Pork Barrel Tech Projects On The Rise

An anonymous reader writes "News.com has a large article up exploring the increase in 'pork barrel'-style technology projects floating through government spending bills. The water-free urinals discussed on Slashdot last year are one such project, as is a 'Virtual Reality Spray Paint Simulator'." From the article: "Earmarks for favored recipients--known colloquially as pork--have become easier than ever for politicians to secure because of the rapid growth in homeland security and military spending, especially if they can find some plausible technological veneer. Exact figures are difficult to obtain, mostly because spending bills tend to be intentionally obfuscated and specifics are usually absent from legislative text. Government watchdogs, however, say earmarks ostensibly related to technology are clearly on the rise."

Comments

Down with big government!

[Kelson]

Clearly, we need to get some Republicans into power so they can cut down on all this extraneous spending and balance the budget.

Oh, wait...

Re:Down with big government!

[TommyBlack]

Bah. Big government is the new libertarianism. Having a big, stupid government that can't do anything right is far superior to having a sleek, functioning government that can oppress its people at a moment's notice.

Re:Down with big government!

[Kelson]

You do realize that both sides do this

Of course. But the Republicans have spent decades portraying themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility and enemies of big government, compared to those "tax-and-spend" Democrats who will just make government big and expensive.

So is the Federal government appreciably smaller or cheaper than it was 6 years ago?

The fact of the matter is that neither party is really in favor of small government, but only the Republicans have claimed to be. And while a few of them (McCain, for instance, based on this article) seem to mean it, most just go along with business as usual.

Re:Down with big government!

[stupidfoo]

Well, conservatives are for limited government and reduced spending. Unfortunately Republicans, who typically claim to be conservative, have drifted away from this.

As I've stated before: McCain will become president in 2008 with a platform including reduced spending, paying down the national debt and government reform. He's not exciting for a lot of conservatives, but oh well, better than Hillary.

Re:Down with big government!

[demachina]

Humorous but the underlying sinister truth is that the Republican party of today isn't a conservative one or one favoring small government. There have always been Republican's who espouse and advocate those principals and settled in to the Republican party only because they only had two choices and the Democrats were an even worse choice than Republicans.

The truth is the only parties which advocate fiscal conservativism tends to be the ones which have no control of the purse strings.

In practice modern Republican's do still want to slash spending on Democratically backed Socialist programs like Welfare, Medicare, Medicaid or anything they perceive as transferring wealth from affluent tax payers to the poor. But at the same time they are just as eager to redirect extravegent sums in to Defense and espionage something which was true of both Bush and Reagan who are the two biggest creators of national debt in U.S. history. And also in to gigantic give aways to corprate benefactors which they've done in a huge way in Medicare D, corporate farm subsidies, their "energy" bill, and massive defense contracting and Iraqi reconstruction bonanzas.

Massive tax cuts coupled with massive defense spending is the Republican strategy for bankrupting the U.S. government and when it heads to bankruptcy because of their policies they will solve the problem by dismantling entitlements and blame it all on them (though Social Security surpluses for example have been helping fund rampant spending elsewhere).

Basically the two political choices Americans have today are:

A. A Democratic party which is Socialist leaning and which will squander big sums on social programs and pork if in power

B. A Republican party that is Fascist leaning and which will squander vast sums on military spending and filling the pockets of the big corporations and wealthy party members who back them and reap windfalls out of the pockets of taxpayers.

There simply is NO viable political option today which advocates slashing the size of the American government and its out of control spending. Its not clear you could stop rampant growth of the U.S. government at this point without economic upheaval. The American economy has become massively dependent on government spending and it keeps the economy afloat at a time when the U.S. economy manufactures or exports next to nothing. Health care spending, and defense spending, much of it paid for with money borrowed from foreigners keeps America's economy.

At this point your two options are to vote Democrat and Socialist or vote Republican and Fascist. There is no libertarian or fiscal conservative option.

Re:Down with big government!

[ArsonSmith]

Because if crap like this is why I came up eith my variation on thw 'line item veto'

Instead of giving that power to the president, let's keep it in cogress with 'line item voting'

Each line of a bill would have 3 options:

  (required) (accepted) (rejected)

Of these a congress person must select one for each line.

