$592K to Study Why Chimps Throw Poop? The IRS Isn't the Only One Wasting Your Money

TheBlaze has covered myriad examples of Internal Revenue Service wasteful spending, from this week's reported $70 million in bonus payments to the $46 million in refunds sent to nearly 30,000 illegal immigrants living at the same address. But the IRS has competition in the area of wasteful spending of taxpayers' money.

Thanks to Michael Snyder of the Economic Collapse blog, we have: The Waste List: 66 Ways The U.S . Government Is Blowing Your Hard Earned Money.

Snyder's list does include some easily justified spending (protecting the president and vice president, as well as living ex-presidents and veeps), but there are many examples of excessive spending within the 66 he's catalogued.

Here are eight of the more ridiculous examples of programs and expenditures paid for by you, and anyone who sent money to the government:

• In 2001, nearly $600,000 was spent by the National Institutes of Health for a study hoping to learn why chimpanzees throw their poop. (No word on a specific answer to the question.)

• While lavish spending on behalf of the Obama family regularly makes news, it's not always compared to the amount other countries spend on their leaders. One example: the U.S. taxpayer puts out a reported $1.4 billion per year to make certain the president and his family are comfortable and safe.  A report from the TruthTwins contrasts that with $57.8 million that British taxpayers pony up for the royal family.

• The NIH is going to spend more than $500,000 to study whether sending text messages using "gay lingo" to meth addicts will convince them to change their dangerous behaviors. The goal is to inspire less drug use and more condom use. (And they've done this before!)

• $175,000 was allocated for a U.S. study to learn whether cocaine use encouraged risky sexual behavior in Japanese quail.

• The soccer field for the detainees at Guantanamo Bay got a makeover courtesy of the American people. The cost? $750,000.

• It's going to be decades before NASA's planned mission to Mars is underway, but that doesn't stop the agency from spending almost $1 million a year to develop a menu of foods that can be eaten by astronauts on this trip.

• Is "GAYDAR" real? A $30,000 grant from the National Science Foundation went to study if people can detect a person's sexual orientation through observation alone. The researchers detailed the results of their study in the New York Times, stating, “Gaydar is indeed real and... its accuracy is driven by sensitivity to individual facial features.”

• Republican Sen. Tom Coburn's book covering much of the wasteful spending by the U.S. government notes that $300,000 was spent by the USDA to encourage more Americans to eat more caviar.

Those are just eight of the examples of wasteful government spending that caught our attention. For more examples of how the government fritters billions and billions of dollars each year, visit these pages.

• The Waste List: 66 Ways The Government Is Blowing Your Hard-Earned Money
• Wastebook 2012 - Senator Tom Coburn's annual catalogue of wasteful spending in Washington
• The 10 Dumbest Ways The Government Wasted Money This Year

(H/T: Zero Hedge)

Follow Mike Opelka on Twitter -- @stuntbrain

--

[related]