from Hacker News

Dr. Paul Releases 2024 'Festivus' Report on Government Waste

by atsaloli on 12/29/24, 12:47 AM with 5 comments

• by arcmechanica on 12/29/24, 1:36 AM

  Rand Paul, the optometrist? That guys an idiot.

• by xnx on 12/29/24, 2:37 AM

  It would be nice to have a reasonable discussion about what we collectively choose to spend money on, but grouping together zany examples distracts from the relative scale of each.

  $32K for "breakdancing" v. $90 billion (2,812,500x bigger) for "Ineffective Navy vessels".

• by pazimzadeh on 12/31/24, 8:19 PM

  this guy sucks. most of it reads like it was written by chatGPT

  > The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spent $419,470 to determine if lonely rats seek cocaine more than happy rats

  repeating the Rat Park experiment is a good idea

  > Congress spent $15 million to turn the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) into an unconstitutional force to prepare, file, and audit your hard-earned money

  > Burning $15 million to study a system that already exists in the private sector and is free to use? (xxi) Sounds like classic government waste.

  The xxi reference is wrong, goes to this https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm1049. Pretty sure the Direct File system is popular.

• by slater on 12/29/24, 1:31 AM

  Oh wow, I bet this will be an even-handed, fair, and agenda-less 'report'!

• by slicktux on 12/29/24, 1:34 AM

  I always referred to Dr. Paul as his father Ron Paul! Best president we never had!