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from the how-your-tax-dollars-are-spent dept.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), chairman of the Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management (FSO) Subcommittee for the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC), continued his efforts to reform the big-spending status quo with the release of a Summer 2019 edition of The Waste Report.
Once again, Dr. Paul's Waste Report turns the spotlight on just some of the ways the federal government spends the American people's hard-earned money, with this edition including stories of building up Tunisia's political system and the Pakistani film industry, supporting "green growth" in Peru, teaching English and IT skills at madrassas, studying frog mating calls, making improper payments, and more.
The biggest seem to be:
Converted an abandoned mental hospital into DHS HQ (GSA and DHS) .......... $2,120,040,355.35
Paid out billions from Medicare in improper payments (CMS) ....................... $48,000,000,000
[Editor's Comment: The full 15-page report is found in a Scribd display on the given link.]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @02:22AM (1 child)
As a scientist in this system, writing grants is a colossal waste of effort. Bullshitters reign supreme and some of them are good people too, I presume. If you don't get your funding then you are essentially ejected from a career in research. This is a tragic loss - those that excel at science often don't excel at talking shit and doing busywork. It's almost as if the grant system has become perfectly opposite what attracts people into science. It's a savage change of direction when you get into your 30s early 40s.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Coward, Anonymous on Sunday September 08 2019, @03:37AM
It's even worse than that. Writing grant proposals corrupts scientists.
As a scientist you are supposed to be honest and point out any caveats, etc. But when you are writing grants, you have to make everything sound important and gloss over possible problems. Almost all calls for proposals ask for an impact statement. Now scientists have to pretend that every research project includes a plan to save the world.
The constant stream of press releases from research institutions has similar effects.