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Here piggie, piggie! Billions in fed trough
Millions earmarked for La Raza radicals, Charlie Rangel library, more 2008 pork

It looks like Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., is going to get his wish – $2 million in taxpayer funding for a library commemorating his 37 years in the House of Representatives.

The Charles B. Rangel Center for Public service will serve as a repository for his "papers," and the congressman will have his own office in the Harlem complex. The facility has already attracted some $25 million in funding from private sources.

Rangel suggests the project will someday be "as important as the Carter and Clinton libraries."

That's just one of hundreds of so-called "earmarks," pet projects of members of the House and Senate, costing taxpayers billions set for approval in the 2008 budget.

The pork-barrel spending planned for next year includes $3.5 million for La Raza, sometimes described as a radical hate group which advocates a takeover of parts of the U.S. Southwest by Mexico.

A plan by Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, both Democrats from New York, to spend $1 million on a Woodstock museum was shot down this week to the astonishment of its backers.

But plenty of other pork is still on the plate:

    * $1 million for the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, requested by Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, both Democrats from Arkansas;

    * $200,000 for the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in Las Vegas, requested by Rep. Shelley Berkley of Nevada;

    * $3.74 million for research into the Formosan Subterranean Termite, requested by Reps. Rodney Alexander and Richard Baker of Louisiana;

    * AFL-CIO Working for America Institute, requested by Sen. Tom Harkin;

    * $750,000 for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library, requested by Clinton, Schumer and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid;

    * $3.76 million for the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, requested by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison;

    * $1 million for the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library, requested by Sen. Thad Cochrane, Republican of Mississippi;

    * $150,000 for rodent control on the Aleutian Islands, requested by Ted Stevens of Alaska;

    * $250,000 to build the Walter Clore Wine and Culinary Center in Washington, requested by Rep. Doc Hastings.

    * $470,000 to study the Asian Long-Horned Beetle, requested by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois;

    * $244,077 for bee research in Weslaco, Texas, requested by Rep. Chet Edwards;

    * $213,386 to study the Oliver Fruit Fly in Montpelier, France, requested by Mike Thompson of California;

    * $1.7 million for the Centers for Disease Control to fund a Hollywood liaison to advise doctor dramas;

    * $5.1 million for "audio and visual integration" in the CDC's new Thomas R. Harkin communications and visitor center – and, yes, that is Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., is sick of this kind of spending. He was responsible for leading the successful fight against the Woodstock Museum.

Not only did he question the propriety and constitutionality of spending taxpayer money on building a commemorative facility to the 1969 rock music festival, but he pointed out the project had all the "earmarks" of a political quid pro quo.

The museum is being funded by billionaire Alan Gerry and his foundation, which has investment income of $24 million a year. Gerry donated $229,000 to political campaigns, with much of it going to support Clinton and Schumer, the senators carrying water for his pet project.

Coburn has offered an amendment calling on the Senate to place a temporary moratorium on transportation pork until all structurally deficient bridges are repaired. His measure was defeated 82-14.

Coburn is the author of the WND Book, "Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders."

A report by the Heritage Foundation last week found some 11,351 pork projects in the House and Senate appropriations bills.

"If this legislation passes, thousands of government grants will be distributed based on political, lobbying and/or campaign donations, rather than on merit," says Brian M. Riedl, author of the report.

He also points out it was the incoming Democratic leadership, particularly in the House, that promised to clean up pork-barrel spending.

Earlier this year, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., announced his intention to keep secret the pork projects in spending bills until after the bills had passed the House, Riedl says. Public pressure forced him to back down.

That's over 43 million and I'm sure that there are many more not listed. I do believe it is past time to trim the U.S. budget and the first step in doing this is to trim these do nothing people from the budget.

Gov’t Pork That Endangers Our Troops

Today’s pork report centers on the porcine efforts of Representative David Wu, Democrat from Oregon, who wrung out of the Congressional budget a $2 million earmark for T-Shirts that were supposed to go to the U.S. Marines. Of course, Wu forgot to notice that the very shirts he had surreptitiously appropriated Federal money for were deemed a danger to our troops health by the very branch upon which he had wished to bestow the fruits of his pork barreling.

