Video:ObamaCarecontractorstillhiringdespitehavingno

Video: ObamaCare contractor still hiring despite having no work

posted at 11:01 am on June 13, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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The contractor is Serco in Missouri, which we’ve noted in the past as the perfect place to work … if you like being locked down for eight hours a day and playing Pictionary. And hey, there’d be nothing wrong with that, if it weren’t for the fact that Serco will get more than a billion dollars in taxpayer money to process non-existent applications. Exactly one month after the first exposé of Serco’s operation, nothing has changed according to KQHA, including the recruitment:

I wrote about the hiring binge last month, which also included overtime to do even more nothing than what was getting accomplished on regular time. The mystery of this particular waste may be solved by looking at Serco’s contract with CMS:

Serco’s contract with CMS requires a particular level of staffing regardless of the work coming into the facility. If Serco falls below that — presumably measured in man-hours on duty — they can lose their $1.2 billion contract. The OT may well be in play because Serco has trouble getting people to get stuck for eight hours at a stretch with nothing to do, a situation that sounds pleasant until it’s experienced first-hand. (I have had this experience at two different jobs for relatively brief periods, and can attest to the torturous boredom it generates.)

This demonstrates the folly of top-down government control of a market-based industry. No insurance carrier would waste money like this for more than a week or two before shedding jobs and rescaling the effort. Anyone who expected that government control would make this process more efficient should have their heads examined … or better yet, voted out of office.

It’s telling that this problem with Serco has been exposed for a month, and yet CMS has done nothing to stanch the waste of taxpayer dollars. Whistleblowers are claiming that we’re flushing a billion dollars down the drain, and yet the same administration that claimed that insurers wasted too much money on activities other than patient care hasn’t lifted a finger to fix this problem. How much patient care would the $1.2 billion deliver if it wasn’tr being wasted by Serco?

Nor is that the only government-run failure in ObamaCare this week. Remember the federal co-ops that were supposed to compete with traditional insurers and force them to spend more on patient care — co-ops that got taxpayer-backed loans to launch? They missed their enrollment goals by a wide margin:

The data, obtained from each co-op by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, suggests that most of the nonprofits fared poorly as they attempted to sell health insurance policies in the federal Obamacare exchanges.

“Enrollment figures to date raise serious questions about how these co-ops plan on staying solvent and that taxpayers will ever be repaid,” Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. …

If any co-op fails and defaults on its federal loans, taxpayers will have pay for its insolvency. AWhite House report by the Office of Management and Budget projected up to four out of 10 co-ops could eventually face insolvency.

The House committee also estimated that the public cost for the enrolling co-op customers was often immense, as high the $207,000-per-person expense in Tennessee. There, the Community Health Alliance Mutual Insurance Co. received $73 million in loans but was able to enroll only 354 people.

Minuteman Health in liberal Massachusetts received the second-largest loan, $156 million, but was able to enroll only 1,435 customers at a cost of $109,000 per enrollee.

Basically, we’re looking at the Solyndras of health care, based on the arrogance that led Democrats to believe that they knew how to structure the health-insurance market better than health insurers themselves.

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Tags: co-ops, ObamaCare, Serco, waste

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SecondObamaCarecontractorfacilitydoingnothing—and

Second ObamaCare contractor facility doing nothing — and still hiring

posted at 10:41 am on May 20, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Last week, whistleblowers in Missouri alerted local media that an ObamaCare facilitator with a $1.2 billion contract paid its employees to do almost nothing … literally. Serco’s paper-application facility in Missouri had so little business that employees had to sit at their desks and entertain themselves most of the day, and the goal set by Serco management had employees aiming at processing just one or two applications a month. Because employees are forbidden from bringing in their own computers or smart phones, they ended up playing Pictionary and socializing most of their day.

A second local TV station in Arkansas wondered if the local Serco office had the same problem. Not only did employees make the same allegations, the office is still hiring even more employees to do nothing:

Not to be outdone, the original station in Missouri, KMOV, followed up on their original story. The work hasn’t picked up, but now Serco is paying OT for doing nothing all day long:

Now that employee said Serco is offering employees an opportunity to work overtime this weekend.

When asked why, the employee was told to catch up.

On what? Sleep?

