in the wrong era. Soundly refuting
liberals online since 2000. NOTE: That is NOT
me pictured at left. :)
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Audacity of Truth
"Diplomacy":
"People are saying what in the world is going on with North Carolina, we look like Mississippi." - NC Gov. Bev Perdue (D) on the passage of Amendment One, 5-11-12
Video: Pork is bipartisan
The latest winner of Reason.TV‘s “Porker of the Month” Award is Congressman Hal Rogers (R-KY). Wonder why?
Conservation or nepotism? Since 2007 Rogers has been promoting a bill which would provide federal grants to overseas wildlife protection for lions and cheetahs. Surprise! Rogers’ daughter is the grants administrator for the Namibia-based Cheetah Conservation Fund, and has been since—you guessed it—2007.
Here’s the video:
Good job, Hal. Glad to know the public treasury is your own private family-aid program.
Sadly, Roger’s Democratic opponent, Jim Holbert, is an advocate of single-payer health care, so that rules out voting for him to get rid of Porky Hal, who looks likely to win, anyway. Maybe next time a credible Republican candidate who treats public money as a trust and not his own private property will give Jim a run for his our money in a primary.
(Crossposted at Public Secrets)
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Cheetahs will probably be extinct in our lifetime. There is not enough variation in DNA between animals and so there are very few live births. I fully support research that will enable this species to stay alive.
While I think most pork is exactly that, with the cheetahs and the honey-bees I disagree….
I am a molecular biologist, and a conservative.
Anny
Anny,
I’ll grant (pardon the pun) that the research may be worthwhile. But I think it’s unseemly to say the least that the congressman is pushing a spending bill in a time of fiscal crisis that would benefit a group that employs his daughter. At the very least, he should recuse himself from any promotion or sponsorship of the bill in question. (And it seems to be a separate bill, not an earmark in another bill. That’s just a guess, though.) If the project is worthwhile, it will garner support and move through Congress on its own merits, and without the taint of nepotism.
There’s another question, however, and that’s the constitutionality of the bill: where among the enumerated powers of Congress in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution is there authorization for Congress to fund research into species preservation? Again, the project may well be deserving, but Congress is given specific powers and no more; we can’t ignore those limits just because we like this or that idea.
Note: I’m not a strict literalist, but more of an originalist when it comes to the Constitution; one has to look at how the words and phrases were understood at the time of passage, in both theory and practice. There may be a way of constitutionally justifying Rogers’ bill, but at the moment I’m very skeptical.
I have always believed in putting my money where my mouth is, so I just donated $1K to the CCF (Cheetah Conservation Fund), and you are right, a pol should not be pushing any bill for the fund that employs his daughter.