… but Senator Richard Shelby, not to be outdone, has earned the “Porker of the Month” award from Citizens Against Government Waste.  Shelby was recognized for his penchant for using federal tax dollars to build shrines to his greatness on various universities.  This year Shelby had the largest of 401 earmarks in the HRSA section of the Senate’s 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education (LHHS) Appropriations Act - an $11 million check for his alma mater, UAT.

Most people donate their own money to get buildings named after them.  Shelby is a federal legislator who instead confiscates money from private citizens and then doles it out as though it were his own and shamefully gets buildings named after him.

This isn’t Shelby’s first “Porker of the Month” award; he last won in August of 2003.

Alabama’s august senior senator has managed to adorn another structure with his name thanks to his largess: the $60 million Shelby Center for Science and Technology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.  Shelby arranged for $50 million to be taken from federal coffers to help fund the project.  I’m not quite sure how a science building on the campus of a school in the U of A system is a federal concern.

Think back to the days and weeks following the abrupt collapse of the major bridge in Minnesota.  Big government types started crawling out of the woodwork demanding higher taxes so that we could afford to spend more maintaining our infrastructure.  Look no further than the current crop of pork projects in the latest federal transportation bill to see that what we need isn’t more taxes, but less.

Six weeks after a fatal Minneapolis bridge collapse prompted criticism of federal spending priorities, the Senate approved a transportation and housing bill Wednesday containing at least $2 billion for pet projects that include a North Dakota peace garden, a Montana baseball stadium and a Las Vegas history museum.

That’s not the half of it.

Total spending on transportation “earmarks” next year is likely to be about $8 billion, when legislative projects from a previously approved, five-year highway bill are factored in. A newly released report by the Department of Transportation’s inspector general identified 8,056 earmarks totaling $8.5 billion in the fiscal year that ended in October, or 13.5% of the Transportation Department’s $63 billion spending plan.

It’s all about priorities.  The top priority of the vast majority of our elected leaders is not to judiciously use our precious tax dollars in the wisest of manners.  No, they first and foremost work to find ways to ensconce themselves in power by using our own money to buy our votes with goofy peace gardens and baseball stadiums.

The Decatur Daily has a long list of north Alabama pork projects announced by the august Sen. Richard Shelby.

• The Arc of Madison County Facilities Expansion, $250,000.
• City of Hamilton Fulton Bridge Industrial Park, $1 million.
• Alabama Association of Area Agencies on Aging, $1 million.
• Cummings Research Park Intermodal Center, $1.29 million.
• University of Alabama in Huntsville Intermodal Facility, $1.55 million.
• UAH Transportation, Infrastructure and Logistics Research, $500,000.
• U.S. Space and Rocket Center Tramway Extension, $259,000.
• City of Gadsden Community Buses, $129,000.

I may be crazy, but I don’t see how community buses in Gadsden, AL, for example, should be a federal concern.

The good senator never takes a break from dishing out the lard - especially for his home county.

Money is headed from Washington to support safety at schools across Tuscaloosa County.

U.S. Senator Richard Shelby, who is from Tuscaloosa, has announced that nearly $121,000 for the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office. It is from the community oriented policing services “Secure Our Schools” program. The money can be used for things like metal detectors, locks and security training.

Why can’t Tuscaloosa County protect its own students?  Is crime so bad there that they need federal financial assistance?

From AL.com:

The anti-tax advocacy group Club for Growth analyzed 50 recent House votes and ranked members on their opposition to earmarks for special local projects. Each amendment would have stripped one or more earmarks from various bills.

Calling it their RePORK Card, the group found only 16 members, all Republicans, who voted for all 50 amendments, a 100 percent rating. There were 105 members who scored 0 percent, voting against all 50 amendments.

There were no anti-pork crusaders in Alabama’s delegation, but there were a handful of interesting protest votes against small projects in California, huge projects in Pennsylvania and Alaska, and one each against lobsters and Christmas trees.

Three members scored goose eggs: Robert Aderholt, Bud Cramer and Mike Rogers. Aderholt, a Republican, and Cramer, a Democrat, are on the appropriations committee where earmarks are nearly sacred.

The 2007 RePORK Card can be read here.  Being a conservative group, the CFG takes great pains to point out how poorly the Democrats did.  I have a sneaking suspicion that Republicans would have ranked significantly lower over the last few years as they frittered away our tax dollars on all kinds of foolishness.  Not coincidently, the CFG only started their RePORK Card last year.

From the Madison County Record:

Thanks to a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, families in Madison County will be better prepared for house fires.

U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer (D-Ala.) along with Madison County Commissioner Dale Strong and Commission Chairman Mike Gillespie visited the brand-new Legacy Elementary in Harvest Aug. 14 to announce that $300,000 had been granted to provide smoke detectors to homes throughout Madison County.

