Just when you think that the wastefulness of the U.S. government can’t get any worse they go out and spend money on some really bizarre things. Now it has come out that the U.S. government is spending $2.6 million U.S. tax dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly on the job.

Yes, you read that correctly.

The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which is a part of the National Institutes of Health is spending $2.6 million tax dollars to study the drinking habits of Chinese prostitutes. Apparently the scientist running the project believes that there is a legitimate governmental interest being served by this study, but this is just ridiculous.

There are people losing their homes and sleeping in their cars and living in tent cities in America tonight, and the U.S. government is spending money to train Chinese prostitutes how to drink responsibly?

A whole lot of people deserve to be fired over this.

But unfortunately this is not an isolated incident. The reality is that the U.S. government is wasting money at an unprecedented pace.

In a stunning waste of money, the U.S. government is actually spending $400,000 to study gay sexual behavior in Argentina bars.

Seriously?

Yes.

And we wonder why the federal budget deficit is ballooning out of control.

The U.S. federal budget deficit for the current year is now projected to be $1.8 trillion, which would be about four times the record set just last year.

When it comes to wasting money, the United States has become the supreme champion. There is simply nobody better at it. Whether it is the trillions wasted on the Wall Street bailout, the hundreds of billions wasted in Iraq or the hundreds of billions wasted in frivolous government spending, there is no match anywhere in the world for the incredible skill that the U.S. government has for flushing money down the toilet.

After all, what other government would pass out trillions of dollars to a bunch of bankers and not be able to tell us where the money went?

When JPMorgan Chase was asked what they did with a 25 billion dollar payment that they were given, they had the following to say about it:

“We have not disclosed that to the public. We’re declining to.”

What?

25 billion taxpayer dollars go to them and they tell us to stick it?

The Associated Press actually contacted 21 banks that received at least 1 billion dollars from the U.S. government and asked them the following questions…..

*How much has been spent?

*What was it spent on?

*How much is being held in savings?

*What’s the plan for the rest?

Now how many of those banks do you think provided specific answers to the Associated Press?

The answer is none.

So do we have any clues where the bailout money went?

Well, according to one study, banks that got taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits in 2008.

Hmm…..my bonus was a 50 dollar gift card.

Somehow I feel ripped off.

Are we supposed to feel good that all those fat cat executives got their bonuses on time?

Americans were told that they “had” to pass the bailout bill “or else” they would face serious consequences.

And so how is all of this money being spent?

Much of it is going to executive bonuses and towards “picking off” smaller banks.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the major Wall Street banks owe their executives more than $40 billion in pay and pensions that these firms fully intend to deliver to them.

Here are just a few examples of what these firms owe to their executives…..

Goldman Sachs: $11.8 billion

J.P. Morgan Chase: $8.5 billion

Morgan Stanley: approximately $10 billion to $12 billion

The American people should have stood up and DEMANDED that NO taxpayer money go to these executives. Instead, Barack Obama and John McCain pushed through a bill loaded with pork that will end up benefiting Wall Street executives more than it will benefit the average guy on main street.

The bailout bill contains “some” restrictions on future bonuses, but according to the Wall Street Journal, “the rules won’t affect what the banks already owe their executives.”

Wall Street executives also are admitting that this bailout money is not going to go for loans, but rather to pick off smaller banks.

Just listen to what one JP Morgan executive said about the bailout money during a conference call that New York Times reporter Joe Nocera was listening in on:

“What we do think it will help us do is perhaps be a little bit more active on the acquisition side or opportunistic side for some banks who are still struggling. And I would not assume that we are done on the acquisition side just because of the Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns mergers. I think there are going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in this environment, and I think we have an opportunity to use that $25 billion in that way and obviously depending on whether recession turns into depression or what happens in the future, you know, we have that as a backstop.”

Did you get all of that?

JP Morgan was admitting that they will use most of the 25 billion in bailout money to acquire more banks.

It was supposed to be used to loan money to regular Americans!

But this is what the same executive said about that later on in that conference call:

“We would think that loan volume will continue to go down as we continue to tighten credit to fully reflect the high cost of pricing on the loan side.”

Do you get that?

JP Morgan has NO INTENTION of increasing loans!

Are you starting to get the picture?

“Continue to tighten credit” means that they intend to loan LESS money.

So why in the world is the U.S. government giving them bailout money?

On another front, it is now being revealed that billions upon billions of dollars have been totally wasted in the reconstruction of Iraq.

It’s bad enough that we had to pay to blow Iraq up and pay to put it back together, but now they are telling us that billions and billions was simply “wasted”?

Ouch.

But the federal government wastes money every single day in a thousand different ways.

Just check out some of the ways that the U.S. government wasted money in 2008…..

*$1,529,220 for an Appalachian Fruit Lab.

*$742,764 for olive fruit fly research. $211,509 of this amount was to be spent in Paris, France.

*$172,782 for the National Wild Turkey Federation in Edgefield, S.C.

*$1,128,000 for Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Alaska Eagle River for an at-risk youth mentoring program. That is one expensive Big Brother program! There must be a lot of at-risk youth in Alaska.

*$50,000,000 for REAL ID grants. Got to be sure to track and trace those unruly American citizens!

*$123,050 for a Mother’s Day Shrine in Grafton, West Virginia (population 5,489, with a land area of 3.8 square miles).

Those are just a few sad examples. The list could literally go on for pages and pages.

The point is that the United States government is squandering the future by wasting money like it never has before.

I wonder what our children and our grandchildren are going to think about all this.

Do you think that they will be thankful that we wasted all of their money and stuck them with the bill?