Maintaining military troops in just about every country that we've ever marked our territory in.
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the war... i think this is a waiste of money because u throw money into something people are getting killed over... I would suggest a more tactical strategy.. how many troops is necasary for this.. What about armored tanks instead of 10 troops needing to die.. How about a invention that zeros in on bad guys ... =)

I find this is the biggest waiste of money... while president sits at the nice desk people are dieing for the country.. no good.. big waiste.

mike !
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The penny & the nickel are two coins that cost more to print then they are worth, with material costs rising and inflation the cost is likely to worsen over time.

"One cent doesn’t buy you very much these days—not even the metal that is contained in a penny. (A penny consists of 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper.) Last year, it cost the U.S. Mint nearly 1.5 cents to create a penny—and nearly 9 cents for a nickel. “With each new penny and nickel we issue, we increase the national debt by almost as much as the coin is worth,” says Edmund Moy, the director of the Mint."

Simply changing the penny to a cheaper material could save $100,000,000 - every year!

http://www.parade.com/news/intelligence-report/archive/what-does-a-penny-cost.html

This simple common sense change to the printing coins has been held up by congress for far too long.

We may even want to retire the penny all together.
For further reading . . .
http://www.retirethepenny.org/links.html
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Without any doubt in my mind the biggest waist of funds was.

The Bridge to no where.

No child left behind.

(And Like romeo said )

Iraq War and war on Terrorism.

-

Bridge to no where. ....

Ketchikan, Alaska and sponsored in 2005 Alaskan legislators and political officials tried to stick inside a bill a project that would certainly bring jobs to the area but would have waisted just about a quarter of a billion dollars on a bridge that extended over an island but went to no inhabited city or town.
Sen. Ted Stevens was the bills main proponent.

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/btn28374.JPG

No child left behind .....

Proponent-ed by George W. Bush had more funds spent on advertising the legislature and educating teachers then money that actually went to schools and universities.
The only thing left behind was the money.

http://tpoor9.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/no-child-left-behind-1.jpg

Finally and most importantly the conflict and restructuring of Iraq and Afghanistan and war on terrorism.

Pro's ?

- The capture of Saddam along with tons of other terrorists and suspected terrorists.
- Restructured the area and brought some degree of civility to the region.

Cons ?

Where the hell is osama ?

Why are people still dressing up in C4 and blowing themselves and others around them to kingdom come ?

And

What REALLY where the motives behind it ?

http://www.greenberg-art.com/.Toons/.Toons%20recent/qqxsgIraq%20OIL.gif

With over a billion dollars spent a week in the middle east that money could have gone to helping the average joe keep a job and feed his family for a lifetime. Not to mention it made our country look like a lame duck after rumors of torture and abuse of prisoners.

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:iGlwRIojrPTf-M:http://www.internationalist.org/iraqtorturecdogs.jpg

Don't know about you guys, but, I'd like a refund please.

Regards,
@XDS
Source(s):
The previous 8 years.

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The invasion of Iraq.

No plans were in place for how to secure an occupation upon victory.

That lack of an occupation plan boosted the cost of the venture by orders of magnitude.

Old-time Republicans themselves had studies going back to the early 80's stating that Saddam, although a tyrant, was about the only authority known to be able to maintain order among the dispirit social forces within Iraq, which means, when Bush Jr. decided to do it, not only was he running against the opinion of all thinking, educated Americans not invested in Halliburton, he was also going against the general wisdom of the old-timers in the Republican party itself.

Now Iraq will be abandoned, and left to its own messy circumstances, with nothing to show for it except ashes for money and lost American lives.

Not only is there no "democracy" like Bush said would result from the invasion, but it is now in a political and economic state worse than it was in under Saddam.

It means that every penny and life spent there was a total waste - much worse than Vietnam, which at least had a point of principal buried in it somewhere - but with the Iraqi misadventure, not one whit of benefit has happened to anyone anywhere as a result, except for maybe some soulless Halliburton investors.

Money and life got wasted away to make things worse than if nothing had been done at all.

And to top it off... it all panned out *exactly* the way so many mid-east analysts were saying would happen if he went ahead with the idea, so it can't even be written off as a lost gamble.

That was not a gamble, where there's a chance to win... that was a self-delusional enterprise that could only be rationalized with barefaced lies like WMDs, and the only reason Bush is not put more to task for it is because, in terms of results, it's nearly impossible to distinguish an evil person from one who is tremendously stupid, and nobody's quite sure how to peg the X-Pres, although general sentiment is that the X-Pres was stupid, while the X-VP was evil, such that, together, the results of their decisions made them compatible bedfellows.

