Thread: Here Piggie, Piggie! Billions In Fed Trough

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
Here piggie, piggie! Billions in fed trough
Millions earmarked for La Raza radicals, Charlie Rangel library, more 2008 pork
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: October 19, 2007
1:33 a.m. Eastern



© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com


Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. (Bloomberg News)
WASHINGTON – 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.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artic ... E_ID=55952



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.





http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artic ... E_ID=58239

I wanted the woodstock museum

Woodstock Musuem for all those people that didn't inhale?
What a waste of money!

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

This is the only thing on the list that sounds reasonable. If and only if this is researching why existing hives are dieing. We are loosing honey bees hives at an alarming rate and we need them to pollinate produce. They serve a purpose in our food chain. Also in the South, Africanized (Killer Bees) have crossbreed with English honey bees and the production of honey had dropped and the hive can be deadly to livestock and humans, if they are aggressive. Quarter of a Million might be too much!

Dixie

why are we giving so much money to an anti-american group like La Raza. I think we should all get together and hire the ACLU to fight that on discrimmination charges. Oh, i forgot only the white Americans in tihs country are racist. Still I bet they would take our case. Do you have to pay them? If so, how dl illegal aliens pay them? Mabe it cuts into their money they send back home.

$3.74 million for research into the Formosan Subterranean Termite

I can't find the words........stupifing! .....along with the Oliver fruit fly in France. How can these people do this with a straight face???

Harry Reid is behind the La Raza earmarks.

Dixie

"The Formosan subterranean termite acquired its name because it was first described in Taiwan in the early 1900s, but C. formosanus is probably endemic to southern China. This destructive species was apparently transported to Japan prior to the 1600s and to Hawaii in the late 1800s (Su and Tamashiro 1987). By the 1950s, it was reported in South Africa and Sri Lanka. During the 1960s it was found in Texas, Louisiana, and South Carolina. In 1980, a well-established colony was thriving in a condominium in Hallandale Beach, Florida. The Formosan termite is rarely found north of 35° north latitude. They have been reported from eleven states including: Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. Their distribution will probably continue to be restricted to southern areas because their eggs will not hatch below about 20°C (68 °F)."From Wikipedia


I, too, am aggrieved at the earmark spending. However, what is listed in this article is reallly small stuff. In my city we are looking at an Interstate freeway bridge replacement that is estimated, now, at S4 billion and which many people believe will only make our traffic problems worse, necessitating billions more in coming years in other projects. We have been proposing an alternative that would probably cost about 2 billion in its completed stage---as opposed to the 20-30 billion the first option will ultimately require. Besides that we have heavily subsidized rail transit systems that can easily eat up several hundred million federal dollars per project--and the liberals want to keep building them!!!

But isn't anyone perturbed that we are spending hundreds of billions in Iraq when we could have donated a few billion to supply a UN force that would have completed the weapons inspections and then moved on to human rights issues? This is an almost unbearable strain on the US economy--don't be fooled. You can't win a war if you go broke! I just read that a number of foreign central banks recently dumped a large number of US treasury notes and the US dollar is steadily declining, now outvalued by even the Canadian dollar. Soon, if you had to leave the United States you wouldn't be able to --you couldn't afford it. So I guess it is stand and fight in the homeland--our policies aren't going to allow us any other choice.

I am not saying I support the Globalist Agenda. The UN has a lot of screwballs in it who hate America--although I have said that I met some decent people too. I just think that we can no longer afford unilateral policies.

It would be much better to be aligned with Europe--especially now that they, too, are waking up to the foreign invasion--than getting so closely tied to Latin America!

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

You've got to be kidding me??

Is it any wonder why Congress has an 11% approval rating?