The Commission will use this funding to acquire 20,000 smoke detectors, which they will distribute to every kindergarten and first grade student in Madison County during “Fire Prevention Week” in October.

What an absolute waste of money.  96% of homes already have at least one smoke alarm.  That means that about 19,200 of those alarms will go to people who don’t need them.  With only 800 going to homes without smoke detectors that translates into a cost of $375 per needed smoke detector.  Nanny government at its finest.

Richard Shelby, Alabama’s senior senator and one of the senate’s most prolific porkers, has really outdone himself this time.

With large swaths of the Gulf Coast still in ruins from Hurricane Katrina, rich federal tax breaks designed to spur rebuilding are flowing hundreds of miles inland to investors who are buying up luxury condos near the University of Alabama’s football stadium.

About 10 condominium projects are going up in and around Tuscaloosa, and builders are asking up to $1 million for units with granite countertops, king-size bathtubs and Bama decor, including crimson couches and Bear Bryant wall art.

While many of the buyers are Crimson Tide alumni or ardent football fans not entitled to any special Katrina-related tax breaks, many others are real estate investors who are purchasing the condos with plans to rent them out.

And they intend to take full advantage of the generous tax benefits available to investors under the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005, or GO Zone, according to Associated Press interviews with buyers and real estate officials.

“The senator believes that the GO Zone program, and others enacted since then to assist with the rebuilding efforts following the devastating 2005 hurricane season, have been extremely successful in accomplishing their goal,” said Shelby spokeswoman Laura Henderson.

I can’t imagine Bear Bryant “wall art” or a crimson couch in a $1 million condo.  Maybe a fancy double wide.

This is what happens when the federal bureaucrats starts handing out free money - our money - like its burning their pockets.  Some of it goes to unintended recipients, who tend to be conveniently located in the home towns of powerful legislators.  Then you also have the intended recipients bellying up to the trough, taking advantage of governmental largesse, and stealing us blind.

The Democrats wrested away control of congress from the Republicans promising, among other things, to reform earmarks.  Well, neither Democrats nor Republicans (for the most part) have done anything to abate the torrent of vote buying disbursements.  At least American taxpayers have people like Arizona’s Jeff Flake doing his best to heap some amount of shame on porkers, although it appears most of them have no shame.

And I’m not at all surprised.

The FBI and IRS have searched the home of Republican Sen. Ted Stevens in a ski resort in Alaska as part of an investigation into his links with an oil-services company, officials said Monday.

“The FBI and IRS are conducting a court-authorized search warrant in Girdwood, Alaska,” an FBI spokesman said in Washington but gave no further details.

Stephens is one of the most prolific porkers in all of D.C.  You might remember his infamous Bridge to Nowhere.  One of the many reasons why citizens should oppose pork barrel spending is that it breeds corruption.  Maybe Stephens can get a cell beside Duke Cunningham.

First, we have a $1M earmark for the “Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure” - a center that doesn’t even exist.  The money is headed to John Murtha’s district.  Rep. Jeff Flake (AZ), who is one of the tax payers best friends in the House, pointed out the phantom center on the floor.  Alarmingly, Flake’s amendment to kill the funding failed by a 98-326 vote (Alabama’s entire delegation voted to keep the funding).  That’s right, 326 legislators voted to keep funding for a center that doesn’t even exist.  The money is actually going to a private firm - with financial ties to Murtha.

[T]he money is actually earmarked to Concurrent Technologies Corporation, a nonprofit technological consulting firm. A brief search of campaign finance records shows CTC President and CEO Daniel R. DeVos, of alternately Central City and Johnstown, Pa. has contributed $7,000 to Murtha’s reelection campaign since April 2002.

Meanwhile, we have the man who, along with Alabama’s Richard Shelby, is one of the most wasteful pork barrelers in the Senate: Don Young (AK).  Young has forgetting whose money he is playing with.

Rep. Don Young attacked his fellow Republicans on the House floor Wednesday, as he defended education funds allocated to his home state of Alaska.

“You want my money, my money,” Young stridently declared before warning conservatives that “those who bite me will be bitten back.”

Young took extreme exception to an amendment by Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) to strike money in a spending bill for native Alaskan and Hawaiian educational programs.

Young really needs a re-education.  That is our money he is wasting.

Folks, there needs to be more anger over earmarks.  Yes, entitlements are a much bigger total dollar problem, but earmarks simply allow politicians to buy our votes with our own money - cheap incumbency insurance.  If they (the government) didn’t take so much from us in the first place then many of the things they fund could be paid for by the market.  The market is a much better determinant of what is justified than some politicians sitting in DC who are only concerned with how the money can be used to give them some good campaign fodder.