Bridges to Nowhere: The Other Other White Meat
August 12th, 2006 at 10:31pm Alec
I don’t know how many of you are on Jim Nussle’s email list, but yesterday’s edition nearly put me into a coma—its noxious photos, mind numbing stories of lemonade stands and lunches, and exceptional ability to kill the interesting somehow combine the worst aspects of a PowerPoint presentation with granny’s grand canyon slide show. In short—it is an unholy alliance between boredom and idiocy.
Of course, it does provide a few opportunities for fun.
“Jim’s Journal,” as it’s called, tells us that Jim is doing what every other self-respecting candidate in the state does this time of year—he’s spending significant time at the internationally-acclaimed Iowa State fair. Of course, Jim has something else in common with too many politicians—wherever he is, he seems to be at the same tricks.
Indeed, true to form, Jim did what he does best. He served up pork.
Heck, Jim’s been doing it for years.
As House Budget Chairman he presided over the evaporation (er, trickledown?) of hundreds of billions of dollars. Where’d it all go? Sure, tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans played a huge part, as did Halliburton contracts. But another often overlooked culprit was the astronomical growth in pork barrel spending that picked up speed in the early 90’s and only accelerated under Nussle’s tenure as HBC.
Now, one can’t blame all pork on Nussle—Congress is stuffed with chronic earmarkers like a pig with an apple down its throat—but when Jim first got to the hill in 1991, spending on pet project earmarks totaled 3.1 billion dollars. In 2006, that number was 29.3 billion dollars. In his five years as House Budget Chairman, pork barrel spending went up in every one. In 2001, when he took control of the Committee, earmarks hovered around 7,000. By 2005, that number had nearly doubled.
And earmarks under the reign of king Nussle have been especially egregious. According to the conservative Citizens Against Government Waste, this year’s budget includes:
$13,500,000 for the International Fund for Ireland, which helped finance the World Toilet Summit; $6,435,000 for wood utilization research; $1,000,000 for the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative; and $500,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum in Sparta, N.C.
Thankfully, Nussle’s reign in the House is over. Here’s to making sure we don’t let him do for Iowa what he did in Congress. Iowans—let’s not be what we eat.
P.S. Do us a favor Jim—keep the “journal” to yourself. Diaries are self-indulgent.
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Entry Filed under: Miscellaneous
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7 Comments Add your own
1. Pork | August 13th, 2006 at 8:47 am
Pork is bad. But if you are going to quote from Citizens agains Government Waste, don’t alter the quotes to make the waste look worse than it already is. Intellectually dishonest.
2. Alec | August 13th, 2006 at 10:57 am
Where’s the mistake? I will correct it.
3. Woody | August 14th, 2006 at 7:39 am
I know this is rocket science for someone of your limited mental capacity, but if you don’t want to read the Jim’s Journals, unsubscribe from their distribution list and allow the next Governor of Iowa Jim Nussle to share his feelings and observations with real Iowans who aren’t killing babies, pushing the perverted gay agenda, taking God out of classrooms and courtrooms, and trying to redistrbute the wealth of succesful Iowans buy making less forutnate people dependent on your “Big Brother” idea of government.
4. Hannah | August 14th, 2006 at 8:44 am
Comments like that mean you’re doing a good job.
5. Woody | August 14th, 2006 at 9:55 am
Chet Culver Announces Plan to Clean Up
His Plate and Yours Too!
Chet Culver has unveiled a plan to address the problem of youth obesity by promising to eat more of everyone’s food before they can put a fork to their plate. Not only will Chet eat your first serving, he will promise to ask for seconds and thirds too! “My plate is my plate, not your plate,” said Culver. “It goes a long way toward reducing the number of fat children we have in Iowa and replacing them with one big fat governor.”
6. Matt | August 14th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
We all love a good flame war…don’t we. I guess Jim has some real quality peeps out there in the blogosphere defending his good name. He decides to pick on the fine Democrats of Grinnell College and their “limited mental capacity”. Few facts for Mr. Woody -
(all statistics courtesy of Yahoo)
Now….for the “claims” Mr. Woody makes. First, he talks about the “perverted ‘gay agenda’”. Your name is “Woody” for goodness sake. To be honest, I’m not sure what “gay agenda” a Governor Chet Culver would push. I understand that you are a scared little man that has some serious insecurities about people’s sexual orientation…but maybe you should focus more on what “positive” things Governor Nussle would do to “combat the gay agenda” that wouldn’t violate the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. constitution or constitute a major expansion of federal/state power into the bedroom.
Personally, when it comes to my penis and what I do with it…I don’t want philandering Jim to have anything to do with it.
Now, for killing babies…I would ask Congressman Nussle (soon to be ‘retired politician Nussle lobbying for Halliburton’) if he has ever accepted campaign contributions from any of the major pharmaceutical companies. Many of these companies manufacture various types of vaccine from the lung tissue of aborted fetuses. According to the scholarly journal “Ethics & Medics” two human cell lines that are used to produce rubella & chicken pox vaccine are derived from the lung tissue of aborted fetuses. I guess Jimmy should return all that cash, eh?
7. Paris Hilton&hellip | August 26th, 2006 at 7:43 pm
Paris Hilton Tape…
The feud between celebrities Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan has taken a turn for the geeky…
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