I was  glad to see this one make it through, and it gives me a bit of a contact high to see Sen. Coburn annoyed.

A new report slams $11.5 billion worth of what it calls wasteful government spending in 2010, including more than a half million dollars to digitize Grateful Dead itemes.

Sen. Tom Coburn’s Wastebook 2010 highlights, cites $615,000 in federal funds to digitize photographs, T-shirts and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead. The money went to the University of California at Santa Cruz, the band’s chosen spot for an archive that is supposed to be free to the public.

“Congress continues to find new and extravagant ways to waste tax dollars,” said the Oklahoma Republican.

Hmmm, let’s see if this is a waste…on the one side we have, for free, legally, to download on the internet…roughly 3,700 hundred shows and other recordings from a cultural icon.  Might I recommend…this (click, press play.  Yes, this is legal.  They were/are pretty chill guys.).   Now they get to add in, on the net, all “digitizedphotographs, T-shirts and concert tickets”, and tons and tons of other stuff, all for free, all online (it’s already there IRL).  And all this at a cost of roughly…$0.002/per citizen.

Truly, Senator Coburn, we’ll have that $1,200,000,000,000 budget hole patched in no time, what with that $650,000 you pointed out.   I mean,  that’s like 0. 0000005416% of last year’s deficit.  At this rate, you’ll have last year’s shortfall made up in…roughly 5,000 years (if you point out this much “pork” each and every day).

Gerry’s dead man, let him go (and float forever over the ether web).

Why not just focus on being a disingenuous douchebag about the 9/11 responders bill?