[FoxNews] From funding for A-list to money for Egyptian tourism, here's this year's roster of waste.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., released his annual Christmas "Festivus" report Friday for the ninth year in a row, outlining $900 billion in government waste.
Among notable instances, the National Institutes of Health allocated funds to study Russian cats on treadmills, photos of Barbies were utilized as identification to obtain COVID relief funds, the Department of Defense lost $169 million of outdoor-stored military gear, $6 million went towards tourism in Egypt by the United States Agency for International Development, and the Small Business Administration provided over $200 million to "struggling" music artists such as Post Malone, Chris Brown, and Lil Wayne.
Up from $30 trillion in debt in 2022, this year's debt amounts to $34 trillion, the report also highlights.
"Who’s to blame for our crushing level of debt? Everybody," Paul wrote in the report. "This year, members of both parties in Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling, which empowered the government to borrow an unlimited amount of money until 2024. As Congress spends to reward its favored industries and pet projects, the American taxpayers are forced to pay the price through record-high inflation and crippling interest rates."
He added: "The same big spenders teamed up, yet again, to continue sending Americans’ hard-earned money to foreign countries and funding endless wars, all while ignoring our porous southern border."
Rand's report highlighted government spending that included accepting Barbie doll photos to obtain COVID relief funds from a portion of an $800 billion allocation in Paycheck Protection Program funds. Other expenses highlighted were $659 billion for national debt interest, $33.2 million for transgender monkey research, $6 million for boosting Egyptian tourism, and an unknown cost for USDA's dog-walking research in summer.
"Researchers found the Labradors’ fur color did not affect their body temperatures after a hot summer’s walk. That’s it. That’s the taxpayerfunded, cutting-edge study," Paul wrote. "The Agricultural Research Service at the USDA, which funded the study at Southern Illinois University, gets $1.7 billion a year from Congress, but it’s unknown how much the hot dog study cost the taxpayer."
Under Dr. Fauci's leadership, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) funded a study using $477,121 to force-feminize male rhesus macaques in a Florida lab, the report found. The experiment involved administering female hormones to these male monkeys to investigate potential vulnerabilities to HIV, even though critics argue monkeys are not susceptible to HIV.
Last year, Paul's report broke down $482 billion in wasteful spending, from the billions spent giving COVID relief funds to ineligible people to a $118,000 study on whether Marvel movie villain Thanos would really be able to snap his fingers while wearing the Infinity Gauntlet.
Making more voters. The Clean Slate law automatically erases criminal records of people 7 years after date of conviction for misdemeanor or 10 years after certain felony convictions.
Connecticut is set to wipe clean the criminal records of more than 80,000 people with previous convictions under a long-delayed law set to go into effect in the new year.
The Clean Slate law, which was approved by the state Legislature in 2021, will automatically erase the criminal records of people seven years after the date of their conviction for a misdemeanor or 10 years after the date of their conviction for certain low-level felonies if they hadn’t been convicted of other crimes.
Gov. Ned Lamont said the goal of the law is to remove barriers to jobs, education and housing for people convicted of low-level offenses but stayed out of trouble.
“Turning your life around after making a mistake isn’t easy, but many people who’ve been convicted of low-level offenses and haven’t committed any other crimes find those convictions haunting them for decades," he said in a statement.
"The idea that minor crimes should remain a part of someone’s permanent record is outdated, ineffective, and can cause more harm than good," he added.
State officials attributed the two-year delay to "intensive information technology system upgrades," which they said will allow criminal justice agencies to "identify eligible convictions and then erase them in an automated manner pursuant to the Clean Slate Law."
That $8 million computer system is now live, they said, and over the next month, individuals who meet the Clean Slate Law’s eligibility requirements will have their offenses automatically erased from their records. No application or petition is required.
Overall, the system has flagged at least 178,499 offenses from more than 80,000 people that will automatically be erased next month when the system begins processing the records. People with convictions prior to the year 2000 are also eligible, but they must first petition the court for approval.
State officials point out that erasure doesn't mean deletion or destruction of the records but prevents their disclosure to anyone other than the court clerk holding the records.
Earlier this year, Connecticut wiped clean 43,754 low-level drug possession convictions under the state's recreational cannabis law.
#1
A record of simple folks' deeds,
And preserved for all time? The heart bleeds!
"Only, one day, José,
A fire swept it away..."
[railroads bosses at bullet train speeds]
#2
For those with an ancient NON-Violent / Victimless crime record, before growing up and becoming citizens, this is good NEWS.
