,525 went for a government study about angry wives. The study determined that “wives would find marriage more satisfying if they could calm down faster during arguments with their husbands.” Whether female, male, married or single, if this outrageous spending doesn’t make brain ache, you’re probably already too numb to feel much of anything. .

And speaking of brains: A company right here in North Carolina received $150,000 from the feds — that’s your tax money they hand out — to develop a math learning game based on the zombie apocalypse.  Zombie apocalypse? Really?

Not science fiction: Unfortunately, this one is all too real. NASA, out of the space flight business, has enough money — $390,000 — to pay for a YouTube show and cartoon series called “Green Ninja.” The plot? A man wearing a Green Ninja costume teaches kids about global warming. This comes as news breaks about the massive fraud of former Environmental Protection Agency climate expert John Beale, who bilked the EPA out of a cool million in taxpayer money

But wait. There’s more — much more.

Like the military’s decision to destroy $7 billion worth of equipment rather than ship it back from the Middle East.

And the $3.5 million spent on solar panels at a New Hampshire airport, now covered because they caused a glare so harsh air traffic controllers had difficulty seeing the runways.

Members of Congress from both parties need to act responsibly by cleaning up such outrageous spending. Americans have had to do some serious belt-tightening. Our government should, too.