7 Heroically Dumb Projects The Government Blew Your Taxes On

In 2013, having ordered a bushel of fancy new cargo planes, the U.S. Air Force realized they didn't have a single use for them. But because it was too late to pull the plug on the whole deal, they allowed the construction of the planes to finish and changed the shipping address for them to Middle-Of-Fucking-Nowhere, The Desert.

And then there's the $86 million we spent on a dope-ass spy plane to combat the out-of-control Afghan drug trade. Except the DEA didn't really know how to make one of those. Which led to the program's bill quadrupling. Which led to the construction taking a really long time. Long enough for the DEA to get bored and leave Afghanistan before it was done. Now that blushingly expensive aircraft is sitting in a storage hangar in Delaware, which is only slightly more dignified than detonating it on a barge in the middle of the ocean.

Oh, and speaking of Afghanistan ...

Afghanistan needs money. Lots of it, and for a long time. Without significant foreign aid, the country's security and police force will collapse, plummeting the country into chaos and poverty. You'll be glad to know that the U.S. already provides a lot of this aid. You will not be glad to know it is often hilariously misspent.

Like the $3 million the U.S. spent on a cold- and dry-storage facility that no one wanted to use. Or the $456,669 training facility built for training the police that was so shoddy the walls literally fell apart in the rain. And then, presumably with their walls and shoes getting wet, the Afghan police were surprised to find the American government addressing the situation by buying them boats.

So, yeah, those boats didn't get used either.

But that's all just regular bungling compared to the $6 million the Pentagon spent on rare Italian goats for the country. This isn't quite as insane as it sounds; it was an attempt to jump-start the country's cashmere industry, and the contractor they were working with in the country claimed the goats had created 350 jobs. But a later investigation raised its eyebrows at that claim and suggested that oversight of this program was so poor they couldn't be sure the goats hadn't simply been sold or eaten.

Six-million-dollar kebabs, folks. Well done.

Unfortunately, and perhaps predictably, the program failed. Hardcore. A comprehensive 10-year study of the program showed that people receiving the training showed absolutely no difference in their age of first sexual contact, number of partners, or risk of teen pregnancy. Again, that's after America dumped $1.3 billion into abstinence education. That could have bought a heck of a lot of condoms. Or, you know, inclusive, realistic education about the prevention of STDs.

Selling these buildings could pay off our debt or go toward buying more cool spy planes or goats or whatever, but still the government refuses. The problem essentially is bureaucracy; to sell these buildings, we'd first have to clean them up, remove the asbestos, vacuum up all the syringes, etc. Then, other government agencies, including state and local groups, would get a chance to look at the buildings to see if they wanted to use them for anything. If none of those groups can come up with a reason to hang onto the buildings (and it doesn't even have to be an immediate or realistic reason), another law requires that homeless advocacy groups then get a chance to take a look at disused federal properties to see if they can be turned into shelters. So for most of the agencies who own these rundown future crime scenes, it's simply easier to say, "Fuck it, we'll use it someday," shut off the lights, and never speak of them again.

Worse, it's damn near impossible to know how many of these buildings there are. The only central record for them, the Federal Real Property File, is notoriously inaccurate. It has buildings listed as empty that aren't empty, buildings listed as full that are actually abandoned and probably haunted, and at least one building marked as being in excellent condition that has a fucking tree growing out of the roof.

Would you be surprised to learn that the owners of these teams like money? Would you be surprised to know they like it more than America? Because they do! In fact, sports teams and leagues across the country have taken millions of dollars to display "paid patriotism" like this. These include ceremonial first pitches, troop enlistment ceremonies, and also, oh cool, exclusive visits from cheerleaders in suites for officers. Basically, any time you see your favorite team giving a war veteran the chance to throw the first pitch, the government has just paid the equivalent of a luxury coupe to do so. Whether or not you agree that the military is a brand is irrelevant, because the government absolutely treats it like one.

The government spends a whopping $80 billion on their technology maintenance budget. Some of that is probably justified -- gotta get those crumbs out of the keyboard somehow -- but a lot of it is going toward maintaining critically outdated and dangerously insecure systems. And it's a problem that's only going to get worse as these systems become more and more obsolete.

The government has plans to upgrade all this stuff, but would you believe it, it's a slow and expensive process. It will take years, decades even, before they're able to upgrade to current, supportable systems and dump all the old garbage, probably in a garage sale. Which means if you've got any eight-inch floppies or a BlackBerry lying around, maybe hang on to them. The government might be willing to pay you a couple billion dollars for them pretty soon.

Carolyn wastes her time on Twitter.

Also check out 20 Times Tax Money Was Flushed Down The Toilet and 5 Projects You Won't Believe the US Government Is Working On.

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