The federal government wastes your tax dollars worse than a drunken sailor on shore leave. The 1984 Grace Commission uncovered that the Department of Defense spent $640 for a toilet seat and $436 for a hammer. Twenty years later things weren't much better. In 2004, Congress spent a record-breaking $22.9 billion dollars of your money on 10,656 of their pork-barrel projects. The war on terror has a lot to do with the record $413 billion in deficit spending, but it's also the result of pork over the last 18 years the likes of: - $50 million for an indoor rain forest in Iowa - $102 million to study screwworms which were long ago eradicated from American soil - $273,000 to combat goth culture in Missouri - $2.2 million to renovate the North Pole (Lucky for Santa!) - $50,000 for a tattoo removal program in California - $1 million for ornamental fish research Funny in some instances and jaw-droppingly stupid and wasteful in others, The Pig Book proves one thing about Capitol Hill: pork is king!

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"From adjusted gross income to zoning and property taxes, the second edition of The Encyclopedia of Taxation and Tax Policy offers the best and most complete guide to taxes and tax-related issues. More than 150 tax practitioners and administrators, policymakers, and academics have contributed. The result is a unique and authoritative reference that examines virtually all tax instruments used by governments (individual income, corporate income, sales and value-added, property, estate and gift, franchise, poll, and many variants of these taxes), as well as characteristics of a good tax system, budgetary issues, and many current federal, state, local, and international tax policy issues. The new edition has been completely revised, with 40 new topics and 200 articles reflecting six years of legislative changes. Each essay provides the generalist with a quick and reliable introduction to many topics but also gives tax specialists the benefit of other experts' best thinking, in a manner that makes the complex understandable. Reference lists point the reader to additional sources of information for each topic. The first edition of The Encyclopedia of Taxation and Tax Policy was selected as an Outstanding Academic Book of the Year (1999) by Choice magazine."--Publisher's website.