’)The conservative blogosphere today is up in arms over some video of Sen. Chuck Schumer discussing American attitudes towards pork.
I think this is once again conservatives believing that conservative media is some kind of serious proxy for what Americans actually think. It isn’t. They convinced themselves that they lost in 2006 and 2008 due to pork, and that’s just ludicrous. They lost because of war and the economy.
People don’t like the government to overspend, they hate stories about $100 dollar hammers and the like. But at the end of the day people send their representatives to Washington to stand up for their home state and district in much of the government’s appropriations process. Show me a pol who doesn’t bring home “pork” and I’ll show you a pol whose seat is in danger.
Is that a license for politicians to spend the public money like the proverbial drunken sailor? Of course not. But the largest democracy also can’t seriously act like the skinflint conservative mythology has built up.
I detest waste, fraud, and abuse from the government – but lets not pretend that for the American people that “pork” is held with the same disgust that misguided war, corporate malfeasance, economic collapse, or careless leadership is.
I know its futile trying to get conservatives to think about these issues in any way more complex than “government = bad” but try for once in your lives.
Yesterday somebody (maybe Sadly, No?) had a headline that included an Oscar Wilde quote. Something to the effect of “Vulgarity is simply the behavior of other people.”
I think “pork” works pretty much the same way.
‘Pork’ is their code word for ‘people (who aren’t wealthy) using the government to get what they want.’
Well exactly. Heard Ingraham babbling about all the supposedly outrageous items in the stimulus – money for the endowment for the arts, green energy research, etc. Literally everything she pointed out, I thought sounded pretty good.
Pork is the new con code word for “anything they don’t want”. Pork is any project loaded onto an appropriation bill that benefits only one area. But that is not true of National Endowment of the Arts, green energy research, etc. Those are initiatives that are broad based.
Whenever I hear people complain about “pork”, I show them the new library annex, or the rebuilt highway, or the new community center. Pork is just taxpayer money returned to the taxpayers. Aren’t cons all for that?
National Endowment of the Arts, green energy research, etc. = DFHs.
Pork is, in the mind of conservatives, any money that doesn’t go straight to their pockets.
India is the largest democracy.