Stupid Government Tricks: Outrageous (But True!) Stories of Bureaucratic Bungling andWashington Wast (But True! Stories of Bureaucratic Bungling and Washington Waste) - Softcover

In the aggregate, the silly expenditures Kohut chronicles constitute a minute slice of the federal pie, but why get mad at the big budget busters when it's easier to gripe about the idiocies that put your tax dollars to work studying constipation in worms, how bovine methane emissions contribute to global warming, or send sand (as ballast) into earth orbit. These are just three of hundreds of head-shaking examples of bureaucratic judgment run amok that Kohut has read about in newspapers and rewritten here with panache and sarcastic headings. Typical is "The Final Answer to All Those Lightbulb Jokes," which replaces the ethnic group with nuclear weapons plant workers, of whom 43 are required for the screwy task. Such cheap compendiums as this have short shelf-lives, but their constant publication and occasional appearance on lists of best-selling paperbacks indicates a demand that libraries should heed. (Incidentally, librarians-as-bureaucrats get off easy: Kohut gives them only one slam--the Library of Congress, for not knowing how many books it's missing.) Gilbert Taylor