Dynamist Blog

Finding Pork and Saying "Never Mind"

porkbusterssm.jpgIn honor InstaPundit and N.Z. Bear's Porkbusters campaign, I went looking for local pork that could be zeroed out to fund hurricane recovery. It was certainly easy to find: Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson put out a press release bragging about $60 million for local projects in the highway bill. (I'm highly skeptical that Rep. Johnson, a Democrat, had much to do with actually obtaining the pork.) As I've said many times on this blog, I'd love to have gorgeous Calatrava-designed bridges over the Trinity River, but I just can't see why people in the rest of the country should pay for them.

I was going to note that even the Dallas Morning News recognized the porkbarrel nature of those bridges in an editorial yesterday, suggesting that funding might at least be delayed to help pay for Katrina recovery. But in today's paper, the editorial board took that back. Today's mea culpa said the bridges "and the Trinity Project will be a huge economic engine for the revitalization of downtown, which supplies the oxygen for much of the rest of North Texas. They are critical to resolving this area's transportation challenges and to enhancing our most important waterway." Of course, even if that argument is true, it has nothing to do with the national interest. I guess Belo higher-ups, conscious of the value of their downtown real estate, objected.

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