Dave Barry on Taxes

Dave Barry: How your taxes turn into manure.

"According to a group called Citizens Against Government Waste, the United States Congress (motto: ''Hey, It's Not OUR Money'') is giving $871,854 to researchers at Auburn University in Alabama so they can develop a better catfish. Now if you ask me, the way to improve on the current model of catfish is to make it look less like a hostile life form from the Planet Klorb, and more like Nemo. But the goal of the Catfish Genome Project, as I understand it, is to create a bigger, stronger catfish, a Shaquille O'Neal catfish that can stand up (so to speak) to global competition from foreign catfish. Perhaps you wonder why this project is being financed by taxpayers, as opposed to the catfish industry. The answer is that the Catfish Genome Project is crucial to achieving a vital national goal that we all share: reelecting the Alabama congresspersons who stuck it in the federal budget."