Solar Powered Beer and Seven Other Ways the Government Wasted Your Money

Conservatives released their annual list yesterday of the most ridiculous things the federal government has spent money on, including a solar powered beer and a $2.7 million weight-loss program for truckers.

Not everything on the list happened this year.

1. The Agriculture Department spent $35,000 on solar panels for a brewery in northern Michigan – solar-powered beer, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers!
2. The National Institutes of Health spent about $2.7 million on weight-loss program for truckers.
3. The Internal Revenue Service issued a $40 million tax credit to GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump to turn the Old Post Office in Washington into a new, luxury hotel.
4. The State Department spent $545,000 to train senior officials how to testify before Congress.
5. A $683,600 National Endowment for the Arts program gave Virginia theater companies tens of thousands of dollars to perform dialogue-free adaptations of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”
6. The National Science Foundation doled out roughly $374,000 on a study about the dating habits of senior citizens and awarded a $50,000 grant to develop a random number generator for casinos.
7. The National Park Service spent more than $65,000 to “demonstrate what happens to bugs when the lights go out.”
8. The Pentagon spent around $43 million to build a gas station in Afghanistan, a project that should have cost about $500,000.

Read more at The Fiscal Times.