According to the Associated Press:


Of course, this treasury raiding by Wu was to pay back a company that gave him campaign donations, the ol’ quid pro quo rears its ugly head.


The problem is that the shirts that Wu set up as a mandate for the Marines to take delivery of were made of nylon and shirts made of such material have been deemed a danger to the troops seeing battle “after finding the fabric melts in intense heat, adhering to the skin” causing severe burns to our injured troops.


Nice job, Wu. Glad you’re there for our troops.

Then, to make matters worse, Wu inserted another $1 million in at another time to purchase the very same shirts again!

Naturally farmer Wu denies there is any “link” to his giving out Federal largess and his receiving campaign donations from the very company that benefited from these budget-busting earmarks.

Yeah. OK. Sure.

It was hard to hear Wu during the press conference, though, what with all the clatter of cloven hooves all around him and all.

This is a picture perfect case of why earmarks should be done away with. Not only is Wu’s raiding of the treasury bad fiscal policy but in this case it can actually lead to putting out troops in even more danger.

So, the Pork king medal goes to David Wu this week. May his constituents reward him by introducing him to the unemployment line.

Oh my gosh!  You're cracking me up!!

Bush questions Hillary's $1 million Woodstock pork
Spokeswoman calls plan 'not good use' of taxpayer funds

The White House is challenging the fiscal priorities of senator and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, in light of the $1 million she wanted the federal government to spend on a project critics characterize as "a taxpayer-funded LSD flashback."

The issue is the $1 million in federal money backed by both Clinton and New York's other senator, Chuck Schumer, to create a memorial for the 1969 counterculture music festival Woodstock in upstate New York.

"I heard that Woodstock was quite a cultural event," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and a candidate for the GOP nomination for president, said this week.

"I happened to be in prison at the time," said the former Vietnam prisoner of war. "Though I wasn't able to see it, I understand that it was quite a pharmaceutical marvel. But let me tell you, I don't think we ought to be spending 1 million of your tax dollars to have a museum there."

He compared the spending proposal by Clinton and Schumer to an earlier plan – later abandoned – to spend $229 million to build a bridge to an Alaskan island with a population of 50.

He called it an example of a broken and corrupt system.

At a White House news brief, WND correspondent Les Kinsolving raised the issue for the administration branch to consider.

"Sen. McCain said that while he is sure Woodstock was a cultural and pharmaceutical event, no one who supports spending $1 million for a Woodstock memorial, as Sen. Schumer and Clinton have, should be president. Does President Bush agree or disagree?" he asked.

"I think the president would disagree with that earmark," said his spokeswoman, Dana Perino. "It's not a good use of taxpayer dollars."

The $1 million plan was debated this week in Congress, and struck down. It had been attached as an earmark to the federal health and education spending bill and supported by both senators.

Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz, and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., worked to remove the earmark, and they won a key 52-42 vote.

Critics have labeled the plan a hippie museum and a taxpayer-funded LSD flashback.

In a second question, Kinsolving raised the issue of work on the border fence, which has been approved by Congress and the president for several hundred miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.

"The AP reports that there is considerable opposition from landowners in Texas to federal plans to build a border fence. And my question: What is the president's position on resistance to this fence that he and Congress agreed is needed?" Kinsolving asked.

"The president, as former governor of Texas, knows that there are many people on the border who disagree with having a fence on their private property, and we – the president has asked Secretary Chertoff to work with them as we try to secure our border," Perino said.

The AP reported that the government had been offering property owners $3,000 to exchange for permission to conduct surveys for the fence project, but some landowners were refusing. The offer later was withdrawn.

The AP concluded that the plan to build 370 miles of steel fence is "widely opposed" in the Rio Grande Valley, because the region depends economically on cross-border traffic.

Congress' plan has approved $1.2 billion to finish construction of about 700 miles of fence along the border, including part of that total in "virtual fence," which would include cameras, high-tech sensors and other technology.

Maybe a million dollars doesn't go as far as it used but I can sure think of better ways to spend that money.
If Hillary wants to immortalize that "pharmaceutical marvel"  maybe she could invest time in a ceramics class and make something for her lawn.