sisu: Where's the pork?

September 18, 2005

Where's the pork?

"The Poker Player in Chief has snookered the dems once again," we i-mailed our sis this afternoon:

We: I think the media still don't get the great poker move the Prez just made. In my view, he's played the big card, but no one has noticed yet. Big anti-New-Deal help for NOLA (school vouchers, let up on environmental regulation, enterprise zones and such) PLUS . . .

She: The media made up their mind many years ago. Please don't confuse them with the facts.

We: NO NEW TAXES (read his lips) . . . trim the pork instead, you losers. I heard one of them -- Malvin Kalb, I think -- claiming that only since last week or so, when they discovered how inept GW was in responding to Katrina, did the media finally wake up and start criticizing the President.

She: I don't want to talk about it.

We: LOL. Nothing to talk about.

She: As with Richard Nixon . . . history will vindicate GW.

We: I think so.

She: It may not come in his lifetime or ours, but we know what we know. Well, I gotta go. I'm mighty hungry.

Speaking of which, InstaPundit smells pork:

The obvious next step is for local bloggers to call their Senators/Representative on Monday and ask if they'll vote to cut this (or, failing that, can identify other cuts they will support) -- then to post the response on their blog. I suspect that members of Congress will pay at least some attention to requests from local bloggers.

One of his readers, Corporate Collections, has already done the homework for us Taxachusetts residents but notes that one man's pork is another's piece of the pie:

"Are there things in other parts of the country that people label pork? Sure," said Joe Dalton, a spokesman for US Representative Edward J. Markey, a Malden Democrat whose district includes Waltham. "But I don't think it applies to our projects."

No one said cutting pork was going to be easy.

Update: Check out PorkBusters Central at The Truth Laid Bear:

All Pork: $ 870,276,071 in pork identified so far.

How are we going to mobilize the blogosphere in support of cuts in wasteful spending to support Katrina relief?" asks InstaPundit. "Here's the plan. 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 posr. Then call your Senators and Representative." Logo by Stacy Tabb.