by Tom Blair
Columnist

Waste phone books – they end up in garbage cans across America. Just how much of a waste? Well, in North Phoenix, the news reported that last year, 415 TONS of phone books went to waste. That’s just in one area of the States. Only 22% of recipients recycle when disposing of their phone books. Environmentalists state that five million trees are cut down each year just to create “white pages” phone books. Wow! I like to use the phone book on occasion, but I guess it would be smarter if we were asked if we want one. You have to remember, too, that a BIG reason they publish the phone books is because they sell BILLIONS of dollars in advertising and they really don’t care if you use them or not – they get their money.

We all know that our government wastes more than anyone can imagine, setting a good example for us. Can you imagine? Our government blew $592,000 on a study last year to figure out why chimpanzees throw poop! And just for your information, the researchers think that it’s a form of communication. Maybe they’re trying to send a message to Washington! I did some on-line research to see some of our outrageous government spending waste. You can look them up to verify them at your leisure:

The National Institute of Health gave the University of Kentucky $176,000 to determine if Japanese quail are more likely to have sex when high on cocaine. The study is scheduled to last through 2015.

The Chinese economy is second only to that of the United States. And China holds billions of dollars in U.S. debt. So the U.S. government sent $17.8 million in aid to China last year to improve the Asian giant’s social services and clean up its environment. That makes sense, right?

Senator Tom Coburn’s “Waste Book” contains some real winners: $30 million to help Pakistani mango farmers – this was part of a four-year, $90 million effort to boost hiring and sales among Pakistani businesses funded through the U.S. Agency for International Development. We must have a close and trusting relationship with the country that somehow managed to miss the fact that Osama Bin Laden was living within spitting distance of a Pakistani military base for years. So our government felt it needed to spend some time and money remaking Big Bird and the other “Sesame Street” characters into a show called “SimSim Humara” for the Pakistani market – at a cost of $10 million dollars. Meanwhile, we keep borrowing money and people go to bed hungry in our country?

Tom “Road” Blair

Website: www.tomroadblair.com