REQUIRED would meabn that this line is required in this bill or I am 100% against it.
ACCEPTED would mean that it is ok to have but isn't important to me and the bill would be ok with or without it.

REJECTED would mean exactly that. throw this line out of the bill.

each line needs a spot to initial as this would make sure that it was at least looked at if not read. It would also be able to show exactly what a politian is for/against. No more spinning a bill that feeds hungrey children and slaughters baby ducks into my apponent wants to slaughter ducks, or my apponent thinks children shold starve.

I am typing on my phone so I will end this for now. please discuss.

Re:Down with big government!

[demachina]

Well the Libertarian's aren't even close to garnering enough votes to make difference so no they aren't a viable option.

A case could be made that their form of government would be as bad if not worse than what we have. The fatal flaw in Libertarianism is it would let loose the wolves of Capitalism and they would devour the nation and most of its people in a sea of unchecked greed. My image of Libertarianism in practice would the robber baron's of the late 1800's who manipulated markets, ran monopolies and who accumulated vast wealth unchecked except by feuds with each other. For example railroad tycoons who devastated farmers by charging just enough to ship their goods to market that the farmers made nothing or lost money for their hard work.

My guess is Libertarianism would lead to massive imbalances in wealth distribution, a small number of very wealthy people and a lot of people living in poverty. Of course the current Fascist leaning system under the Republican's is heading down the same road.

I think this creedo is probably the one that will hold sway in the U.S., U.K. and most of the world in the future:

"In the ..... State the individual is not suppressed, but rather multiplied, just as in a regiment a soldier is not weakened but multiplied by the number of his comrades. The ..... State organizes the nation, but it leaves sufficient scope to individuals; it has limited useless or harmful liberties and has preserved those that are essential. It cannot be the individual who decides in this matter, but only the State."

It really is starting to describe what is happening in the U.S. and the U.K. in particular. If you don't recognize it it is part of Mussolini's Fascist doctrine the word to fill in the blank "......" is the "Fascist" State.

Re:Down with big government!

[_Sharp'r_]

"railroad tycoons who devastated farmers by charging just enough to ship their goods to market that the farmers made nothing or lost money for their hard work."

I especially like how you complain about people who don't want the government to be able to control and regulate things like railroads, then use as your example a situation where special interests bought off the politicians because the government had the power to grant them severe railroad-right-of-ways monopolies and regulated pricing by the government, but controlled by the special interests.

Isn't that the exact opposite of what the libertarians and capitalists want the government to be able to do?

Re:Down with big government!

[demachina]

Well it was probably a bad example in specifics since Libertarianism hasn't really ever existed on any large scale so there is no precedent for it. The key point is you would have wealthy and powerful people who could use to their wealth to dominate their society. No they wouldn't have government interference, and politicians pandering to their special interests, but they also wouldn't have any regulating influence, and in that vacuum the people with the money, and no scruples, would aways have the edge and usually win.

So in a Libertarian system how would you do railroads differently or at all. Let two competing interests build two railroads to serve the same markets so there is competition but twice the capital required and twice as much land wasted on right of ways. Why stop at two, how about three or four. Or of course maybe you couldn't build a railroad at all because one or a handful of Libertarian land owners could refuse to grant a critical right of way.

I think what I am saying is we are gravitating to government and social systems at extremes.

We do need government and a state to engage in activities that are for the common good and to check those that seek to take advantage and abuse their fellow citizens. But at the same time the state needs to be ruthlessly held in check to keep it from growing beyond reason and intruding in to the lives of its citizens where it doesn't belong.

Todays Socialist Democrats and Fascist Republicans are building a state that is completely dominating our lives in partnership with their corprate benefactors. The Libertarians would put us in a world without sufficient government to keep a society of hundreds of millions of people functioning properly which is why no one takes them seriously.