KMOV unlocks part of the mystery of this story. Serco’s contract with CMS requires a particular level of staffing regardless of the work coming into the facility. If Serco falls below that — presumably measured in man-hours on duty — they can lose their $1.2 billion contract. The OT may well be in play because Serco has trouble getting people to get stuck for eight hours at a stretch with nothing to do, a situation that sounds pleasant until it’s experienced first-hand. (I have had this experience at two different jobs for relatively brief periods, and can attest to the torturous boredom it generates.)

This demonstrates the folly of top-down government control of a market-based industry. No insurance carrier would waste money like this for more than a week or two before shedding jobs and rescaling the effort. Anyone who expected that government control would make this process more efficient should have their heads examined … or better yet, voted out of office.

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Tags: cms, healthcare.gov, ObamaCare, Serco, waste

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So,whyistheUSDArequestingtobuy

So, why is the USDA requesting to buy submachine guns?

posted at 4:01 pm on May 16, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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Yep. That’s a thing, according to a report from Breitbart:

A May 7th solicitation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeks “the commercial acquisition of submachine guns [in] .40 Cal. S&W.”

According to the solicitation, the Dept. of Agriculture wants the guns to have an “ambidextrous safety, semiautomatic or 2 round [bursts] trigger group, Tritium night sights front and rear, rails for attachment of flashlight (front under fore group) and scope (top rear), stock collapsible or folding,” and a “30 rd. capacity” magazine.

They also want the submachine guns to have a “sling,” be “lightweight,” and have an “oversized trigger guard for gloved operation.”

The solicitation is from the USDA’s Office of Inspector General, and another of their solicitations submitted on the same day (May 7th) is looking for the “commerical acquisition of ballist vests, compliant with NIJ 0101.06 for Level IIIA Ballistic Resistance of body armor… Body armor is gender specific, lightweight, trauma plate/pad (hard or soft), concealable carrier, tactical vest, undergarment (white), identification patches, accessories (6 pouches), body armor carry bag, and professional measurements.”

I might mention that I find it rather galling that an administration that would prefer to remove “high-capacity” gun magazines from the reach of the common citizen also sees fit to equip one of its most innocuous of bureaucratic arms with what it also deems “military-style weapons,” not to mention the monetary expense to taxpayers — but this apparently is not a new thing (a bunch of various IG offices employ armed special agents with law enforcement powers), and as Matt Welch at Reason aptly notes:

So how did an internal government watchdog turn into an external projection of U.S. power against its own citizens? Because of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which amended the IG Act to grant inspectors “full law enforcement authority to carry firearms, make arrests and execute search warrants.” The law was sponsored by then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), passed with a heavily Republican majority (207-10 in favor, versus 88-110 among Democrats), passed overwhelmingly in the Senate (90-9, with no Republicans voting against), and then signed into law by President George W. Bush. The blunt truth is that after 9/11, a vast majority of elected conservatives want to arm the bejeebus out of the feds, with little or no deliberation about long-term consequences.

Here’s the USDA’s justification, via Politico:

USDA responded to POLITICO by explaining that there are more than 100 agents employed by the law enforcement division of the department’s Office of the Inspector General who carry such weapons because they are involved in the investigation of criminal activities, including fraud, theft of government property, bribery, extortion, smuggling and assaults on employees. From fiscal 2012 through March 2014, OIG investigations pertaining to USDA operations have netted more than 2,000 indictments, 1,350 convictions and over $460 million in monetary results, the OIG told POLITICO in a subsequent email.

Machine guns, though? What the heck is that about? I must say, though, that I’m pretty much with Matt Welch on this one — if the GOP is genuinely interested in walking back some of the federal government’s police powers that the party largely granted, it’s time to get to drafting some legislation to reverse the 2002 amendment and presenting their money-saving and state-slimming case. I’d be interested to know how the Obama administration would receive such tidings.

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Tags: abuse, big government, Department of Agriculture, fraud, waste

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GetreadyforthenextroundofObamaCare

Get ready for the next round of ObamaCare price spikes

posted at 2:41 pm on May 15, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Let’s start with this video, in which KMOV continues investigate the billion-dollar contract awarded by HHS that apparently solved more Pictionary puzzles than processed applications. After their first report, KMOV heard from a number of Serco employees validating the initial whistleblower — who updated Chris Nagus and Dan Greenwald to say that nothing had changed since. One former employee told Nagus on a Skype call that spending seven months doing nothing all day long made her wonder about her own sanity, but more so about the program’s sanity. A supervisor told her in December — when the approaching date of disruption of existing insured would hit — that their goal was to process one or two applications … for the month:

“I think for the entire month of December I processed six applications and that was pretty good,” Lavonne said.

