HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Taxpayer-Funded Halloween Handouts

Halloween is a fun occasion for kids to dress up and go door-to-door looking for handouts of candy and other goodies. What taxpayers don’t realize is that all levels of government celebrate Trick or Treat all year long by handing out tax dollars to unnecessary programs and projects. The scary part is that taxpayers almost always end up tricked.  As the Taxpayers Protection Alliance wraps up a week-long celebration of Halloween (read previous blog postings here, here, and here), today’s offering of Trick or Treats features five frightening examples of Halloween-themed tricks on taxpayers, featuring a jack-o’-lantern carve out, subsidies for scary movies, a high-priced Halloween party, a punkin’ chuckin’ pork project and a government-subsidized corn maze. WARNING!! We repeat, we advise strong parental guidance because some material may not be suitable for children since they are the ones that will ultimately be paying for these tricks.

Federal Jack-O’-Lantern Subsidies Carve a Chunk Out of Taxpayers’ Wallets

Agricultural subsidies for products like peanuts, dairy and sugar are fairly well known. Most taxpayers aren’t aware that the federal government also carved out subsidies for pumpkin growers. In fact, federal taxpayers spent more than $1.2 million to underwrite pumpkin growers and subsidize the cost of federal pumpkin crop insurance programs between 1995 and 2010.

That cost has been swelling recently. Over the past three years, the cost of subsidizing pumpkins has increased to $134,589 annually, according to estimates from the Environmental Working Group’s Farm Subsidy Database.

The expense of pumpkin insurance to taxpayers is expected to skyrocket to record levels this fall since heavy rains and flooding from Hurricane Irene destroyed hundreds of thousands of pumpkins in the Northeast.

Horror Movie Handouts

The Arizona Commission on the Arts squandered $16,632 in public money on The Loft Cinema to, among other things, screen offensive horror films this Halloween.

The Tucson-based art house movie theater is celebrating Halloween by showing “Motel Hell,” “The Human Centipede Part 2: Full Sequence” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” using part of a grant funded by state tax dollars and federal tax dollars courtesy of the National Endowment for the Arts.

“Motel Hell” is the story of a farmer who uses the bodies of murdered motel guests to make his prized sausage. In the sequel to one of the most controversial movies ever made, the star of “The Human Centipede Part 2” tortures then surgically connects a dozen people mouth to anus. The Loft Cinema’s Halloween showing of the cult classic horror movie parody “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” features a live “terrifying virgin suicide” and plenty of boas and fishnet stockings.

Madison’s Frightening Festival of Wasteful Spending

Madison, Wisconsin, celebrates Halloween in an unusual way, by blowing $180,000 in taxpayers’ hard-earned money on an event called “Freakfest.”

Freakfest, which is held on State Street between the state capitol and the University of Wisconsin campus, draws about 40,000 revelers each Halloween for concerts and costume contests.  The largest portion of the event’s $180,000 price tag finances extra police protection, which is necessary given Freakfests’ reputation of ending in riots and tear gas.

According to a representative from Mayor Paul Soglin’s office, in addition to the cost of the extra police protection, Madison taxpayers pour cash into the city’s streets and parks departments’ budgets to fund Madison’s pricey party.

Chunkin’ Cash in Colorado

The Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, celebrates fall by shooting pumpkins hundreds of feet through the air at the expense of taxpayers.

The event, called “Punkin’ Chunkin’ Colorado,” features seven classes of various pumpkin-shooting air guns, catapults and slingshots. There are prizes for longest shot in each category and the most theatrical team of pumpkin shooters, as well as a grand prize for the gourd gun that shoots pumpkins the farthest.

Much of the town’s $307,000 “special events” budget is blown on staging and promoting the event each October. The Visit Aurora Promotion Board, the local tourism agency, also uses a chunk of its $341,000 taxpayer-funded budget to underwrite the expense of smashing pumpkins over great distances.

An “a-MAZE-ing” Waste of Money

Many of Tennessee’s taxpayers are still lost as to why state leaders are subsidizing corn mazes. The Tennessee Department of Agriculture gave more than $7,000 to improve business operations at a corn maze in Northeast Tennessee.

The goofy grant is part of an $888,000 spending spree intended to boost agritourism, and encourage diversification and innovation in farming. As a result, vineyards, cattle farms and even the corn maze are now receiving a new form of welfare funded by Tennesseans.

Cleek Farms, the Kingsport-based enterprise using tax dollars to subsidizing the five acre corn maze, also features a cow train and food vendors selling deep-fried Oreo’s.