Alaska Senator Bob Ziegler introduced a bill to make it illegal for a civilian dog to impersonate a police dog. Members of the Georgia State Game Commission were fiercely debating the pros and cons of regulating "aligator rides" when one alert member noticed a typographical error on the agenda--the commission was actually supposed to be discussing whether or not they should regulate "alligator hides." During the 1980s, the Chico, California City Council banned nuclear weapons, enacting a mandatory $500 fine for anyone detonating a nuclear weapon within city limits. Texas State Representative Jim Kaster introduced a bill into the state legislature that would require anyone who plans on committing a crime to give his would-be victim at least twenty-four hours notice. This notice could be given orally (over the phone or in person), or in writing and must also inform the intended victim that it's okay to use deadly force as a defense--but only in certain crimes. During the energy crisis of the late 1970s, Ohio State Representative John Galbraith introduced a bill to eliminate January and February from the calendar. His thinking went like this: "If we divided the fifty-nine extra days between July and August, we will cut our energy needs by about one third through eliminating the coldest days of the year. Cold is largely a psychological matter. If people look at the calender and see that it is July, they will be quite happy to turn the heat down." In the late 1980s the town of Grantham, New Hampshire had two streets called Stoney Brook; Stoney Brook Drive and Stoney Brook Lane. The town council decided to remedy the confusing situation by changing the street names. The new names are Old Springs Drive and Old Springs Lane. All seven Democratic candidates, including six incumbents, in Rhode Island's 1995 local elections missed the deadline to nominate themselves to run for office. On March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez spilled thousands of gallons of oil off the shores of Alaska. Soon after this, some 36,000 dead birds were recovered from the waters; others washed up on the shore, all covered in thick crude. Federal and state authorities thought the number of fatalities of our feathered friends was probably higher--and they set out to prove it. The US Fish and Wildlife Service spent $600,000 for one study in which 219 birds were taken from remote locations, including national wildlife refuges, and killed. Their bodies were fitted with radio tracers, many were dipped in oil, and then they were thrown into the sea. Radio receivers picked up the signals from the dead birds and tracked their course in the ocean. The project was designed to demonstrate that thousands of other birds could have sunk into the ocean's floor, while others might have floated out to sea or washed up on deserted shores. Alaska's regional director of the Wilderness Society, Allan E. Smith, exclaimed, "I don't understand why they have to go out and kill a bunch of wildlife to prove what everybody already knows--that a bunch of wildlife was killed." The US government has 32 billion cubic feet of helium stored under twenty square miles of Texas Panhandle. Why? In case of blimp warfare. The National Helium Reserves was established by Congress in 1929 when blimps were thought to be the next phase in modern warfare. During the 1960s Congress decided to renew the reserves and ordered additions to the stockpile. In 1973 Congress finally realized we had enough helium and the chances of a blimp attack were dim, so they ordered the Bureau of Mines, which handles the program, to maintain the existing supply. They didn't get rid of it; they just stopped buying more. In 1993 the budget for the project ws set at $22 million. Even though they plan to recoup this money by selling of small amounts of helium to other government agencies, their debt from buying and storing the helium now exceeds $1 billion, with annual interest payments of around $130 million. NASA and the Defense and Energy departments are their principal customers, and they're required by law to buy all their helium from the reserve, even though it costs more than helium from private suppliers. Wrapping up the end of a grueling 1988 campaign, Herbert Connolly, who was running to keep his seat on the Massachussetts governor's council, looked at his watch and realized he had to get to the polls before they closed. Unfortunately Connolly was fifteen minutes too late and wasn't allowed to vote. The final tally was 14,715 for Connolly and 14,716 for his opponent. $1 million was added by the Senate to study brown tree snakes. The snake is found only in Guam, hasn't been proven to be life threatening to humans, and can't survive in North America. $102,000 was spent on a project by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, including one experiment to see if sunfish that drink tequila are more agressive than sunfish that drink gin. The Senate appropriated $200 million to buy 36 million pounds of depleted uranium, even though the government has a stockpile of depleted uranium to last for a hundred years--of war! On March 16, 1995, the Mississippi House of Representatives finally ratified the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution--abolishing slavery. In 1986 the National Park Service purchased a half acre of land in southwest Washington, D.C., for $230,000. In 1988 it was discovered that the Park Service already owned the land--they bought it in 1914. Judith Kraines, county controller in Reading, Pennsylvania, voiced her department's computer problem at the January 1996 meeting of county commissioners. Her computer hadn't worked in two years. She was forced to type letters, memos, and do all written business on a typewriter. "If we had a computer," she stated, "letters would go out faster." Three days after the meeting, Kraines announced that the computer she'd been complaining about had been fixed. The problem that had eluded her for two years? It wasn't plugged in. Congress approved $1 million to be spent in Trenton, New Jersey, to preserve a sewer as a historic monument. The brick-lined sewer is twenty-five feet underground and has been visited by only two people in the past twenty-three years. In the mid-1980s the governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, authorized the EPA to incinerate dioxin at Vertac. Unfortunately there were no incinerators that could meet the federal standard for burning dioxin. The dioxin had to be mixed with other materials before it could be incinerated, thereby producing two barrels of ash for every barrel of dioxin. The EPA then spent $300,000 for special storage buildigns to house the dioxin ash. The EPA launched a study in 1993 into the dangers of breathing while you take a shower--specifically, whether one might be injured by inhaling water vapor. The World Health Organization tried to help Borneo with its mosquito problem by using US-made DDT. Everything seemed great for a while, but the powerful chemical disrupted the food chain and soon the entire island was overrun with rats. What was the US's solution to deal with the rats? They parachuted in hundreds of cats. $5 million was approved by the Senate to renovate buildings and finish an aircraft hangar at Michigan's Wurtswirth