Lavonne said her output in December was good because other employees told News 4 the goal was to process even fewer applications.

“Our supervisor said if we process one or two of these a month we have done our job,” one employee said.

Lavonne said they had to come up with ways to pass the time. Employees told News 4 workers are not allowed to bring in a cell phone, pen, or paper.

“We played Pictionary on a very dry erase board,” Lavonne said. “We played 20 questions, we made up games what you did in 1989.”

Employees also told News 4 boredom reigned because of the lack of work and the restrictions on what workers could bring into the office.

“You could be completely sane and work there for seven months and leave there and want to check yourself into a mental hospital it was that bad,” Lavonne said.

That’s just the entree for today’s post, though. In my column for The Fiscal Times, I look at analysis of insurer filings from Virginia and Washington for premium changes in 2015. The numbers show that consumers had better expect another big spike in costs:

Rate-proposal filings in the state of Washington show the four largest insurers proposing average increases across their plans ranging from 8.1 percent to 11.2 percent in a single year. Jonathan Wu of Value Penguin analyzed the proposals and concluded that the insurers tried betting on success, and came up short. “What is troubling about the data is that among these insurers, there is clearly an issue with the premiums offered in the first enrollment period,” Wu writes. Noting that the four companies offered the lowest prices in the market this year, their enrollment numbers are not surprising, but their consumers may get a less-pleasant surprise by the end of the year.

In Virginia, two insurers control 86 percent of the market, and both propose steep increases in 2015 premiums. Anthem, which has 113,614 of the roughly 170,000 enrollments, wants to boost prices by an average of 8.5 percent next year, while CareFirst wants a hike of 14.9 percent. All five insurers in the Virginia exchange want price hikes, with only Kaiser’s proposal falling below an 8.5 percent increase. If the Obamacare experience in these two states provides any indication, Wu writes, “then consumers might need to brace themselves for rate hikes in the coming months.” … 

That brings us to the group-insurance market, where most Americans get their health insurance. Shortly after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the Department of Health and Human Services produced an analysis that predicted the employer mandates and increased costs would force “66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans” to be canceled. That was the “mid-range” estimate, one that went unnoticed until the mass cancellations of plans in the individual market.

As Forbes’ Avik Roy argued at the time, it meant that the churn in the individual market provided just an appetizer to the main course of market disruption that will come this fall.

The extent that insurers can limit those price hikes will come at the expense of your “choice habit,” as one wag spun it earlier this week. Now that people have begun to access their insurance for medical care, they’re discovering what we’ve noted for months — that the provider networks have narrowed dramatically, no matter what level of coverage they selected:

Before the law took effect, experts warned that narrow networks could impact patient’s access to care, especially in cheaper plans. But with insurance cards now in hand, consumers are finding their access limited across all price ranges.

The dilemma undercuts President Obama’s 2009 pledge that: “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period.” Consumer frustration over losing doctors comes as the Obama administration is still celebrating a victory with more than 8 million enrollees in its first year.

Narrow networks are part of the economic trade-off for keeping premiums under control and preventing insurers from turning away those with pre-existing conditions. Even before the Affordable Care Act, doctors and hospitals would choose to leave a network — or be pushed out — over reimbursement issues as insurers tried to contain costs. …

Insurance agents Craig Gussin in San Diego and Kelly Fristoe in Texas helped dozens of clients switch plans just before the enrollment deadline when clients realized their doctors weren’t covered. Now, they’re struggling to help clients who realized they were in that position after the March 31 enrollment deadline, when consumers are locked into plans for one year.

Gussin says that even after his mad-dash to make switches before the deadline, he still has a half-dozen clients who are stuck — and he expects the number to grow as more try to schedule with doctors. He and other agents fear it will be one of their most serious issues in 2014.

“Everybody I talk to is having the same issue. It’s probably the number one item that we’re seeing right now,” said Gussin, who is petitioning Covered California for special enrollment status to help clients change plans.

Oddly, Americans didn’t have that much trouble satisfying their “choice habit” before the Obama administration decided to make health care “affordable.” Investors Business Daily says it’s time to admit that ObamaCare is working — just as its critics predicted:

High and rising premiums. Runaway costs. Rampant waste. Workers shoved into government-run exchanges. That’s what critics said would happen should ObamaCare remain the law of the land.