Now they can legally purchase Self Defensive weapons again. ☺
But seriously. IF the Sentence for the crime is the repayment to Society as we are constantly told. Then why should a NON-Violent or victimless criminal crime record exist forever?
Especially IF when those people get their manure together and cleaned up their act.
#4
I thought most felons were already "turning their lives around" when they committed their crimes, according to their relatives, teachers and coaches anyway.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/22/2023 7:33 Comments ||
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"What is the point of Congress having oversight if bureaucrats can show up and refuse to answer questions by order of the bureaucracies in question? That is not a viable oversight system. It is simply a facade that leads to no meaningful accountability at all."
" The former federal prosecutor who allegedly shielded President Biden and his son Hunter during a criminal investigation testified 79 times to Congress that she was “not authorized” by the Justice Department to answer questions about the case, according to a transcript reviewed by The Post.
Former Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf repeatedly cited a five-page authorization letter from Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer as she refused to answer questions during a House Judiciary Committee deposition last week.
Weinsheimer’s Dec. 12 letter, also reviewed by The Post, says: “[T]he Department generally does not authorize congressional testimony from line-level personnel, especially relating to an ongoing investigation with charges pending in court. The Department has declined to do so in connection with this matter.”
"Of note is that Wolf does not even work for the Department of Justice any longer. Despite that, she brought a letter from her former employer saying she was "not authorized" to answer any specific questions dealing with the matter. "
[Breitbart] As privacy-oriented lawmakers continue waging their war to rein in government surveillance abuse, there have been several startling revelations about the government’s abuse of surveillance laws.
FreedomWorks and Demand Progress have aggregated some of the most egregious instances of intelligence agencies abusing Americans’ privacy:
“[T]ens of thousands” of baseless searches “related to civil unrest” in a one-year period.
including 141 racial justice protestors and thousands of January 6 suspects.
Searches for individuals an NSA analyst had met on an online dating site, and a prospective tenant.
Searches for a state court judge who reported civil rights violations to the FBI.
Searches for places of worship that were intentionally hidden from oversight.
Searches for a member of HPSCI and a U.S. senator.
A “batch” search for 19,000 Congressional donors.
“Batch” searches that included current and former federal government officials, journalists, and political commentators.
Searches for people who came to the FBI to perform repairs.
Searches for victims who came to the FBI to report crimes.
Searches for business, religious, and community leaders who applied to participate in the FBI’s “Citizens Academy.”
Searches for college students participating in a “Collegiate Academy.”
Searches for family members and colleagues.
Searches for police officer candidates.
Searches for an individual employed by a defense attorney.
Searches for a wrongly accused American academic.
Searches based on a witness’s report that two men “of Middle Eastern descent” were loading cleaning supplies into a truck.
Searches for a local political party.
“Batch” searches for 1600 Americans “who had flown through an airport during a particular date range and were either traveling to or returning from a foreign country”
2,000 searches for “the names and dates of birth of individuals who were registered competitors in an athletic event.”
Posted by: Skidmark ||
12/22/2023 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11134 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
#3
In the era of Nixon and Reagan, the DoJ and FBI had no problem being adversarial to the President. The Clinton's began the "salting" focus on the career civil service, and under Obama it was boosted on steroids. In the age of the "Imperial Puppet Show", it has become very clear that many portions of the DoJ, DHS, FBI, DoT, DoS, and other major agencies do not see themselves as civil "servants" any longer.
[Breitbart] “As long as the hostages are not the main and primary target for Israel,
then everything that I or President Biden say or do is of little value”
#5
The security of Israeli is Bibi's highest priority. Hama's existence is a threat to that. Seems he's got it right unlike those who drink water from the Potomac and put America's security last.
#6
Would it be genocide if you said, "When I snap my fingers, everyone who hates this country dies?" and it happened?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/22/2023 11:11 Comments ||
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#7
#5 Procopius2k, just be grateful the US isn't locates geographically where Israel is. We wouldn't last two weeks.
Praise the Lord for the oceans that protect us.
Posted by: Tom ||
12/22/2023 11:42 Comments ||
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#8
Netanyahu is like Trump in that he is not a member in good standing of the elite Globalist Cartel. He cares more about his country than a bunch of megalomaniac billionaires. They hate him for that and they're willing to sacrifice Israel for their hate. Maybe that explains why Obama/Biden encourage Iran, just because they hate Netanyahu.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/22/2023 12:00 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The Clean Slate law automatically erases criminal records of people 7 years after date of conviction for misdemeanor or 10 years after certain felony convictions.
