In honor of the release of the new Star Wars movie, Senator Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) has just released the 2015 wastebook called The Farce Awakens. The annual report, which used to be produced by Senator Tom Coburn, lists 100 spending programs that are a complete waste of your money.

I assume that the winner of this year report is the $1 million given to the Texas National Institute of Health to study a dozen monkeys running in hamster balls on a treadmill.

Each of the twelve little monkeys was put into a “transparent rodent exercise ball.” The balls of monkeys were then placed onto a standard human NordicTrak treadmill. The treadmill was started at a low speed and gradually increased to 1 mile per hour. The monkeys did acclimate to running in the exercise ball on the treadmill, but not without some spills and mishaps along the way. One vomited in his exercise ball and three others “defecated in their exercise ball.” Another monkey “in the treadmill running group died during week 11 of the study, for reasons not related to the study,” according to the researchers. The scientists say “while it was technically forced exercise, it did not appear to induce stress in the marmosets.” …
The researchers say more studies of monkeys running on treadmills can be conducted for more meaningful purposes. Specifically, they assert “these techniques should be useful to researchers wishing to address physiological responses of exercise in a marmoset model.” And in a case of monkey-see, monkey-do, the National Institute on Aging is already spending more than $600,000 to conduct its own monkey on a treadmill study. “A treadmill was purchased and a ventilated-lexan box was designed to confine the monkey to the treadmill. Several monkeys are currently walking on the treadmill daily,” according to project information posted by NIH.

As bad as this sounds, it may not be as bad as the $5 million spent by the California Institute of Health on the organization of parties for hipsters at bars and nightclubs.

“Will you be there to help a hipster in need?”
That’s the question posed by the “Help A Hipster” movement that has received nearly $5 million of taxpayer funds from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) over the past five years. The project organizes parties at bars and nightclubs, featuring indie rock bands, local artists and DJs, as well as other activities aimed at enticing hipsters to “take a stand against tobacco corporations.” And when parties fail to achieve that goal, the intervention gets blunt, flashing cash in front of the hipsters’ ‘stache. “Quit smoking, get cash” offers one of the programs that hands out up to $100 as a payoff to get hipsters to stop smoking.

There is much, much more such as: $668,000 to study #angrytweets and #heartattacks, $77,000 on yogurtopia, or $448 million on free rent for freeloaders.

The list would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. The whole thing is here.