And on every point, these critics were viciously attacked by the White House and its amen chorus in the press. But on each, the critics are being proved right while the law’s backers try to change the subject.

Warnings of ObamaCare rate shocks were a big myth, we were told — merely “scare tactics” used to gin up opposition to the law by Republicans.

Then the first year’s rates came out last fall, and they were far higher than pre-ObamaCare premiums in most states, often even after taxpayer subsidies.

The rate shocks continue. IBD reported this week that two states are proposing rate hikes topping 8% for their 2015 ObamaCare premiums. In Virginia, CareFirst Blue Choice proposed a nearly 15% increase.

According to one insurer, poorer health of enrollees plus ObamaCare taxes and fees are largely to blame.

Nevada insurance brokers, meanwhile, see premium hikes of 35% to 120% for small businesses renewing plans this year, the Las Vegas Review Journal reports.

And a recent analysis by Avalere Health concluded that “double digit premium increases are likely in many markets” for next year.

But at least we’re kicking our “choice habits.”

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Tags: "choice habits", contractors, ObamaCare, providers, waste

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HowtogetapaycheckfromtheEPA

How to get a paycheck from the EPA without really trying: Telework without working, or go to the office and watch porn

posted at 1:21 pm on May 7, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

If you can read this addendum to yesterday’s EPA post without slamming your head onto your desk, I salute you.

On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that inspectors general are up in arms over the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Homeland Security operating as a “rogue law enforcement agency” and agency employees actively blocking their investigations into employee misconduct. The House Oversight Committee held a hearing on these alleged improprieties this morning, and according to the prepared testimony of Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Investigations Allan Williams, last year’s case of former employee John C. Beale defrauding taxpayers of nearly a million dollars while pretending to be a CIA operative was just the beginning of the waste/fraud/abuse.

An employee at the Environmental Protection Agency downloaded more than 7,000 pornographic files onto a government computer and viewed them for two to six hours a day, according to the agency’s independent watchdog.

The worker, who wasn’t identified, was watching pornography when a special agent showed up at his work space, Allan Williams, the EPA’s deputy assistant inspector general for investigations, told lawmakers today.

“True deterrence of employee misconduct at the EPA ultimately rests with agency executives and managers to set a tone that ensures such behavior will not be condoned,” Williams told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. …

The employee caught viewing pornography is still on the payroll, earning about $120,000 a year, and the case has been referred to the Justice Department for prosecution, Williams said.

Not only did that employee earn six figures — he earned, ahem, “performance rewards.” Via the WFB:

Rep. John Mica (R., Fla) questioned Allan Williams, the deputy assistant inspector general for investigations at the House Oversight Committee over the employees’ “work activities.”

“So this guy is making $120,000, spending two to six hours a day looking at porno. Then this information I have is he received performance awards during the time period?” Mica asked Williams.

Williams responded, “Uh, he possibly did. Yes, sir.”

In an entirely separate instance, another manager allowed an employee to collect full pay and benefits without reporting to work. It reportedly started out as a work-from-home accommodation for a medical condition, except that the employee wasn’t actually doing any work either — and yet managed to collect a casual $500,000 or so over several years, as well as cash bonuses based on excellent performance appraisals. Astounding.

As Chairman Issa put it in the hearing this morning, the EPA is “running an organization from which no one can get fired.” Who wants to make bets about this kind of waste, fraud, incompetence, negligence, and lack of oversight being unique to the 16,000 employees of the Environmental Protection Agency?

Tags: big government, bureaucracy, Environmental Protection Agency, fraud, House Oversight Committee, investigation, waste

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TwoUKhospitalsincineratedtheremainsofdead

Two UK hospitals incinerated the remains of dead babies for heat

posted at 11:21 am on March 24, 2014 by Allahpundit

Another 10 hospitals incinerated remains as part of standard garbage disposal protocol. Treat the unborn as “medical waste” and don’t be surprised when some facilities take that idea to its logical conclusion.

The Telegraph’s headline implies that incineration was reserved for aborted babies, as some sort of final ghoulish indignity for the unwanted, but the story says the policy was broader than that. Miscarried fetuses ended up being burned too.

Last night the Department of Health issued an instant ban on the practice which health minister Dr Dan Poulter branded ‘totally unacceptable.’…

One of the country’s leading hospitals, Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge, incinerated 797 babies below 13 weeks gestation at their own ‘waste to energy’ plant. The mothers were told the remains had been ‘cremated.’

