Unbelievable...
I've spent the last two days thinking I should really write something on here, and arguing with myself about what. Thank goodness for Congress--my dilemma is solved.
Once again, while browsing the online news, I stumbled across a nugget that struck my sense of the ridiculous so hard I had to react. The sad thing is, it should have made me irate--but I'm so used to it now that it just irked me.
There's a government watchdog group, Citizens Against Government Waste, which every year releases a 'Pig Book'--a list of porkbarrel spending that got shuffled into bills passed by Congress. Now, their definition of 'pork' is a little loose--it's any project that isn't specifically requested by the President--but some of the items on their list are enough to make you laugh, or cry, or curse, depending on what your initial response to congressional gluttony may be.
Some of the real winners on the list--
Water-free urinals-- $1 million
A teapot museum-- $500,000
The Museum of Glass-- $550,000
The National Cattle Congress-- $250,000 (This one I could sympathize with--I love a good
steak every now and then...)
The Arctic Winter Games-- $500,000
The last one is particularly noteworthy, as Alaska leads the pack in pork projects, for the fifth consecutive year--both in terms of raw dollars spent, and in terms of per capita dollars spent. At least they don't get away with everything--last year, the Alaska senator responsible for most of these projects wanted $223 million to build a quarter-mile bridge from Ketchikan to an island just off the coast with a grand total population of 50. The request was dropped when other senators called him on it (though they were probably all wishing, inwardly, that they'd had the raw audacity to ask for something like that).
Not everyone is that bad...Georgia averages only $12 a head in pork spending. Utah wasn't even mentioned in either of the articles I saw. The national average is $31 a head.
Once again, our national leaders are practicing the kind of double-talk for which politicians are despised. On one hand, they're calling for great fiscal responsibility; they're even financing a two-front war on terrorism (regardless of whether or not you agree that's the end goal of it, that's what they're calling it). In the five projects listed above, there is over $2.5 million that could be spent on equipment, or on helping repair infrastructure in the countries involved so that we'd have less negative publicity. I mean--c'mon--a TEAPOT museum? What kind of annual expenses could they have? And if they can't figure out a way to finance them on their own, then maybe they should realize that there just isn't a demand for a building to go look at teapots. Water-free urinals? Talk to NASA, they've already tackled that problem. Or just buy a chemical toilet.
And the Arctic Winter Games? I bet they're even held in the summer...
I've spent the last two days thinking I should really write something on here, and arguing with myself about what. Thank goodness for Congress--my dilemma is solved.
Once again, while browsing the online news, I stumbled across a nugget that struck my sense of the ridiculous so hard I had to react. The sad thing is, it should have made me irate--but I'm so used to it now that it just irked me.
There's a government watchdog group, Citizens Against Government Waste, which every year releases a 'Pig Book'--a list of porkbarrel spending that got shuffled into bills passed by Congress. Now, their definition of 'pork' is a little loose--it's any project that isn't specifically requested by the President--but some of the items on their list are enough to make you laugh, or cry, or curse, depending on what your initial response to congressional gluttony may be.
Some of the real winners on the list--
Water-free urinals-- $1 million
A teapot museum-- $500,000
The Museum of Glass-- $550,000
The National Cattle Congress-- $250,000 (This one I could sympathize with--I love a good
steak every now and then...)
The Arctic Winter Games-- $500,000
The last one is particularly noteworthy, as Alaska leads the pack in pork projects, for the fifth consecutive year--both in terms of raw dollars spent, and in terms of per capita dollars spent. At least they don't get away with everything--last year, the Alaska senator responsible for most of these projects wanted $223 million to build a quarter-mile bridge from Ketchikan to an island just off the coast with a grand total population of 50. The request was dropped when other senators called him on it (though they were probably all wishing, inwardly, that they'd had the raw audacity to ask for something like that).
Not everyone is that bad...Georgia averages only $12 a head in pork spending. Utah wasn't even mentioned in either of the articles I saw. The national average is $31 a head.
Once again, our national leaders are practicing the kind of double-talk for which politicians are despised. On one hand, they're calling for great fiscal responsibility; they're even financing a two-front war on terrorism (regardless of whether or not you agree that's the end goal of it, that's what they're calling it). In the five projects listed above, there is over $2.5 million that could be spent on equipment, or on helping repair infrastructure in the countries involved so that we'd have less negative publicity. I mean--c'mon--a TEAPOT museum? What kind of annual expenses could they have? And if they can't figure out a way to finance them on their own, then maybe they should realize that there just isn't a demand for a building to go look at teapots. Water-free urinals? Talk to NASA, they've already tackled that problem. Or just buy a chemical toilet.
And the Arctic Winter Games? I bet they're even held in the summer...
posted by Curtis at 10:43 AM
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