The American Spectator

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Blinded by Pork

4.25.08 @ 12:01AM

PIG-HEADED
Re: W. James Antle III & Richard B. Spencer's Let Them Eat Pork:

The lead-in to "Let Them Eat Pork" asks, "What's wrong with a little earmark spending?"

Apart from the fact that "winking" at our own principles is what got conservatism into the current mess in the first place, the Constitution does not permit it.

Next question?
-- Daniel H. Fernald, Ph.D.
Mountain View, California

I realize that it must be tough to turn out attention-grabbing columns week after week, but the need seems to produce some bizarre topics.

Along this line, the arguments of Antle and Spencer in favor of fiscal pork sound like some other meat to me -- baloney. Assuming I understand them correctly, it's ridiculous for the government to save a few discretionary bucks while spending far more on entitlements.

Do they, in their private lives, take this same approach? Do they ignore frugality on food and clothing while worrying only about the mortgage and car payment?

Personally, I prefer the broken windows approach to saving federal money. If we can wean lawmakers from attempting to buy votes with questionable expenditures of minor sums, perhaps it will someday be easier to get them to look at entitlements more realistically. In other words, if we can encourage a small-scale habit of parsimony, we might ultimately get them to stop buying votes wholesale through spending trillions on programs that are difficult to rein in.

"Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves" is an old saying but one that still has some merit, even today when the pennies are counted in quadrillions.
-- Richard Donley
New Lyme, Ohio

The problem with the transportation pork is that it bypasses processes that could sort out the difference between a good road project and a bad road project. Theoretically, the difference between a good project and a bad transportation project is the difference between consumptive spending and productive spending. Nationwide, transportation departments have been doing a terrible job of making such decisions anyway, so I can see how someone might come up with the idea that a congressman or senator could not possibly do worse. This however is not an adequate justification for wasting taxpayer money. The current system works a little like this: They build the road and then we try to adjust to the damage or mistakes.

The process of transportation project selection, nationwide is awful. In the Sixties there were benefit cost formulas that allegedly took into consideration the value of human life, the cost of accidents with and without human injury and many other factors. This formula changed over time in such a way that it began to include a very high fraction of intangible and questionable benefits. If the formula worked then, over time, there would be a decline in highway deaths, damage and general economic chaos. That did not happen. most declines in fatalities are attributable to safety improvements in the engineering of the vehicle, not project location.

In fact, there is a decline in rate of return on transportation investment since the construction of the Interstate. Proof that the benefit formulas failed is this: The cost of financing the car and insuring the car went up faster than the consumer price index while the cost of gasoline and the cost of a new car, when inflation adjusted since 1980, actually went down slightly. (That may not be true for California or Arizona any more)

Being frustrated with the difficulty in transforming pavement into economic advantage, our senators and congressmen have seized the opportunity to turn pavement into votes or as constituent service. This is malpractice of traffic engineering by people whose real job is fundraising to get elected next time around. We can build a road anywhere but we have no good system of selecting projects that derives the greatest good for the greatest number. We don't even have a good definition of need. This system tramples property rights in that it gives the government the right to take property without there being a clear understanding of the magnitude of public benefit. No property, public or private should be taken for a remote possibility of public benefit. No taxpayers money should be taken if it is to be used to build a road that costs more than the actual benefit conferred on society, especially if it ends up as an overnight sleeping place for dogs.
-- Danny L. Newton
Cookeville, Tennessee

W. James Antle III & Richard B. Spencer may have had their tongues planted deeply in their cheeks when they suggest that the American tax payer let their congressmen pork the American tax payer royally. And if they are serious, allow for pork but very little funding otherwise, they offer a pragmatic solution but abandon principle. Bottom line, the money Congress spends does neither originate with nor belong to Congress; the money they so profligately spend is yours and mine. Mr. Congressman, hands off my stack!

Taxation for anything other than for services rendered is thievery. The services the federal government need provide (i.e., that cannot be met by anyone organization or agency) are clearly spelled out in the Preamble to the Constitution: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." Taxing and spending wildly does nothing to secure the blessings of liberty, promote our national defense, and is directly contrary to our general welfare and of our posterity. If I need a plumber and carpenter to fix my house, I don't sell a bond so that my grandchildren can pay for housing they have never known, let alone enjoyed.

Letter to the Editor

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