US Government Spent $432,000 Researching Gay Hookup Apps

The government, courtesy of the US taxpayer, somehow finds the extra cash to spend on useless studies like how kids view fat characters in movies, voice therapy for transgender folk, why lesbians are hazardous drinkers and fat, and other bizarre and useless studies.  Frankly, who cares.  These studies have cost up to 99 million.  That was for a grant study in China!

Yes, I'm sure the National Institutes of Health (NIH) does conduct research studies on legitimate and worthwhile subjects, but do we really need (or want) to know whether GPS dating apps will encourage gay men to have risky sex, and how aroused they get using the app? Yep, that's the latest NIH waste.

Columbia University received $432,000 to study how gay "hookup apps" like Grindr, Scruff and GROWLr might increase risky sexual behavior.

“Smartphone technologies have provided a new venue for sexual partnering among men who have sex with men (MSM),” the grant for the project states. “Indeed, there are a rapidly growing number of smartphone applications designed to facilitate sexual partnering among MSM.”

The project argues that dating apps that use the Global Positioning System, or GPS, has “accelerated” the rate that gay men can find sexual partners, compared to online.

“Furthermore, given the expediency with which men are able to arrange sexual encounters using these applications, there is cause to question if, when, and how sexual negotiation and serostatus disclosure occurs,” the grant said. “The overall study goal is to understand how sexual risk behaviors among MSM may be facilitated by the nature of GPS-enabled smartphone applications, the way they are used, and the process by which sexual partnering occurs via smartphone applications.”

60 gay men were interviewed for the study.

Who cares about the dating habits of gays or straights.

I'd like them to conduct a study: find out why the government spends money on stupid research projects.

More on the Washington Free Beacon.

IRS Hired For Millions The Same Canadian Company That Botched The Obamacare Website

Here's one for the WTH file.

Remember the Canadian company CGI Federal that messed up, big time, HealthCare.gov, the Obamacare website? They were eventually fired, with good reason, but apparently the IRS has now hired the IT company for the Obamacare tax program for a whopping $4.46 million!

CGI is a $10.5 billion Montreal-based company that has forever been etched into the public’s mind as the company behind the bungled Obamacare main website.

After facing a year of embarrassing failures, federal officials finally pulled the plug on the company and terminated CGI’s contract in January 2014.

Yet on Aug. 11, seven months later, IRS officials signed a new contract with CGI to provide “critical functions” and “management support” for its Obamacare tax program, according to the Federal Procurement Data System, a federal government procurement database.

The rest on Daily Caller, which lists all the various failures with the HealthCare.gov website.

And what are we doing hiring a Canadian company? No offense to my Canuck buddies, but don't we have a competent IT company that can handle the job?

Feds Waste $300,000 On How Humans Interact With Bicycles

Taxpayers just wasted $300,000 on a research study of how "humans interact with bicycles," because it's oh so important to know how to lower our carbon footprint.

Think this was sourced from The Onion or from one of the myriad of other satire sites? Nope.  It's woefully true. The National Science Foundation (NSF)  conducted the study from October 2009 through June 2013.

The premise for the project, which was conducted between October 2009 and June 2013, was that bicycle dynamics are “poorly understood,” and researchers set out to come up with new designs to encourage more Americans to bike to lower their carbon footprint.

“Although human operator control models exist for numerous aircraft and other vehicles, the bicycle with a rider is a human-vehicle system whose dynamic behavior is poorly understood,” researchers at the University of California, Davis said in a paper publishing their interim results.

The paper said the authors had “deeper questions” about how people control bikes, and argued that no designs in the last century have been made with “desired handling qualities.”

“Even the simplest models of a bicycle with a rigidly attached rider have yet to be completely understood,” the researchers wrote.

“If successful, this research will improve the fundamental understanding of how humans interact with bicycles and will help pave the way to the design of bicycles for a wider population and for a wider range of tasks,” they added.

The rest on the Washington Free Beacon

Busted- Porn and Nerf Footballs Charged To IRS Expense Accounts

After all the controversy regarding targeting certain pro-Jewish and conservative groups, and wasting $50 million on conferences, the IRS has been busted, once again, for allegedly letting employees charge things like porn, stove top hats, Nerf footballs, and popcorn machines to their official IRS distributed credit cards. Which means, we paid for all of that.

 A new report by the Treasury's inspector general for tax administration looking at spending over two financial years says that although "the majority of IRS cardholders appear to use their purchase cards properly," a small number of employees made "inappropriate" charges. "Inappropriate" as in the cards of two employees—one who is still with the IRS—were used to pay for online porn, reports NBC News. (In fairness, both employees reported their cards missing or compromised, though one reported five cards as lost.)

One woman racked up $2,655 on things like diet pills, romance novels, steaks, and a smartphone, which were then filed as "reference books and office supplies." Other questionable spending identified in the report: a government luncheon where 41 guests drank 28 bottles of wine; and $4,000 in items intended for team-building and morale, such as Thomas the Tank Engine wristbands, kazoos, and the "world’s largest crossword puzzle." The inspector general has made 11 recommendations to increase oversight of the program.

Okay, so it's only two, and their cards might have been compromised, I know several of my credit cards have been, but five lost cards?  Come on.

