Golden Fleece Award

The Golden Fleece Award is presented to those public officials in the United States who the judges feel waste public money.

Established in 1975 by former U.S. Senator William Proxmire (D-Wisconsin), and issued until 1988, it was revived by the Advisory Board of the Taxpayers for Common Sense in 2000. Its name is a tangential reference to the Order of the Golden Fleece, and a play on the transitive verb to fleece, as in charging excessively for goods or services.

Award winners included:

Office of Education for spending $219,592 in a “curriculum package” to teach college students how to watch television.
National Science Foundation for spending $84,000 on a study on love.
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded project by psychologist Harris Rubin for $121,000, on developing "some objective evidence concerning marijuana's effect on sexual arousal by exposing groups of male pot-smokers to pornographic films and measuring their responses by means of sensors attached to their penises, in 1976.
Bureau of Land Management.
NASA's SETI program for the scientific search for extraterrestrial civilizations, although he backpedaled after being visited by Dr. Carl Sagan.
United States Postal Service for spending over $3.4 million on a Madison Avenue ad campaign to make Americans write more letters to one another.
United States Congress.
The White House
United States Department of the Army for a 1981 study on how to buy a bottle of Worcestershire sauce.
United States Department of Labor.
United States Department of the Interior.
United States Department of Energy.
National Park Service.
MIT, for the Aspen Movie Map.

[edit] See also