Citizens Against Government Waste

I was checking out the Citizens Against Government Waste
web site, a "non-partisan" organization that reveals
"pork projects". Dad told me about the site.

http://www.cagw.org

My fact-finding mission revealed the following:

- Alaska has consistently been #1 pork/capita as far back 
as I checked (1999-2005).  In 2005 their pork per person 
was $984.85.  Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) knows how to 
bring home the bacon.  According to CAGW stats he is the 
undisputed King of Pork, year after year.

- Hawaii is usually #2 in pork/capita.

- In 2005 California and Texas were the least pork/capita
states (California - $6.62/person, Texas - $2.90/person)

- 'Blue' states of California and New York are 
consistently below the national average of pork/capita
year after year.

- In 2005 the total pork for both California and
New York combined was less than that of sparsely 
populated Alaska.

$237,593,250 - California total pork 2005
$393,032,750 - New York total pork 2005
_____________
$630,626,000 (CAL and NY combined 2005)

$645,502,000 - Alaska total pork 2005

Despite these facts, CAGW voted the New York Senators
(Schumer, Clinton) as the "Porkers of the Year"
even though their own statistics show it's not true.
Why? Because Schumer and Clinton disagreed with some
fiscal policies of the President (thank GOD!).

CAGW is non-partisan?

- The total pork for 2005 was a little confusing,
in one place CAGW mentioned $27 Billion but their
state-by-state chart showed a total of $9.7 Billion

- In their "Oinkers" of 2005, which they title as
"RECOGNIZING DOGGED PERSERVERANCE IN THE MAD PURSUIT OF PORK",
for some reason they found a need to label as "pork" a
$25,000 grant for the Clark County School District
for curriculum development to study mariachi music.
(that wouldn't even pay for one person's annual salary)
They called it the "La Pork-a-Racha Award".

Apparently the CAGW people don't know how to use a
calculator. Most high school math students can do
the calculation (I hope). Here's the word problem:

Q. If the total pork for the country is $9.7 Billion,
what percentage is the Clark County mariachi pork?

A. $25,000 divided by $9,700,000,000 = 2.5773196 e-6
then multply by 100 to get the percentage, which amounts to
2.5773196 e-4 (Andrew knows what that means more that I do)
I think that means that the mariachi pork amounts to
0.00026 percent (which rounds off to 0.000 percent)
of total pork projects.

Next question:

Why is CAGW including the "mariachi scandal" in their
document on significant pork projects?
0.000 percent isn't significant.

Although they have a search feature at CAGW, you can't
search to see how much pork the Demos are responsible
for vs. the amount the Republicans are responsible for.

I wonder why?

I often hear stuff like "the pork the Demos put in
the budget is the problem". I wanted to find out if
that was really true. Unfortunately it isn't easy
to find out one way or the other.

In a related news item:
I guess you've all heard that we had to raise the debt
ceiling AGAIN (4th time for Bush's presidency, I think)
We've now deemed it is OK to go $9 TRILLION in debt.
Now that _IS_ significant.

In other words, when you've maxed out your credit card,
just get some more credit cards.  Problem solved.

By the way, when we reach $9 TRILLION in debt in a 
year or so, every man, woman, and child would have
to pony up about $30,000 if we want to become debt 
free again.  (yes, Lilly and Jack, you too)

I highly recommend a book that Dad loaned me 
"Empire of Debt" by Bonner and Wiggins.
It's informative, scary, and funny, all in one.

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