Baltimore Sun: pork before people
Tags: No TagsI have to give the Baltimore Sun credit for a nifty headline: "Republicans' policy of 'pork before people' takes a terrible toll". However, I wonder whether all of their facts are correct:
The bridge stands as a monument to a corrupt Washington culture - a culture that has mismanaged and plundered our nation's treasury. The exact culture that allowed Hurricane Katrina to wreak more destruction than it ever should have. A corrupt culture that has cost this nation hundreds of billions of dollars in rebuilding costs. It has cost us a city, a flourishing cultural center, and it has cost us lives.
The bridge is aptly named "Don Young's Way," after Alaska's Republican Rep. Don Young, the House Transportation Committee chairman who gleefully described his having stuffed the transportation bill "like a turkey."
The same Congress rejected the Army Corps of Engineers' request for $27 million to improve levees around Lake Pontchartrain, allocating only $5.7 million. In this fiscal year, the corps also requested $78 million for drainage control in New Orleans; Congress allocated less than half that amount. For a fraction of the cost of "Don Young's Way," hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars could have been saved in reconstruction costs…
As previously discussed, the bridge might not be as bad as it's been portrayed; see the link.
Regarding the last paragraph, see "Fed. engineer: locals skimmed funds for levees", "Levee upgrade wouldn’t have prevented failure", "Money for levees went to Mardi Gras, overpasses, PI, legal fees…" and other posts here.
I'd encourage not putting too much faith in either side's talking points until all the facts are out there.
