BBB:Stop Thief!

   It has been costing taxpayers $243,000 to water bureaucrats' office
plants.

   The Department of Energy gave an inventive, forward-looking genius
in Missouri $1,200 to design and build a solar heated outhouse.

   The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration spent $27,000 to find
out why inmates want to escape from prison.

   The National Science Foundation spent $84,000 to study "why people
fall in love."

   The Smithsonian Institute spent $89,000 to publish a dictionary in
the Taotzil language, which is spoken by a small, obscure tribe in
Mexico.

   The Federal Highway Administration wasted $220,000 of the taxpayers'
money on an idiot's questionnaire asking whether large trucks
contribute to traffic congestion.

   The Department of Labor spent $385,000 for a door-to-door census of
every dog, cat, and horse in Ventura County, California.

   The U .S. Navy paid $110 each for diodes. They normally cost four
cents. Navy cargo ships are repaired at a cost reportedly fifty-eight
times greater than similar commercial vehicles.

   A $97,000 grant by the National Institute for Mental Health was
spent in part on the study of a Peruvian brothel. The researchers
vested "three weeks of evening work" in making about twenty visits to a
"house of ill repute." They found, through "formal" and "informal"
interiews with prostitutes, that the brothel was a gathering place for
men.

   The Justice Department paid $734,371 to determine whether Playboy,
Penthouse, and Hustler magazines contribute to juvenile delinquency.

   The National Endowment for the Humanities granted $2,500 to
Arlington County, Virginia, to study why people are rude, cheat, and
lie on local tennis courts.

   Many people believe the only way to eliminate the deficit is by
either making serious cuts in important social and defense programs or
by enacting a massive income tax increase.

   However, the Grace Commission has documented $24 billion waste over
three years--enough to eliminate the deficit without tax increases or
cuts in important domestic and defense spending.

   But powerful special interest groups who live off of the government
waste are fighting hard to block Grace Commission recommendations.

   --American Way Features

   --Straight Talk