Another ‘waste to energy’ facility at Ipswich Hospital, operated by a private contractor, incinerated 1,101 foetal remains between 2011 and 2013.

They were brought in from another hospital before being burned, generating energy for the hospital site. Ipswich Hospital itself disposes of remains by cremation.

How do you process this story if you’re a pro-choicer? I can imagine three camps. One is the “so what?” group. If “life” doesn’t begin until viability (or birth, for the hardcore abortion warrior), then yeah, this is medical waste. You don’t cremate tumors, do you? Toss it in the incinerator. Next is the group that wants to distinguish between miscarried babies and the aborted. The parents of the former saw a life in the making even if pro-choicers didn’t; the remains should thus be treated with due decorum, as a consolation to the bereaved. The remains of the aborted needn’t be similarly respected. Finally, there’s the group that’s uncomfortable with treating fetal remains as waste (or fuel) under any circumstances. I don’t know how to square that with the idea that life begins at viability, though. To do it, you need to move from the standard pro-choice position that what’s growing in the womb isn’t really “life” to the position that yes, okay, it’s human life, but abortion is a form of justifiable homicide. Then you can treat the remains with the dignity due, say, an executed prisoner. But most pro-choicers are obviously reluctant to make that move; once you concede that a life is at stake, you’re on dangerous ground politically.

Anyway, question for our three lefty readers: Which group are you in?

Tags: abortion, baby, british, cremate, energy, fetus, hospital, incinerate, plant, UK, United Kingdom, waste

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Thegovernmentdoesn’tknowhowmanyemptybuildings

The government doesn’t know how many empty buildings it owns — just that they’re costing us billions

posted at 8:01 pm on March 13, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Ugghhh. Via The Hill:

President Obama on Thursday urged Congress to “do even more” on conservation projects after signing legislation protecting a 35-mile stretch of Lake Michigan’s coastline.

“There are currently dozens of conservation proposals before Congress — many supported by Democrats and Republicans — that would protect important lands across the country and help grow our economy,” Obama said in a statement.

The Sleeping Bear Dunes conservation law was the first public lands designation by Congress in more than five years — the longest lawmakers had gone without making a wilderness designation in nearly 50 years.

While urging lawmakers to take up additional conservation measures, Obama pledged to “continue to do my part to protect our federal lands for future generations to enjoy.”

I’m sorry, but simply implying that adding more land to the one-third of the surface area the United States government already owns is not quite the same thing as the president doing his “part to protect our federal lands for future generations to enjoy” and simultaneously “growing the economy.” If Obama really wanted to ensure the best possible environmental and economic stewardship of those precious lands, he might start considering opening them up for public-private management setups or leasing them for other commercial uses that could actually turn their own profits — instead of subjecting them to clunky, political, top-down policy decisions and turning them into a further strain on our deferred maintenance backlog.

In that same vein, the many empty and abandoned buildings currently beefing up the federal estate are a major drain on taxpayer resources, but the bureaucracy is gummed up with rules and regulations that directly deny the properties from being put to productive uses. Via NPR:

Government estimates suggest there may be 77,000 empty or underutilized buildings across the country. Taxpayers own them, and even vacant, they’re expensive. The Office of Management and Budget says these buildings could be costing taxpayers $1.7 billion a year. …

Wise and his colleagues have been using the only known centralized database that the government has, the Federal Property Profile, and it’s not reliable, he says. …

But Carper says that even when an agency knows it has a building it would like to sell, bureaucratic hurdles limit what it can do. No federal agency can sell anything unless it’s uncontaminated, asbestos-free and environmentally safe. Those are expensive fixes.

Then the agency has to make sure another one doesn’t want it. Then state and local governments get a crack at it, then nonprofits — and finally, a 25-year-old law requires the government to see whether it could be used as a homeless shelter.

Which means that federal agencies usually end up giving up and just locking the gates on these blighted opportunity costs. Instead of focusing on placing still more lands and properties under federal control, perhaps the government should be a little more focused on getting rid of some of them.

Tags: Barack Obama, conservation, federal government, monuments, national parks, waste

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Ofcourse:Governmentoverpaysbymillionsfordiapers

Of course: Government overpays by millions for diapers

posted at 10:11 pm on January 27, 2014 by Mary Katharine Ham

This story struck a chord with me today. I’m always trying to explain to people that the federal government (and government in general) is so disrespectful of taxpayer money that it doesn’t even do the most basic things to make sure it’s using your money wisely. Everyone knows the most egregious things about the federal government’s spending habits. They borrow in trillions, they print in billions, they refuse to write budgets, they illustrate their commitment to one sacred kind of spending by vowing not to cut anything from any other kind of spending to pay for it. For normal people who make budgets, priorities, and tough calls in tough times, it’s insulting.

