Shrimp on a Treadmill Calculator

''The following is about the SoaT Index Rating System, a.k.a., the ShoaT Index Rating System. "SoaT" has two meanings: "Shrimp on a Treadmill" and "Snakes on a Train." For the latter, see Snakes on a Train. The Shrimp on a Treadmill Index is a sorting algorithm developed by Dozerfleet Labs, designed to help measure the ludicrousness of government spending on any one particular project involving allocation of taxpayer funds. It is named after the infamous Shrimp Running on a Treadmill video that was shot at Pacific University of Oregon, which sparked controversy about how Congress spends money on frivolous projects. The video clip in question has even featured on John Stossel's The Money Hole.

Note: The algorithm is not entirely scientific; but does provide a guideline for understanding the wisdom (or lack thereof) of government spending on any one project or another.

Basic formula
$$ p = [ (t * b)/165 ] * 100 ;

p!P < = 30 $$

Definitions for sliding scales
There are two sliding scales to determine the SoaT rating of a government spending project.


 * 1) Vileness
 * 2) Cost

Vileness defines how morally wrong or unnecessary that allocation of taxpayer dollars is. There are super-tier groups to the eleven tiers that define this sliding scale:


 * 1) Perfectly Understandable (Tiers 1 and 2)
 * 2) Irritating, But Somewhat Forgivable (Tier 3 and 4)
 * 3) Immoral (Tiers 5, 6, and 7)
 * 4) Abominable (Tiers 8 and 9)
 * 5) Diabolical (Tiers 10 and 11)

Cost measures in brackets approximately how much money a group of taxpayers is forced to pay for the given project. More on that below.

Dimension 1: Vileness
How indefensible the reason for spending is. A "1" means perfectly understandable uses of public money. The higher up this scale goes, the harder it is to justify use of public money for that type of project.

Tier 1: Patriotism and Survival
This includes military spending, actual needs of paralyzed war veterans, and protection of infrastructures and utilities.

Tier 2: Basic Services
This includes actual needs of the sick and elderly, and protection of basic services like police and fire. It also includes Social Security, retirement, and 911 dispatch services.

Tier 3: Paper Pushing Busybodies
Any overregulation of the above causes by bureaucrats, especially in ways that only create arbitrary laws and mandates to cover "what if" situations; and/or which are counter-productive to a healthy economy or a workplace's efficiency.

Tier 4: Micromanagement
This is defined as having excess committees and redundant services all doing the same job as one another. Having three bureaus for the same job on a federal level, four more on a state level, and 15 more on a city level is insane.

Tier 5: Politician's personal vanity
The mayor blows $8,000,000 on a statue of himself to adorn the city with. Because he's totally not compensating for something. This is when a project does not fall into any of the other categories listed below; but is clearly being funded because the brainchild behind it all is a megalomaniac.

Tier 6: Burn the Witch
Use of public monies to defame opponents and their causes via media libel. Traditionally done via dishonest campaign "smear" ads, politicians have often used taxpayer funds to defame their opponents on issues that don't matter. This helps to distract from issues that do matter. In recent times, some money has been allocated under the table to media elites who get in bed with said politicians. Media outlets then combine these figures with their own funds to replace actual news correspondence with Speculation Committees.

Obama acts like a baby? Nah, that's just them mean Tea Party guys being mean because they won't let him have every single last thing he's ever demanded. Michelle Bachmann goes for days without a break and then complains of a headache? Oh...she must be too wimpy to be presidential material! Journalists have been willing to throw their credibility away, just to destroy the Tea Party. Yet, they cringe when Sarah Palin has the nerve to call what they do "blood libel."

But when someone in the government helps the media pull off a smear using taxpayer dollars, then that falls under this tier.

Tier 7: Unnecessary Projects in the Name of "Science"
Why can the National Science Foundation waste millions on Jell-O wrestling? Why do we have lobbyists that want human cloning, in spite the ways it could be misused in violation of the 13th and 14th Amendments? Why do we want embryonic stem cells that create tooth tumors when adult stem cells produce the real results? (Hint: [not actually, but theoretically] justifying abortion, ahem *cough*.) Why do shrimp run on treadmills? Why do we blow millions to determine how much liquor it takes for college girls to agree to casual sex? Not really for science; but for self-interest. Some whack wants to know what would happen; puts out some BS about how humanity might benefit from the discovery, asks real nice for free monetary handouts from a politician hungry to get votes, and...voila!!! Instant government grant!

