Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Porkbusters!

Who you gonna call?

porkbusters

Are you tired of hearing about all the pork projects that our elected leaders are always piling into every Senate appropriation bill that comes along? Well here's your chance to find out how much pork there is, who is putting it there, and exactly how some of your hard earned tax dollars are being spent.

Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit describes Porkbusters this way:

Identify some wasteful spending in your state or (even better) Congressional District. Put up a blog post on it. Go to N.Z. Bear's new PorkBusters page and list the pork, and add a link to your post.

Then call your Senators and Representative and ask them if they're willing to support having that program cut or -- failing that -- what else they're willing to cut in order to fund Katrina relief. (Be polite, identify yourself as a local blogger and let them know you're going to post the response on your blog). Post the results. Then go back to NZ Bear's page and post a link to your followup blog post.

The result should be a pretty good resource of dubious spending, and Congressional comments thereon, for review by blogs, members of the media, etc. And maybe even members of Congress looking for wasteful spending . . . .

Feel free to copy the cool logo by Stacy Tabb and use it on your own posts.


I don't know if Porkbusters will make a difference. But it is a start. The best way to start eliminating unnecessary government spending is making that spending visable to the voters. For too many years congress has hidden their pork spending in volumes of paperwork. The main stream media isn't willing to sift through the paperwork and present the facts to the voters. But with the internet and blogs, we can get this information out and available. Then if enough voters let their Ccongressmen and Senators know that they do not approve of federal funds being spent to build bike paths and sidewalks, perhaps we can start spending our tax dollars on important things. Or we cab elect leaders who will spend our money wisely.

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