It happens every year and it's still enough to make you shake your head. Doctor and Senator Tom Coburn released his 2011 Wastebook of government spending this week and it's eye opening. Coburn calls it "6.5 billion dollars of stupidity" and says people need to wake up and take a look at how their money is being spent.  We had a very interesting conversation with the Senator. It includes his thoughts on the race for president and the Keystone pipeline as well as the 2011 Wastebook. Click here to listen to our exclusive interview with Doctor Coburn.

As soon as the study came out we put in a call to the Senator and reached him by cell phone as he was Christmas shopping with his wife in Tulsa. The Doctor was adamant that the public needs to be more aware of what's happening around them. "There's no common sense, nobody's looking, and people need to wake up."  An Oklahoma project made the top ten list this year. Over a half million dollars of taxpayer money is going to transform a dilapidated rock house into a welcome center on the Talahina Drive. The problem acording to Coburn? "We already have two welcome centers there." 

We wanted to find out how you felt about the latest release so we grabbed a copy of the list and went out to see what your thoughts are. You can hear some of those opinons with a click here.

 Check the links below for the entire study as well interviews and more.

Examples of wasteful spending highlighted in “Wastebook 2011” include:

 • $75,000 to promote awareness about the role Michigan plays in producing Christmas trees & poinsettias.

 • $15.3 million for one of the infamous Bridges to Nowhere in Alaska.

 • $113,227 for video game preservation center in New York.

 • $550,000 for a documentary about how rock music contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

 • $48,700 for 2^nd annual Hawaii Chocolate Festival, to promote Hawaii’s chocolate industry.

 • $350,000 to support an International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy.

 • $10 million for a remake of “Sesame Street” for Pakistan.

 • $35 million allocated for political party conventions in 2012.

 • $765,828 to subsidize “pancakes for yuppies” in the nation’s capital.

 • $764,825 to study how college students use mobile devises for social networking.

Check the entire list here.