And why not? Politicians who don't play along get chased down by mobs naive enough to believe that "for science" is always a justifiable excuse. Violence from those mobs is not unheard of either. Why are they not all rounded up and put on chain gangs for their rioting? Because that would be "inhumane."

Thus, we have Shrimp on a Treadmill. And that is actually not the worst offender in this category. Just one of the most comical.

Tier 8: Vote Baiting
These are projects that are done solely to win over voters. If they are the result of minority "leaders" extorting taxpayers using engineered guilt trips, then that falls under Tier 10. Tier 8 is when stuff is handed out "for free" to certain neighborhoods known to vote strongly for one party or another. In other words, a Nebraska farmer must accept a 10% increase in taxes on his crops so that congressmen notorious for running gay brothels from their basements at taxpayers' expense can seduce New Yorkers to into voting Democrat. As for the businesses that actually sell these items, and lose money when the government hands the items out for free? Too bad, so sad for those businesses.

What's this? A Tea Party member in Minnesota might actually win an election? Boom! At taxpayers' expense, a bunch of new vote counters are "suddenly" hired&mdash;in under an hour. And they're all Democrats. And they've "suddenly" discovered an entire trunk full of votes! And all those votes are Democrat votes. And half of them were signed by a woman who has been dead for over a century. The other half were signed by Mickey Mouse. But they count! And it is at taxpayers' expense that these new vote counters must count Micky Mouse's votes.

Traditionally, groups such as ACORN were behind scams like this. But since ACORN was defunded, hundreds of its decentralized subsidiaries have taken over the job.

Tier 9: Loony Lefting
Projects partial to radical left-wing causes.


 * Example 1: In spite the guy who started belief in global warming now arguing against it, world governments spend trillions every year on summits to fight global warming. And their argument: Gaia (a pagan goddess) is mad that mankind exists.  Therefore, man is responsible for climate change.  Therefore, modern society (meaning, just the United States and any other country that dares to practice capitalism) must be destroyed.

Monies allocated to these causes are not only dishonest and extortionist of taxpayers, but are also a way for Euro-snobs to punish Americans for existing by forcing them to put their money in the idolatrous offering plates of world leaders bowing before the whims of a pagan goddess.


 * Example 2: Declaring it illegal for any particular state to defund its local branches of Planned Parenthood, even after an investigation has revealed those chapters to be guilty on multiple counts of covering up child sexual abuse. The reason?  Because Planned Parenthood is a sacred cow of the Democratic Party.  And then punishing those states by raiding their state finances because they refused to let criminals get away with it just to aid one political party.


 * Example 3: Taxpayers forced to fund all abortions, period. Even the most absolutely vain ones and even ones that are clearly forced or coerced.  You must pay, even if you believe it is murder and find it appalling.  In past centuries, this was called tyranny.


 * Example 4: It's only bad when America drills for oil or has a spill. China and Mexico can be as careless and greedy as they want.  It's only bad when America wants to be self-sufficient.


 * Example 5: We must rebuild every single country wherein which we fight a war to depose a despot who has become a threat to all life. Even if the locals routinely whack off to thoughts of murdering us in our sleep.  Billions wasted on building soccer camps in Baghdad with al-Queada watching in the distance only half-amused?  Gotta be done, because Uncle Sam said so.


 * Example 6: We must go around the world "apologizing" for our ancestors sticking up for themselves, and apologizing for myths invented by Deconstructionists of abuses that our ancestors supposedly committed against the ancestors of outsiders. Outsiders who have blisters on their spanked monkeys for all the times they have fantasized about murdering us in our sleep.  We must force-feed this pre-engineered guilt down the throats of Kindergarteners&mdash;all at taxpayers' expense and sometimes without their knowledge or consent.


