NIH - One Big Waste of Taxpayer Money

The National Institutes of Health is a federal government agency that funds various health related studies. It spends $29,000,000,000 a year on studies conducted by various research agencies and educational establishments.

While some of these studies are no doubt important, you've also got the incredible waste that comes with a government agency:

$423,500 for a current study of why heterosexual men don't like to use condoms.

$400,000 for a Buenos Aires study of bars to find out why gay men engage in risky behavoir while drunk.

$2,600,000 for a study of Chinese prostitutes to see how to get them to drink less while on the job.

$178,000 for a study of Thai prostitutes to see why those who are addicted to drugs have higher rates of HIV infection.

OK, that's about $4 million wasted on four absolutely useless studies that serve no point except to line the pockets of 'researchers'. $4 million isn't much in the grand Obama scheme of things, but damn ... that's a lot of our money thrown away!

I grant you that this waste did not start with Obama, but it is surely getting worse by the day due to his edicts.

Update - A couple more garbage cans our money is being thrown into (though not by the NIH, government nonetheless):

$100,000 grant available for the Recovery of the Wyoming Toad Program. A hundred grand to someone who can breed frogs, offered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

$10,000,000 offered by the US Agency for International Development, for the purpose of providing support to improve basic education in Cambodia.