It will go down in history as being on the scale of leadership fiascoes like when Emperor Nero thought he could stop a barbarian invasion by traveling north to put on a show with theater and dance and music, starring himself in the title roles, before those barbarians in order to persuade them into feeling that Rome was just too darned nice and civilized to be attacked, except in Rome's case, their Senate had enough sense to stop him.
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Everybody here is talking about the war in Iraq, and I agree, it was / is a large waste of money. But increasingly recently it appears that the situation in Iraq may turn out much better than it started. At least we've accomplished *something* there.

I would argue that the bigger waste of money is the war on drugs. This has been going on for years and years, cost billions of dollars, and pretty much accomplished nothing. Drug use has not decreased in the USA as a result of the war on drugs. In fact, the dangers from drug use have increased, not to mention the increased levels of violence in both the US and Latin American countries that happen to lie in the corridor between Colombia and the US.

I'm not sure that I would advocate legalization of all drugs in the US, but I certainly feel that the current approach is NOT working and needs to be changed. If solely for the fact that the current approach grossly enriches "the bad guys" I would advocate some level of regulation and legalization.
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Actually, there is a war going on that never ends, and costs us much more than any other war.

The War on Drugs costs taxpayers more than $50 billion dollars each year, and is one of the least effective programs we pay for.

http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm

* From 1987 to 1998 state spending on corrections increased by 30% while spending on higher education decreased by 18.2%.(6)
* State prison budgets are growing twice as fast as spending on public colleges and universities.(7)

Despite the exponential growth in spending on the drug war, illicit drugs are cheaper and purer than they were two decades ago,(8) and continue to be readily available. In addition, according to White House estimates, 57% of Americans in need of drug treatment do not receive it, in spite of its proven cost effectiveness in reducing drug use.

Who really profits from drug prohibition?

Organized Crime. According to the United Nations, drug trafficking is a $400 billion per year industry, equaling 8% of the world's trade.(14) By empowering organized criminals with enormous profits, prohibition stimulates violence, corrupts governments at all levels, and erodes community order.

Arms manufacturers, the prison industry, and other special interest groups.

* Anti-drug aid to other nations often comes in the form of military assistance. This year's National Drug Control Budget, for example, includes $452 million to provide Blackhawk helicopters to the Colombian military to fight coca cultivation.(15) Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., the exclusive manufacturer of the helicopters, lobbied heavily in favor of an escalation of aid to Colombia.(16)
* With the overall prison population at roughly 2 million, nearly 500,000 of whom are drug law violators,(17) federal and state governments have been forced to build an ever increasing number of prisons to house what former drug czar Barry McCaffrey has called "America's internal gulag."(18)
* Drug testing is a lucrative industry with a strong interest in perpetuating drug war hysteria. It is estimated that the United States spends $1 billion annually to drug test about 20 million of our workers,(19) in spite of research demonstrating the high cost and low effectiveness of this assault on American privacy.(20)

Corrupt Law Enforcement.

* A 1998 report by the General Accounting Office notes:
…several studies and investigations of drug-related police corruption found on-duty police officers engaged in serious criminal activities such as (1) conducting unconstitutional searches and seizures; (2) stealing money and/or drugs from drug dealers; (3) selling stolen drugs; (4) protecting drug operations; (5) providing false testimony; and (6) submitting false crime reports.
* The same study found that on average, half of all police officers convicted as a result of FBI-led corruption cases between 1993 and 1997 were convicted for drug-related offenses.

http://www.drugpolicy.org/library/factsheets/economiccons/fact_economic.cfm
Source(s):
http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm
http://www.drugpolicy.org/library/factsheets/economiccons/fact_economic.cfm

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The United States Government wastes money on voting booths. In the day of technology, why is there no way for us to vote from our homes with a government issued pin number allowing every legal citizen the right to choose instead of letting the electoral college.

Allowing congress to initiate their own pay raises is a waste of money. I want my boss to let me choose my salary and then show up only part time to work.

Giving the first family money to redecorate each time a new one moves into the White House is a waste of money. What is wrong with the dishes already there which cost thousands of dollars?
http://usasearch.gov/search?v%3aproject=firstgov-web&v:project=firstgov-web&query=first%20lady%20redecorated&
If you want to see where a great deal of our tax dollars go check this out: http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r107:1:./temp/~r107YggHF3:e0:

I hope the links work

 
Source(s):
http://usasearch.gov/search?input-form=simple-firstgov&v%3Aproject=firs...

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