 * Example 7: Socialists inherently believe that socialized medicine is automatically better, just because it's socialized. And nothing had ever dare tell them otherwise.  Therefore, forcing socialized medicine is the logical conclusion.  Obamacare was declared the most egregious offender in this category since the moment it was first passed.

Tier 10: Appeasement gimmicks for entitlement-minded extortionists
This includes Eurotrash, Greek-originating civilians, and others who believe in cradle-to-grave socialism and that they should be able to have everything for nothing. The slightest chance that they don't get something they want, and they threaten to start riots and get the press involved and vilify the state for not being a nice nanny and giving them their pacifier when they ask for it.

This tier also includes appeasement for degenerate illegal immigrants who threaten to shoot police to get what they want. Instead of being engulfed in flames for resisting deportation, they're allowed access to rewards that someone else worked hard to earn. They rewrite history to suit their agendas, and manipulate liberal guilt to convince leaders to rob a modern man's fortunes and give it to the lowlifes because of what may or may not have been done to those lowlifes' ancestors by a different man's ancestors.

To appease these seditionists by giving in to their demands for federal funds is tantamount to aiding and abetting terrorism. And for the Obama or any other presidential administration to make that standard policy is itself an act of sedition. In fact, since a lot of the ultra-violent crybabies are not even US citizens, it's tantamount to treason.

Do you work hard? Too bad! A lazy Mexican can rob your entire life's savings away from you. Because if the government says no to his demands? Gasp! He'll loot a store! And his cousins will help him! We don't want to look bad taking bullets to all of them, do we? Wouldn't they spin that to make it look like genocide? (Never mind their talks of killing gringos.)

So-called black "leaders" like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who have been sellouts to America's worst enemies in other countries' communist parties since day one, will try to extort money from literally anything. If they don't like it, they claim it's "bad for Black America." And voila! They instantly get their way, even if their claim was total BS. All they need is to put one 500 lb. woman on TV who can claim to be adversely affected, and act teary-eyed, and that alone is "proof" of their demands.

This is the second-most-vile misuse of taxpayer funds: feeding the greedy porker mouths of extortionists who exploit the interests of minorities to fill their own butter-bellies. And funding the demands of nanny state worshipers who don't believe they should have to work a single day of their lives to earn a single dollar.

Tier 11: Lending borrowed money to aid enemy despots
When your home country is defaulting on loans to another, why lend money you don't have to an evil dictator in a third country who has repeatedly stood by lunatics calling for your country's demise? When Obama lends money borrowed from China to aid Hugo Chavez, this is an example of lending to enemy despots.

In the old days, that was called treason. Now, it's official policy.

Note
Subtract 0.25 from the vileness scale for projects that create jobs in the private sector that genuinely produce goods. (Services that are not directly corresponding to the production of goods don't count.) Add 0.75 to the vileness score for projects that create bureaucratic jobs that do not directly result in the creation of private sector goods.

Dimension 2: Actual cost
How much is being spent, within certain brackets. Either one time or on a regular schedule.

How to use
To use the SoaT algorithm, merely multiply the vileness tier of a government spending project by the cost bracket. The product of these two factors divided by the highest product possible for the scale is the SoaT index rating for that government project. Values lower than 0.01 are automatically rounded up to 0.01, so that the end result score may be listed as a percentage.


 * Example 1: Shrimp running on treadmills "for science" (i.e., the NSF's self-interest) &rarr; Tier 7 x Bracket 3 = 21 / 165 = a SoaT rating of 13%.
 * Example 2: Obamacare &rarr; (Tier 9 + 0.75 ) x Bracket 15 = 135 / 165 = 89%, almost three times the amount of unjustifiability required by the scale to be deemed wasteful in the first place! That's like having three times the legal limit of alcohol in one's blood when caught driving drunk!
 * Giving money to Egypt while under the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood ranks at 78%! The same goes for giving money to Libya.  That's over 2-1/2 times the minimum requirement!


 * Lowest product possible: 1
 * Lowest possible score: 1%
 * Highest product possible: 165
 * Highest possible score: 100%