Which brings us back to the profligate $286 billion transportation bill passed by a conservative Congress and signed in Illinois this week by a conservative president (who had to take three stabs at just getting the governor’s name straight). The bill has something for everyone - except, naturally, for those without any political clout. Nearly 10 percent of the bill’s cost goes exclusively to pure, unadulterated pork. It would make Tammany Hall’s graft-specialist George Washington Plunkitt proud: Conservatives seen their opportunities and they took ‘em.
You’ve heard of the bill’s inclusion of items like the “bridge to nowhere” - the $230 million concrete connection between the Alaskan town of Ketchikan and Gravina Island (population 50) - but there are other goodies. More than 6,000, actually, including …
… a $4,000,000 bicycle path and public park for Calexico, California; $2,320,000 for landscaping along the Ronald Reagan Freeway; a $2,000,000 parking lot in San Antonio, Texas; $1,200,000 to install lights and whatnot at the Blue Ridge Music Center in Virginia; an even million for “scenic management planning and implementation” at the Journey Through Hallowed Ground, also in Virginia; $750,000 to improve roads at the Pennsylvania State Baseball Stadium; and a $100,000 traffic light for Canoga Park, California. For just $50,000 I’d gladly stand in Canoga Park’s Independence Avenue and Sherman Way intersection and direct traffic myself.
Nice projects, all, but why a struggling Athens, Georgia family without guaranteed health care or a public school in good repair should pay for a yuppie bike path in Calexico, California is beyond me - and should be beyond anyone with an interest in civilized spending priorities.
Yet this is today’s government by conservatism. Welcome to the Republican version of Tammany Hall politics.
Good piece over at p m carpenter's commentary.
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