Comments on: Why this Pork-Busters Stuff is Nonsense

By: Steve Verdon

Steve Verdon — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 07:51:40 +0000

madmat, My team? Pray tell what is "my team"? I know you wont answer as comments like yours are usually drive-by pablum with no connection to the facts. As for suggestions, I have made them before, just not in this post. Bithead, Of course we need institutional changes. Everybody hates the pork the "other guy" brings home for his district/state/etc. But their own pork, why that is important stuff. YAJ,

So we should a) stop drawing attention to it, b) only complain about it when the election year is well underway and not look forward two years and try to get challengers in place for primary battles on some of the worst porkers or c) just give up all together.

Can you write something that isn't a strawman for once? Did I suggest any of the above? I do believe the last sentence of my post totally contradicts what you have written. Vulgorilla,

Thatâ??s right. The status quo has way too much momentum to have any change applied. It happened back in 1776, and it can happen again.

Read my response to YAJ. I didn't say it couldn't be done, but until some serious discussion of changing institutions--i.e. something like amending the Constitution--it is just a waste of time, IMO.

By: Vulgorilla

Vulgorilla — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 01:53:40 +0000

"The idea that things can change without some pretty substantial institutional changes is just a waste of time, IMO."

That's right. The status quo has way too much momentum to have any change applied. It happened back in 1776, and it can happen again.

By: jpe

jpe — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 22:49:36 +0000

So we should a) stop drawing attention to it...

You make an institutional change, like some version of pay-go. Pork will never be significantly unless it the cut is compelled by law.

By: don surber

don surber — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 20:35:54 +0000

It's our money. We should be able to tell congress how to spend it. If that's "pork" than so be it.

By: yetanotherjohn

yetanotherjohn — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 20:12:42 +0000

So we should a) stop drawing attention to it, b) only complain about it when the election year is well underway and not look forward two years and try to get challengers in place for primary battles on some of the worst porkers or c) just give up all together.

Think of this as an analogy of the NEA. They are incumbents who care less about failing schools than they do about stopping competition or getting more money into their hands. Do you just stop caring if you don't immediately make headway?

Not all problems avail themselves of immediate solutions. Sometimes it can be a multi-generational struggle to change the attitudes away from what is convenient to what is right.

By: Bithead

Bithead — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 19:50:10 +0000

I'm not convinced institutional changes the issue. I do, however, I agree that this pork busters businesses been nonsense since jump street, since one of the inherit all of these of the pork busters movement is that they and they alone get to define what is and is not "pork".

By: Gollum

Gollum — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 19:26:12 +0000

PorkBusters complains of $27 billion in pork projects in FY2005, or about 1.1% of federal budgeted outlays in that year.

Don't we have bigger fish to fry than that?

By: madmatt

madmatt — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 18:42:44 +0000

Well then why don't you make some suggestions instead of sitting by while your "team" continually loots the treasury? Obviously they won't listen to libs or moderates anymore!