Worst ways the government wasted your money in 2023 - The Horn News

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Worst ways the government wasted your money in 2023

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by Frank Holmes, reporter

The holiday season is a time for individuals, families, even nations to repeat traditions.

Unfortunately, the federal government’s favorite annual tradition is wasting your money.

Fortunately, every year the worst examples of extravagance, incompetence, and full-blown abuse get chronicled in Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s Festivus report.

The senator’s report on government waste plays on the popular Seinfeld episode where Jerry’s father (Jerry Stiller) invents a new holiday — “Festivus for the rest of us” — and as part of the festivities, he creates a new annual tradition: the airing of the grievances.

“I got a lot of problems with you people (in Congress)! And soon you’re gonna hear about it,” said Senator Paul on social media as he released his holiday report. “I’M BACK for more airing of grievances, exposing waste, and generally pissing people off online.”

 

What’s on the senator’s naughty list this year?

Start with Barbie — not the Woke new movie with the “Grrl Boss” model, but an elaborate fraud not caught by the federal government.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government handed out money like water. The Horn News has detailed how government sources in the Biden administration have admitted there was so much fraud, it will take 100 years or longer to even investigate.

What’s incredible is who was doing the defrauding: It was America’s favorite doll!

Fraudsters applying for a slice of the $800 billion in COVID Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) “loans” had to submit a photograph of themselves along with their application.

Since these are phony accounts, they have no photograph — so they uploaded pictures of Barbie, and the U.S. government’s crack security software couldn’t tell the difference.

“What was supposed to be an AI system to verify proof of identity, quickly exposed the stupidity of the program. The verification system did not catch the images of dolls,” Paul explains. “Somehow the Small Business Administration carelessly approved the applicants from Toyland and sent out improper COVID-19 PPP payments.”

Not everyone who got emergency COVID tax dollars was fictitious; unfortunately, they weren’t broke, either.

Several of the biggest celebrities in America dipped their hand in the till during the government-forced COVID shutdown of businesses nationwide.

Their money came from a separate government program, also run by the Small Business Administration: the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant.

The money was supposed to lift up business owners and performers who relied on live entertainment to make a living—and as a grant, no one ever pretended recipients would ever have to pay this back.

Guess what “small business people” cashed in?

Rapper Lil Wayne pocketed more than a lil’ change: $8.9 million of your money.

R&B singer Chris Brown beat the blues by raking in a cool $10 million.

Nickelback could cut it as a poor man stealing; they walked away with $2 million in grants from the program.

Feminist idol Melissa Etheridge came to your deposit window and walked away with $3.9 million.

Leann Rimes took home $2 million.

Washed up bands like Korn, Slipknot, and Smashing Pumpkins also pocketed millions upon millions of dollars.

“These multi-millionaire musicians were cashing checks, instead of the intended recipients: America’s small businesses,” said Senator Paul.

It turns out this is just the tip of the iceberg. The government sent out $236 billion in improper payments.

“Federal law defines the term as payments made by the government to the wrong person, in the wrong amount, or for the wrong reason,” said Paul. That includes $50 billion from Medicaid, $45 billion from Federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, $21 billion from the Earned Income Tax Credit, $4 billion from the PPP program, and more.

That includes $38 million to dead people (who are probably voting in Chicago). What’s worse, they were “people Uncle Sam knew were dead”—and not just their careers, like Korn, says Paul.

The government didn’t do much better when the money went where it was supposed to go.

Before he retired as the highest-paid man in the federal government, Dr. Anthony Fauci spent $477,121 of your money to try to change the sex of monkeys. The transgender monkeys study injected feminizing hormones into male monkeys—rhesus macaques, specifically—and studied if it made them more likely to develop HIV/AIDS.

“The lab worked to make male lab monkeys ‘transgender’ to address ‘social injustices’ suffered by ‘transgender persons’ such as ;transgender women (TGW)-individuals who were assigned a male set at birth but express their gender along a female spectrum,’” says Paul’s report.

“Critics note that monkeys themselves are not susceptible to HIV, and argue injecting the male monkeys with female hormones is unlikely to yield relevant information or to help humans,” he added.

Maybe Fauci, who authorized a study torturing dogs, just likes doing kinky things with animals.

That’s just a small glimpse into Paul’s incredible Festivus report, which you can read here.

After reading over the government’s strange priorities, Paul said everyone should have listened to the grievances of his father, Congressman Ron Paul.

“This weekend I’m traveling to see my parents, and it always reminds me that if more people than just me and Rep. Thomas Massie had been listening to my Dad, we would be a lot better off,” the senator said.

Everyone might be a lot better off financially—and the American taxpayer would have a lot fewer grievances.

But at least we can be glad that one of Rand Paul’s feats of strength is airing the liberals’ dirty laundry in the halls of Congress each December.

 

Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”

About the Author

Stephen is a U.S. Army veteran with over a decade of combined experience in political commentary, economics, and news.