The Internet, e-mail, websites, YouTube, social media, news
websites and blogs make information easily available. A few minutes of inquiry
via Google should make us the most informed people on earth. The problem is
that this explosion of information did not make us searchers for the truth.
Instead, we search for anything that supports our beliefs and anything that is
gossip or about celebrities. We engage in fantasy. We forward e-mails that are
hoaxes and become offended when shown proof that those emails are hoaxes.
Here are some real facts that most people seem to have
missed.
- Our Federal Government paid 2.6 million dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly on the job[1]. By the way, the study did not involve ethnic Chinese living in the United States. The study took place in China.
- Taxpayers directly contributed $18,248,300 million to the Republican and Democratic national committees, or a total of $36.5 million, to hold their presidential nominating conventions in Election 2012. They gave similar amounts to the parties in 2008[2].
- The Department of Agriculture spent $2 million to fund an internship program. The program hired one full-time intern.
- Last year, $120 million was paid to dead federal employees. (In all fairness, sometimes it is hard to tell).
- A total of $146 million was paid for federal employees to upgrade their flights to business class.
- The government spent $2.6 million to encourage Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly.
- The Department of Health and Human Services provided an $800,000 subsidy to build and IHop in Washington, D.C. (Google it! It is absolutely true).
- The National Institutes of Health has given $1.5 million to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston to study why “three-quarters” of lesbians in the United States are overweight and why most gay males are not.
- During 2012, $25,000 of federal money was spent on a promotional tour for the Alabama Watermelon Queen.
•The U.S. government spent $505,000 “to promote specialty
hair and beauty products for cats and dogs” last year.
•NASA spends close to $1 million per year developing a menu
of food for a manned mission to Mars even though it is being projected that a
manned mission to Mars is still decades away.
•Over the past 15 years, a total of approximately $5.25
million has been spent on hair care services for the U.S. Senate.
•The U.S. government spent $27 million to teach Moroccans
how to design and make pottery in 2012.
•During fiscal 2012, the National Science Foundation gave
researchers at Purdue University $350,000. They used part of that money to help
fund a study that discovered that if golfers imagine that a hole is bigger it
will help them with their putting.
•A total of $10,000 of U.S. taxpayer money was actually used
to purchase talking urinal cakes in Michigan. (What did they say? Probably, "No! Please don't do it"!
•Vice President Joe Biden and his staff stopped in Paris for
one night back in February. The hotel
bill for that one night came to $585,000.
•The U.S. Department of Agriculture has spent $300,000 to
encourage Americans to eat caviar produced in Idaho.
•The National Institute of Health recently gave $666,905 to
a group of researchers that is conducting a study on the benefits of watching
reruns on television.
•The National Institute of Health also spent $592,527 on a
study that sought to figure out once and for all why chimpanzees throw poop.
•The federal government spent $750,000 on a new soccer field
for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.
•The IRS spent $60,000 on a film parody of Star Trek and a
film parody of Gilligan’s Island.
•Last year, the federal government spent $96,000 to buy
iPads for kindergarten students in Maine.
•The U.S. government spent $200,000 on “a tattoo removal
program” in Mission Hills, Calif.
•Last year, the government spent just under $1 million
posting snippets of poetry in zoos around the country.
•The U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research spent
$300,000 on a study that concluded the first bird on Earth probably had black
feathers.
•The federal government spent $75,000 to promote awareness
about the role Michigan plays in producing Christmas trees and poinsettias
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