Barbie doll pictures, meth-head monkeys headline Sen. Rand Paul’s ‘Festivus Report’
Christopher Tremoglie
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Rejoice! For today is the day that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) releases his annual “Festivus Report” for 2023, highlighting the government’s fiscal irresponsibility and the billions of dollars of taxpayer money that the government wasted. It’s arguably a fiscal conservative’s favorite day of the year.
“This year, I am highlighting a whopping ~$900,000,000,000 of waste, including an NIH grant to study Russian cats walking on a treadmill, Barbies used as proof of ID for receiving COVID Paycheck Protection Program funds, $6 million to promote tourism in Egypt, and $200 million to ‘struggling artists’ like Post Malone, Chris Brown, and Lil Wayne,” Paul’s “Festivus Report” read. “No matter how much money the government has already wasted, politicians keep demanding even more.”
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Consider the specifics of some of the Festivus Report’s highlights.
First and foremost, had to be the impact Barbie had on government waste — and it had nothing to do with the much-ballyhooed movie released over the summer. The Festivus Report revealed that many schemers who defrauded the government to get COVID relief money from the Paycheck Protection Program used images of Barbie dolls as part of the verification process. The AI system the government used to verify identities before dispersing the funds was not able to recognize this and, as a result, scammed the government out of millions of dollars set aside for relief efforts.
“What was supposed to be an AI system to verify proof of identity, quickly exposed the stupidity of the program,” the Festivus Report read. “The verification system did not catch the images of dolls uploaded by fraudsters. Somehow the Small Business Administration carelessly approved the applicants from Toyland and sent out improper COVID-19 PPP payments.”
But if paying millions of dollars for Barbie pictures was not bad enough, the Festivus Report also exposed that the government sent $38 million in COVID stimulus payments to people who were dead. This included $10 million dispersed to people who were already deceased “on the date someone applied for funding.” Additionally, $1.3 million was given to “30 individuals who were dead for at least a year.”
Next, the Festivus Report also revealed the significant challenges the military apparently has in properly storing expensive equipment. Such incompetence cost taxpayers $169.6 million because of an inability to properly store gas turbine engines, hydraulic transmissions, and vehicular track shoes used on tanks. It’s one thing for military equipment to be damaged in battle or from enemy forces abroad in hostile areas. It’s another thing entirely for them to be damaged because of negligence.
Moreover, the Festivus Report revealed a lot of monkey business. And that’s not an idiom for anything. The report specifically detailed millions of dollars the U.S. government spent on programs dealing with monkeys. Paul highlighted the $33.2 million contract signed by the National Institutes of Health and a South Carolina business to “house, feed, and care” for monkeys on “Monkey Island.” This facility in South Carolina takes care of these primates before they are sent to research labs across the country.
Another government project involved spending a “portion of approximately $12 million in NIH grants” was spent on a research lab at the University of Mississippi Medical Center that gave monkeys “meth in the morning and tracked the monkeys’ sleeping habits through implanted wire leads.”
And still another government project that involved spending portions of two grants worth $3.7 million to study monkeys to research the section of the brain “that impacts risk-taking choices.” It was a gruesome procedure that involved removing a section of the lab monkeys’ skulls and injecting their brains with tracers to monitor brain activity as the primates chose between scenarios that involved deciding between a “low-risk, low reward choice and a high-risk, high reward option.”
Even musicians could wet their beaks and get millions of dollars in relief funds meant for the country’s small businesses. The Small Business Administration was supposed to provide financial relief to concert venues that had to close during the pandemic. The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program was meant to help such places. However, it seems to have been exploited by famous musicians and their touring companies who claimed to be “small business owners” to receive funds to the tune — pun intended — of over $200 million. This included Post Malone, Chris Brown, Lil Wayne, Usher, Melissa Etheridge, Common, and Steve Aoki, among others.
“These multi-millionaire musicians were cashing checks, instead of the intended recipients: America’s small businesses,” read the Festivus Report.
And these were just some of the many projects the government wasted billions of dollars on. They then shifted the burden of their reckless spending to the taxpayer.
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“As Congress spends to reward its favored industries and pet projects, the American taxpayers are forced to pay the price through record-high inflation and crippling interest rates,” Paul said in the Festivus Report.
It’s outrageous, and it should not be happening. The people deserve better; the country deserves better. Taxpayers funds should not be a blank checkbook for the government. Americans need to start demanding fiscal responsibility from their elected officials.