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The Pig Book: How Government Wastes Your Money
The federal government wastes your tax dollars worse than a drunken sailor on shore leave. The 1984 Grace Commission uncovered that the Department of Defense spent $640 for a toilet seat and $436 for a hammer. Twenty years later things weren't much better. In 2004, Congress spent a record-breaking $22.9 billion dollars of your money on 10,656 of their pork-barrel projects. The war on terror has a lot to do with the record $413 billion in deficit spending, but it's also the result of pork over the last 18 years the likes
- $50 million for an indoor rain forest in Iowa
- $102 million to study screwworms which were long ago eradicated from American soil
- $273,000 to combat goth culture in Missouri
- $2.2 million to renovate the North Pole (Lucky for Santa!)
- $50,000 for a tattoo removal program in California
- $1 million for ornamental fish research
Funny in some instances and jaw-droppingly stupid and wasteful in others, The Pig Book proves one thing about Capitol pork is king!
- $50 million for an indoor rain forest in Iowa
- $102 million to study screwworms which were long ago eradicated from American soil
- $273,000 to combat goth culture in Missouri
- $2.2 million to renovate the North Pole (Lucky for Santa!)
- $50,000 for a tattoo removal program in California
- $1 million for ornamental fish research
Funny in some instances and jaw-droppingly stupid and wasteful in others, The Pig Book proves one thing about Capitol pork is king!
187 pages, Paperback
First published April 6, 2005
About the author
Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization representing more than 1.2 million members and supporters nationwide. CAGW's mission is to eliminate waste, mismanagement, and inefficiency at all levels of government.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 7, 2009
Citizens Against Government Waste, The Pig Book: How Government Wastes Your Money (St. Martin's, 2005)
Another book designed to raise your blood pressure while educating you, though it must be noted up front that anyone who reads this will probably wonder how some of these things are wastes of money. CAGW are, as long as it's not a major project (for some reason, they completely fail to note HIPAA, the single largest governmental waste of money ever conceived), equal-opportunity destroyers. That said, on the other side of the equation, you're certain to find millions upon millions of dollars that will make you wonder what on Earth Congress was thinking. After all, it doesn't take just one idiot to get the government to invest millions of dollars into projects that are, at best, useless redundancies. People have to vote on this stuff, y'know?
I'll admit that my number one complaint about this book has little to do with the book itself. I get annoyed at the kind of forced anonymity thing implied by an “author” named Citizens Against Government Waste. And far from the note at the end telling you who the editors of the book actually were mollifying me, it just seemed to make it all the more irritating. You guys put it together? For god's sake, take the credit. It's not like you were going for anonymity if you put your names in the back of the book, right? And it does still nag that CAGW were unwilling to attack HIPAA, which in its first year alone wasted more money than all the projects in this book put together, while attacking such relatively harmless projects as the Steamtown Museum (one wonders how a project that was widely considered “a godsend” to the local economy—a characterization which the book's editors do not at all dispute—is a horrible thing. Though, yeah, it would have been nice had Pennsylvania paid the money back eventually...). But other than those niggles, worth it. *** ½
Another book designed to raise your blood pressure while educating you, though it must be noted up front that anyone who reads this will probably wonder how some of these things are wastes of money. CAGW are, as long as it's not a major project (for some reason, they completely fail to note HIPAA, the single largest governmental waste of money ever conceived), equal-opportunity destroyers. That said, on the other side of the equation, you're certain to find millions upon millions of dollars that will make you wonder what on Earth Congress was thinking. After all, it doesn't take just one idiot to get the government to invest millions of dollars into projects that are, at best, useless redundancies. People have to vote on this stuff, y'know?
I'll admit that my number one complaint about this book has little to do with the book itself. I get annoyed at the kind of forced anonymity thing implied by an “author” named Citizens Against Government Waste. And far from the note at the end telling you who the editors of the book actually were mollifying me, it just seemed to make it all the more irritating. You guys put it together? For god's sake, take the credit. It's not like you were going for anonymity if you put your names in the back of the book, right? And it does still nag that CAGW were unwilling to attack HIPAA, which in its first year alone wasted more money than all the projects in this book put together, while attacking such relatively harmless projects as the Steamtown Museum (one wonders how a project that was widely considered “a godsend” to the local economy—a characterization which the book's editors do not at all dispute—is a horrible thing. Though, yeah, it would have been nice had Pennsylvania paid the money back eventually...). But other than those niggles, worth it. *** ½
Displaying 1 of 1 review