Senators wasting our money in many ways

Our senatorial spendthrifts, Messieurs Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley, were recently profiled in The Gazette for their earmarks in the last session of Congress. Here are a few of the ways these men and their Beltway cronies are squandering our hard-earned tax dollars and driving the U.S. government into bankruptcy. Examples are courtesy of Sen. Tom Coburn's report titled “Wastebook 2010”:

l $700,000 to the University of New Hampshire to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.

l $60,000 to renovate an Iowa pizzeria's facade for a more “inviting feel.”

l $216,000 to study whether politicians “gain or lose votes by taking ambiguous positions.”

l $615,000 to the University of California at Santa Cruz to digitize photos, T-shirts and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead.

l $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.

l $35 million to 118 phantom medical clinics that were established by criminal gangs to defraud the U.S. government.

l $600,000 to the Minnesota Zoo to develop a video game called “Wolfquest.”

l $1.8 million for a “museum of neon signs” in Las Vegas.

Yep, our tax dollars are being flushed down a federally mandated low-flow toilet on the most wasteful, and unconstitutional, things imaginable. Local self-identified progressives who want even higher taxation rates for their god, the State, have misidentified the problem.

Our government is not short of money; it is long on spending.

Ed Dolan

Central City