Pork, Good or Bad?

Chapter 27

Earmarks, or pork barrels are really rather ridiculous when it comes right down to it. In the current economic stimulus package about $2 million was given for Swine Odor Removal. Hear that? That’s wasting $2 million of our taxpayers dollars in order to make swine odor smell better. Here in South Windsor Connecticut, that really doesn’t effect us much, but we’re still paying for it. Earmarks seem like a pretty wasteful way for our tax payers to lose all their hard earned money or a $4 million grant for the alma mater hidden away in a different very large piece of legislature, where no one but the person we put it there will see it, until it’s put into action. Ear marks are a sleazy way to make sure your town or your alma mater benefit and no one else.

Chapter 28

However, it is said by Madison that “the private interest of every individual may be sentinel over the public rights” (The Enduring Debate, 172). Pork can often benefit just one town or area, but that’s a good thing. These are things that need to get done and can help the economy and country in general without going through too much fuss for it. Consider the Ship Creak Water project, that a group of self proclaimed ‘pork-busters’ called the CAGW openly mocked and called a blatant waste of government funds. What it was really doing was “exploring not only what kind of environmental precautions are necessary, but whether the federal government really has to pay for them, and whether local private entities might be convinced to foot part of the bill”. It’s extremely annoying when pork is put into bills in order to benefit just one area, but more often than not, these itty bitty pieces of pork are not really a waste, but a way of bettering the country and after all, as The Fort Worth Star-Telegram said “Pork can mean local jobs, local beautifications, local pride, ect.”