Moderation is the key to good government and we have no moderate leaders. We need politicians who abhor passing laws and creating government programs and bureaucracies but who are willing to do just that when there is a real and legitimate need and it is in the public interest. Right now we have professional politicians who live to churn incomprehensible bills that are pandering to one special interest after another but when looked at holistically are giant piles of steaming crap, not sound policy. Today's politicians seem to live to churn out bad legislation that each year costs us more and more money and produce less and less for benefit for the public good.

Re:Down with big government!

[linguae]

Interesting; you share much of the same views that I do. Yet, I call myself a libertarian; even though I don't agree 100% with the philosphy; I'm about 80% or so. I identify myself more with the Chicago school of economics than I do with the Mises school of economics, even though I base much of my viewpoints on both schools.

My only beef with the Libertarian Party is that its views are a bit too far on the libertarian scale, almost borderlining on anarchocapitalism. Anarchocapitalism advocates the removal of all government (not only federal, but state and local as well). Even though it is the ultimate philosophy in both economic freedom and personal freedom, I don't think it is very effective in the long run, since there are some legitamite uses for a government. A good democratic/republican government (notice the lowercase letters) should be able to voice the needs of not only those who have money, but also those who don't. (That is one of my problems with anarchocapitalism; how would the poor hire arbitration forces when dealing with coercion and there is no police force, for example?) We need some government, but not the big government that Democrats and Republicans are pushing. (I'm not saying the the Libertarian Party supports this, but they are of a further libertarian bent than some of the classical liberal parties in Europe, which are much more moderate).

We need small, decentralized government that has a civil liberties + free market philosophy. The federal government still retains its courts, military/defense, some small regulations on businesses (anti-trust, environmental stuff [but modeled in a free-market style], national natural monopoly issues, etc.), interstate highway funding (but not without the strings attached, such as a nationally set drinking age; that should be a state's rights issue, as well as environmental/air pollution restrictions that actually hurt those cities more than it helps; don't get me started on highway funding....), and even national parks (goes in line with free-market environmentalism), but everything else must be transferred to state/local governments, privatized, or outright removed. States, depending on their voters, can implement a free-market-style safety net such as school vouchers, negative income taxes, and "health care vouchers" (for lack of knowledge of a proper term) for the poor/disabled. States can also handle infrastructure. Local governments can handle things that are best handled on a local level (police, fire, school districts, ordinances, etc.).

I feel that on a state/local level, a combination of free-market ideas plus a safety net and infrastructure will work decently, provided that they stay within the principles of the market, and that those programs don't become socialistic in the long run. The federal government's power should be limited greatly, except for a select few issues that I've already enumerated. All levels of government should adopt civil libertarian views on social and personal issues, IMO.

I am a self-proclaimed minarchist (supporter of small-government) who supports free markets and civil liberties. I'm not a "taxation is theft" anarchocapitalist, but I do not lean on the left with anything. I suppose these are the viewpoints that you have also, unless I am missing something.

Re:Down with big government!

[callingalloldhippies]

Vote for ideals not for the party. In my state Primary, our Registration choices are N.P (non-partisan)= any one who is running, Independent= (the state party's' candidate), or the National "Dumb and Dumber" party's.

Ya'all here, in the states need to remember that Democracy is NOT 'majority rule' but the result of an active, committed minority.

You are sooooo much more educated, talented and capable then those of us who said "NO MORE" in the 60's and 70's.

You have already changed the whole world, as we knew it in the early 70's. I was there! BB's/ Usenet/ Irc/, and the sifting of multiple real time information and communication is the source of such power...not only here but also world wide!

It's YOUR turn! Greedy Fat Cats should be afraid...be Very Afraid!

Re:Down with big government!

[demachina]

"If everything is voluntary, then what kind of wrong could you possibly come up with?"

The obvious one already cited, you wouldn't be able to build roads, railroads or pipelines because land owners would inevitably refuse the right of ways or charge so much for them they would make the projects impractical.

Now there might be some real merits in not having these things, since we would have smaller, simpler less dehumanized societies that are back to earth. But you would give up most of the conveniences you take for granted today and cities would be goners. Everyone would be back to subsistence farming since that is probably the only way you could reliably survive without a functioning transportation system. Unfortunately I doubt you could go back to subsistence farming at this point without cataclysm since our population is so great now, and most people would have neither the land or the ability to feed themselves if they had to.

