Pork-Barrel Spending Exposed
How much wasteful spending goes on each year in Illinois? Yesterday, the Illinois Policy Institute released its 2008 Piglet Book, which details more than $686 million in wasteful spending alone. Highlights (or, rather, lowlights) include:
· $4 million for a Ford Technical Training Center in Chicago
Heights
· $1 million for the Illinois film office in Chicago
· $920,000 for the Chicago Aerospace Education Initiative
· $550,000 for the conservation of pheasants
· $500,000 to administer the tanning facility permit act
· $156,000 to Southern Illinois University to refurnish cabins at
the “Touch of Nature Environmental Center” at Southern
Illinois University – Carbondale
· $40,000 for the Springfield Figure Skating Club
· $35,000 for the Prairie Aviation Museum for a display gallery
in Bloomington
There’s a lot more where that came from, including protections for “fur-bearing mammals” and funds for Ukranian Easter Eggs. The piglet book is available for download the below link.
Read the Full Story: http://www.illinoispolicyinstitute.org/news/article.asp?ArticleSource=304
How are some of these things pork? Hopefully the book actually explains it rather than just listing things as if they are self-evident when they aren’t. The only item with which I am passingly familiar is the SIUC Touch of Nature. Those cabins are part of an outdoor lab and camp that serves children who are burn victims, PACT camp (an intervention program for children with behavioral problems) and also hosts Camp Little Giant, a camp for people with mental handicaps. That’s not really what I call pork. The cabins haven’t been refurbished in years. And they ARE cabins — not some Chicago-land idea of a cabin that is really a luxurious chalet.
Per the IPI, these projects bypassed the legislative process and are earmarks, rather than projects which compete for funds.
Perhaps the camps are worthwhile, but they are singled out for grants rather than standing in line with other grant applications, per the IPI.
JBP
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