Air Force Base--after the decision was made to close the base. In April 1993 the Montana legislature passed an animal-abuse law that increased the fine for a second violation to $1,000 and two years in prison. At the same time the state's maximum penalty for second-offense spousal abuse is a mere $500 and six months. The plan was to tempt alleged big-time drug traffickers with two hundred pounds of cocaine, courtesy of Uncle Sam. Once they took the bait, state and federal authorities would swoop down on the bad guys, make the streets safe, and make the news. The plan didn't include the bad guys getting away with the cocaine--but that's what happened: putting $4 million in premium grade cocaine out on the street. Six months of preparation and hundreds of thousands of dollars went into organizing a drug raid that was to take place at a Washington, D.C., public housing complex. The agent in charge of the operation was driving to the staging area the morning of the raid when he heard about the proposed top-secret plan over the radio. Apparently the city housing agency had issued a press release the night before, which announced there was going to be a drug sweep the following morning. The entire operation had to be canceled. Representative Tom Moore, Jr., was concerned at how little attention legislators paid to the bills on which they voted. So, in 1971, as a joke, he introduced a bill honoring Albert DeSalvo for his pioneering work in population control. De Salvo, the notorious Boston Strangler, confessed to killing thirteen women in the Boson area. Moore's bill commended the Boston Strangler for serving "his country, his state, and his community... This compassionate gentleman's dedication and devotion to his work has enabled the weak and lonely throughout the nation to achieve and maintain a new degree of concern for their future... He has been officially recognized by the state of Massachusetts for his noted activities and unconventional techniques involving population control and applied psychology." The resolution passed unanimously. The Arkansas legislature designed a law that would prevent voter intimidation. Unfortunately, the law is written in such a way that, if enforced, would make voting illegal. It reads: "No person shall be permitted, under any pretext whatever, to come nearer than fifty feet of any door or window of any polling room, from the opening of the polls until the completion of the count and the certification of the counted returns." During the 1980s, efficiency experts saved the Department of Defense between $27 million and $36 million each year. However, the work of the efficiency experts cost between $150 and $300 million each year. The Treasury Department wanted to educate computer security professionals about high-quality strains of computer viruses. They uploaded such viruses onto the Department's Automated Information System computer bulletin board. To make sure the computer security professionals know what they were up against, the Treasury Department also made available programs that are designed to make sneaking into other people's computers easier. The programs, since they were listed on the Automated Information System computer bulletin board, were available to anyone who decided to dial into their sytem. So for more than a year, over a thousand computer operators called up the bulletin board and were able to download strains of computer viruses that could completely disable computers and software and turn anyone into a "Super Hacker"--all courtesy of our government. $5 million was approved by Congress to build a new Parlaiment building for the Solomon Islands. Even though it's part of the British Commonwealth. $100,000 was spent to study the problem of why people don't like beets. In 1995 officials of Duval County in Jacksonville, Florida, while beaming about their new $35 million jail, suddenly realized that all 195 cells didn't have any doors. In Canadaigua, New York, they do have new prison-cell doors. Installation of these doors was halted, however, when officials of the Ontario County Jail realized the bars in the doors were so far apart, prisoners could simply slip through them. In the mid-1970s, the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration spent nearly $27,000 to determine why prisoners want to escape from jail. The US Department of Agriculture spent $46,000 to calculate how long it takes to cook eggs. $11.5 million was appropriated by the House to modernize a power plant at the Philadelphia naval yard--which is scheduled to be closed. The National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke spent $160,000 to study if you can cast a spell on someone by drawing an X on his chest. Why? "The phenomenon under investigation cannot be understood or explained by information currently available and it is of obvious interest to determine what other heretofore unknown factors or mechanisms significantly influence muscle strength and movement." Missouri state legislators approved a five-pound 1,012-page bill aimed at reducing state paperwork. When an urgent call came from the Air Force, a trucking firm in Grand Forks, North Dakota, jumped into action. A truck and driver were needed to take an emergency load of potatoes to a military depot in Dallas, Texas. Frantic to get this done ASAP, the trucking firm tried to find an available driver. Everyone was on assignments, but one good civilian took leave from retirement to make the run. He picked up the load at the shipping dock in Grand Forks and drove to Dallas to deliver the spuds on time. While he watched the crew unload the potatoes, the Grand Forks driver asked one of the workers, "Where are these potatoes headed?" The response was quick and mind boggling: "Grand Forks Air Force Base." According to a former FBI agent, during the early 1990s the FBI hat 1,500 informants in the American Communist party. Since all their informants paid dues, the US government was the largest financial supporter of the American Communist party, second only to the Soviet Union. The Air Force spent $100,000 to blast simulated jet engine noise through barns to see how it affected pregnant horses. Result? They didn't like it. $34,645,000 approved by Congress for research into screwworms, even thought the worm has been eliminated from the US. $23 million was spent by the post office to find out how long it takes for the mail to be delivered. $1 million was spent on a Utah program to study how to safely cross the street. Boston Curtis will go down in history as the most unlikely of political candidates. The mayor of Milton, Washington, Kenneth Simmons, placed Curtis on the ballot for the Republican precinct committee in 1933. He was considered a "dark horse" candidate but won the election anyway. His victory made national news because not only was Curtis the underdog--he was also a mule. Mayor Simmons announced he had endorsed the mule's candidacy "to show how careless many voters are." The Indiana State Police instituted an intensive three-month investigation into the suspicious death of one man. Their findings after their in-depth investigation: The man, who had died of thirty-two hammer blows to the head, was not a suicide but the victim of a murder.
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