One mans pork

[kevin_conaway]

Is another mans steak

Bad image.

[Anonymous Coward]

Something bothers me when I hear about urinals and spraypaint simulations in 1 sentence.

This is surprising how?

[WindBourne]

Combine this admin's deficit spending like a drunk sailor and the current level of corruption of the congress, and yes, you are going to get loads of pork. Until new laws are made to restrict lobbyists influence, we will see more even when the democrats win the congress back. Sadly, I note that neither party was really wanting to curtail the lobbyiest "influence". Congressman Hefley from Colorado was booted off the ehtics committeee because other republicans was pissed that he was going after some of the worst, esp. Tom Delay. He has pushed for several good laws to stop this "influence".

BTW, in other nations, we would call this type of influence bribery and corruption. Here we now call it business as usual.

Re:This is surprising how?

[Kelson]

But trust me.... You don't.

Would you care to educate the rest of us? Or would you rather just watch people spread misinformation?

Waterless toilet

[jimbolauski]

The waterless toilet is a great idea and it works, it's too bad that the plumbers union doesn't approve of it. Not all those projects are evil.

Re:Waterless toilet

[ToxikFetus]

The waterless toilet is a great idea and it works

I agree. I've seen them in national parks/forests and they allow sanitary waste disposal without having to run massive lengths of plumbing. They're also popular at some ski resorts, but no self-respecting skier would ever use a urinal. That's why God made snow: For man to practice his urinary penmanship.

Pissed off

[dotslashdot]

I was pissed off about the water free urinals.

I dunno...

[Otter]

I have to pay for this stuff, and I don't like having my money wasted any more than the next guy does. But the only criterion these stories ever seem to use to decide what is particularly wasteful is whether they can be described in a comical fashion. Hahahahaha -- urinals! There's plenty of serious-sounding stuff in the budget that returns a lot less value to taxpayers than water conservation.

Also, while a dollar is a dollar, even a hundred million here and there is rounding error on the federal budget. The real pieces are Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, pensions, the military and debt servicing; arguing about anything else is mostly a distraction from the structural problems.

Re:I dunno...

[QuantumRiff]

Actually, social security is not part of the federal budget. That is a misleading figure from combining the Federal funds, and Federal Trust funds. Note on your paycheck stub that you pay 2 or 3 different fed accounts. Federal Income tax, which pays for military, and most other gov't stuff, is one item, usually, Social Security and medicare/medicaid come from other line items. These are paid for with trusts, not taxes. The Social Security TRUST is huge, amounting to trillions of dollars kept safe for social security, and used only to pay for social security. It does not take money from the federal taxes. NONE. However, congress keeps "borrowing" money from this trust for federal budget stuff, and promise to repay it in the indefinable "Future". So if you pull the x% that these huge budget items consume from the published "Budget" you will find that that 100Million is a heck of alot more percentage wise than it looks.

My town of 40k just spent something like 60,000 on deep diving equipment for the dive rescue team from a homeland security grant. We have 1 lake in the entire county that is deep enough to need this equipment. The counties view is "hey, its free federal money" Its not free, we are all paying for it.. Mulitply this by x number of stupid grants for stupid things, and you get a very, very large amount wasted.

Re:I dunno...

[sgent]

That's a nice fiction -- but the real world doesn't care that its in a "trust fund" or not. The S&L reinsurce was in a trust fund, as was FEMA, as is the near bankrupt PBGC. The reality is that if the goverment is obligated regardless of trust fund antics. Fact is that bond buyers care about two facts: profit -- total government reciepts - total government expenditures; and net worth (Total Assets - Total Liabilities).

An _entire_ generation?

[C10H14N2]

Hyperbolic much?

NMCI

[HangingChad]

Government watchdogs, however, say earmarks ostensibly related to technology are clearly on the rise.

Just look at the Navy's NMCI project. What a boondoggle. 8 billion dollars for a computer system where many users have to resort to using their own equipment to get anything done.

