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