IRS Wastes $50 Million On Conferences, Including A Lame Star Trek Parody

More controversy re. the IRS.  An audit of the agency that audits taxpayers discovered that the IRS spent approximately $50 million from 2010 to 2012 on perks for employees, including baseball tickets, and over 200 conferences.

A government watchdog's look at the scandal-hit agency's books found that it spent around $50 million on more than 200 conferences for employees between 2010 and 2012, according to the House Oversight Committee. The spending included baseball tickets, $135,000 in fees for 15 outside speakers (among them: $17,000 paid for a talk on "leadership through art"), and videos showing IRS employees taking line-dancing lessons and acting in a Star Trek parody, the AP reports.

The two videos were part of a $4 million conference in Anaheim, California, the Star Trek parody alone cost $60,000 to produce.  They didn't even bother to negotiate lower room rates, and some lucky ones- out of the 2,600 people in attendance- got to stay in $3,500 per night presidential suites.

According to acting IRS chief Daniel Werfel things have changed since then.

Watch the video of those IRS folk learning line-dancing courtesy of taxpayer money.  And the pitiful Star Trek Parody.

Source: Newser

Government Waste: Grant To Study Voice Therapy For Transgenders

More wasteful government spending:

$152,500 federal government grant to study "voice therapy" for transgenders.

The National Institutes of Health grant goes to George Washington University.

The story.

Feds Dole Out $876,752 To Research Snail Sex

The U.S. government's 'National Science Foundation' (NSF) has taken it upon itself to fund a study about sex and snails. That's right.

The National Science Foundation awarded a grant for $876,752 to the University of Iowa to study whether there is any benefit to sex among New Zealand mud snails and whether that explains why any organism has sex.

The study, first funded in 2011 and continuing until 2015, will study the New Zealand snails to see if it is better that they reproduce sexually or asexually – the snail can do both – hoping to gain insight on why so many organisms practice sexual reproduction.

“Sexual reproduction is more costly than asexual reproduction, yet nearly all organisms reproduce sexually at least some of the time. Why is sexual reproduction so common despite its costs,” the study’s abstract asks. 

So far, the grant has paid out $502,357, according to NSF, and could pay out the full $880,000 between now and 2015. The study is funded through what NSF calls a continuing grant meaning that it agrees with the researcher to fund a certain amount, but can end up spending more on the grant if NSF agrees that more money is warranted.

The broader aim of the study is to find out why sexual reproduction and males exist, arguing that sex is biologically inefficient for females. Because an asexual organism can simply clone itself faster than it can reproduce if it finds a mate, the study seeks to see if there are other benefits to sexual reproduction that outweigh this ‘cost’ of finding a mate.

Uh, why do we need to know this, and why on earth should we care about the sexual proclivity of New Zealand mud snails?

While $870,000 plus change is a relatively paltry sum in the grand scheme of things, it's a heck of a lot of money to be spending on research that does nothing to aid humanity, and simply adds to our trillion dollar deficit.

The rest here.

Joe Biden's $1 MillIon 2 Night Hotel Stay In Paris and London

VP Joe Biden and his posse cost the U.S. government $459,338.65 for hotel rooms alone- for one night- on his recent jaunt to London this past February.

Biden and gang stayed at the Hyatt Regency London The Churchill Hotel.  136 rooms were booked for 893 room nights, which means the rooms were probably booked for more than one night. The rooms cost around $500.00 per night.

Yes, these trips are part of the job, yes I understand they can't requisition bids for hotel stays (because of security issues) but can't they stay at maybe a four star hotel. And doesn't the State Department have travel advisers that can do a little preliminary comparison shopping? And what about hotel loyalty programmes?

And if you think $459,338.65 is outrageous, his 1 night stay at a Paris Intercontinental Hotel cost a whopping $585,000.50.

Why Are Lesbians Hazardous Drinkers? Feds Spend 2.7M To Find Out

This country is on the financial brink, and the government is wasting money on research studies like: how to improve the taste of beef jerky, or why lesbians are vulnerable to hazardous drinking?
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has handed over $2.7 million for the latter.

The University of Illinois has received grants since 2009 for its project, "Cumulative Stress and Hazardous Drinking in a Community of Adult Lesbians," which aims to develop “culturally sensitive” strategies to prevent lesbians from being drunks.

“Studies using both probability and nonprobability samples provide ample evidence of lesbians' vulnerability to hazardous drinking,” the grant’s description reads. “However, very little is known about the factors that increase lesbians' risk for hazardous drinking.”

“We propose to build on and extend our study of sexual identity and drinking… to model effects of cumulative stress on hazardous drinking among lesbians.”

The researchers theorize that lesbians report higher rates of traumatic events, making them more likely to engage in hazardous drinking, which has been defined by NIH’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism as “more than 7 drinks per week or more than 3 drinks per occasion for women.”

Furthermore, the problem may be worse for “lesbians of color,” the researchers say.

The grant states that there are “chronic stressors unique to sexual minorities, creating cumulative stress that may be compounded in lesbians of color.”

The study is being led by Tonda Hughes, professor at the Department of Health Systems Science at the University of Illinois, an “internationally recognized expert in the area of alcohol use among lesbians,” according to the University.

Why?!

Thank you Feds for wasting taxpayer money.