The Army Corps of Engineers built a dam in Oklahoma for $50 million, only to have the upstream river dry out, so the lake never formed.
The Census Bureau spent $2.5 mllion in 2010 to advertise on the Super Bowl, and the ad laid one of the event's biggest bombs.
The National Science Foundation once spent $440,000 on research into online dating and how that affects its practitioners.
Conferences on AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) offered luxuries to their conferees that contributed nothing to a solution.
The federal government’s airport subsidies pay for commercial flight routes that carry few passengers because people drive the distance.
In 2010 the federal government spent a million dollars putting poems up for zoo visitors to read in five big-city zoos.
The Department of Energy, responsible for the energy habits of other federal agencies, wasted electricity in its offices.
The Grateful Dead took a $615,000 federal grant to establish a "free" museum at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Shreveport, Louisiana cleaned mold and mildew from a building - an abandoned housing project - then demolished it anyway.
The Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA) squandered money on a deserted monkey house and over 300 vacant buildings.