random thoughts when looking at a pork report
Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today released a list of the most egregious pork barrel projects spilling over in the Fiscal 2008 House Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD) Act. One section of the bill alone – – Economic Development Initiative (EDI) grants — has $78.2 million in pork spread throughout 480 projects. The purported purpose of EDI is to increase economic development and revitalization, but it is too often used as a pork depository.
Pork is one of those things that is a little hard to dissect. Any number of congress critters rail against it, and then slice up all they can for their districts — thus having it both ways. The pork meisters, in the Senate, are Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd — who have wisely staked out their Seniority chairmanships to best enable them to take their jabs at the Federal Budget. But there is a situation that arises where one dismisses Stevens’s infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” as a farce, and then thinks for Stevens’s somewhat non-descript highway appropriations that it is difficult to see how West Virginia couldn’t use those highways.
CAGW could use a better acronym. How do you pronounce “cagw” — specifically the dangling ‘w’ at the end?
— $250,000 for construction of the Walter Clore Wine and Culinary Cente in Prosser, WA, in the district of Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.);
— $200,000 for sidewalks, street furniture and facade improvements in Tamuning, Guam, in the district of Del. Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam)
Maybe the Walter Clore Wine and Culinary Cente will bring in industry and tourism beyond its quarter of a million fund — and usually when I think of any Congress critter and the federal funds he brings in, I stall at the amount that Hanford requires. But it is maybe a little startling to see that the Representative of Guam — who doesn’t have a vote — is in on the action. One doesn’t think much of the power that Guam’s representative delegate brings to the picture. A fifth of a million dollars for sidewalks, street furniture, and facade improvements? What the heck is street furniture, and how much of the $200,000 is going toward it?
And could Doc Hastings get some funds for rodent removal — Prosser, of course, having had that nationally noted Humongous Marmot problem a year or two ago?