But those are all macro issues. Let’s bring it down to the details. If there’s one thing I’d wager nearly every single mother in this country does at some point, it is look for sales on diapers. Whether they’re cloth or disposable, tiny or big, you gotta buy them and you gotta buy bunches. So, you make damn sure you’re getting them for a decent price, doubling up your coupons, gift certificates, sales, and buying in bulk.

But the bulkiest of buyers feels no need to be nearly so careful with your money:

A lack of competitive bidding processes among state Medicaid agencies caused the program to overpay for diapers by about $62 million in 2012, according to a report released by federal auditors on Monday.

Only five state Medicaid agencies have implemented competitive bidding programs for “disposable incontinence supplies,” according to the inspector general for the department of Health and Human Services.

Those states reported saving up to of 50 percent on those supplies, the IG report found.

States nationwide implemented cost control mechanisms, the report noted, but Medicaid could have saved about $62 million if competitive bidding processes were adopted nationwide.

Those savings would amount to 23 percent of the Medicaid bill for disposable incontinence supplies, which include nine categories of diapers and liners, including products for adults and children.

It’s like going to Bed Bath & Beyond without your 20 percent off coupon, every day, for a gazillion years. It’s stupid, wasteful, and eminently preventable.

Ben Domenech, of Transom and Coffee & Markets (which if you’re not reading or listening to, you should) lauds a legislative fix for some of this:

“One of the reasons Medicaid is spending so much on adult diapers in the first place is that the Medicaid program has morphed into an uncomfortable combination of two programs,” Domenech explained in an email.

In addition to its role as an insurer for low-income Americans, he said, Medicaid has become “a long-term care program which provides chronic care and nursing home services for seniors.”

Domenech lauded a proposal introduced on Monday by Sens. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), Orrin Hatch (R., Utah), and Richard Burr (R., N.C.) that would repeal Obamacare and replace it with, the senators say, a more “sustainable, affordable, patient-centered” system.

In the meantime, clip those coupons, moms, while these idiots fritter away the money they’ve already stolen from your grandchildren.

Tags: competitive bidding, Medicaid, waste

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Coburn:Thisiswhat$30billioningovernment

Coburn: This is what $30 billion in government waste looks like

posted at 6:21 pm on December 17, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

Sen. Tom Coburn’s office has been compiling a report on some of the most egregious examples of government waste for a few years now, and the “nearly $30 billion in questionable and lower-priority spending in Wastebook 2013 is a small fraction of the more than $200 billion we throw away every year through fraud, waste, duplication and mismanagement.” Whatever other hand-wringing our elected representatives may do over the billions of dollars that should-or-should-not be cut from food stamps, or sequestration, or what have you, there is plenty of federal waste there for the axing if politicians could just get their collective act together and make a priority out of it. The instant classics from last year’s Wastebook included $27 million for Moroccan pottery classes at the Agency for International Development and a university grant to the tune of several hundred thousands dollars for experiments with robotic squirrels, and sadly, some of this year’s headliners are just as facepalm-worthy:

Uncle Sam Looking for Romance on the Web – (NEH) $914,000

The Popular Romance Project has received nearly $1 million from the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) since 2010 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.” …

Government Study Finds Out Wives Should Calm Down (NIH) $325,525

If your wife is angry at you and you don’t want her to stay that way, you might avoid passing along the findings of this government study. Wives would find marriage more satisfying if they could calm down faster during arguments with their husbands, according to government-funded research. …

Federally Funded Solar Panels Covered at Manchester-Boston Airport Because the Glare Blinds Pilots and Controllers (FAA) – $3.5 million

When officials at the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in New Hampshire installed new solar panels, they did not anticipate one quarter of them would not be used 18 months later. In Spring 2012, the panels were placed on top of the airport’s parking garage, and 25 percent have remained there, covered with a tarp, rendering them useless. Problems with the new panels were noticed almost immediately by air traffic controllers who claimed that for 45 minutes each day, glare made it difficult to oversee the airport’s runways.

The

 

Tags: Budget, bureaucracy, Congress, federal government, Tom Coburn, waste

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