Of course the contract award to EDS didn't have anything to do with EDS being in Bush's home state. We all know how honest government contract awards are under our glorious Republican leadership, dedicated to bringing accountability into government affairs and responsibility into government spending.

Re:NMCI

[NitsujTPU]

Yes, here's the timeline.

http://www.nmci.navy.mil/Press_Room/NMCI%20AT%20A% 20Glance

NMCI was talked about while I had a summer job doing network support at a Navy base as an undergraduate. The contract was awarded in October, 2000. Bush wasn't even elected yet.

Some ideas

[eviloverlordx]

Here are a couple of ideas for the pork barrel:

a VR program that can train a congressman how to count, so the budget can get balanced

or

a robot teacher to teach science to Republicans

I'm sure I can come up with more pie-in-the-sky ideas.

Ob "The Young Ones" quote

[Rob T Firefly]

I've told you a million times, don't exaggerate!

Re:Figures

[stupidfoo]

you create an entire generation of people who are dependant on the government's teat for sustenance

Like the "youth" in France? A law that actually allows a company to fire you? WE MUST MARCH!

Bunch of ignorant fools.

One party rule

[plopez]

What makes the pork easier is the defacto one party rule. There is no real accountability, and congress at this point is also no better than the president's rubber stamp. WIth a split congress some of the excesses may dissappear. As well as returning a little democracy to congress.

Before you slam Pork Tech projects...

[marlinSpike]

Fellow /.tters, Everybody who has partaken in, endorsed or voiced a paranoia about losing their jobs to developers in India, China or suchlike foreign countries with lower costs of living, spare a minute before you last out at Pork.

After all, Pork is the onething that's guaranteed not to be outsourced! Think about it -- you can finally ignore all those teaser /. articles about the newest company to invest $1B in India... you won't give a crap, because your job will be safe for 10 years or more, which in the Tech industry is an eon.

Now the only thing you'll have to worry about is getting the right Pork project, so that your skills don't languish in those 10 years, so much so that you become outmoded even for Pork projects.

Cheer up fellow /.tters. It's Washington to the rescue!

One man's pork is another man's state-craft.

[nbahi15]

One man's pork is another man's state-craft.

That is what one of my political science professors said about so called pork and I tend to agree. Getting up in arms over what doesn't directly benefit you, or that you don't understand is fairly normal. For example I am sure the same people that complain about water-free urinal technology were buying grey market toilets when congress mandated low flush technology. Sure there were problems in the beginning, but nothing some hard working engineers can't sort out. Frankly I think not flushing relatively scarce fresh water down the not-so-proberbial toilet is a good idea, but hey I am a tree hugging, dirt worshipper.

Let's be honest, some people complain if you spend money on anything other than what they personally like. Which would be fine if you represented everyone, and were fairly omniscient. Alas, nobody seems to listen to me when I say we should cut the War Department's (AKA Department of Defense) budget in half, and give the money to the national lab's, NASA, and health coverage for all American's

Because to me the pork in the economy is the military.

Here is a link

[VP]

How it works

I'm forgoing moderating you down

[Inoshiro]

to say this: there is a very, very large difference between a law that says you can't be fired unless there is just cause (and if so, you get a time unit of notice so you can find another job), and a law that says you can fire anyone under the age of 26 with no reason, and no time delay, whenever you want.

Oh, you won't sleep with the boss? Fired.
You called in sick too much this week. Fired.
I don't like how you're dressing. Fired.
We hired on my 40-year-old brother. Fired.

Instead of working with the worker to correct behaviour that is causing a problem (and optionally letting them go after they have time to find another job), it makes firing be a big, ugly stick over everything.

Egalitarian societies should not tollerate such laws.

Just Give Me Some Action!

[mpapet]

Typical ./ reaction, hands wringing, Oh dear, Oh my!

Well, let me be the first then to suggest:

http://www.taxpayer.net/

http://www.taxfoundation.org/

http://www.concordcoalition.org/issues/scorecard/i ndex.html

Each spin a different way and I'm sure there's a few dozen more groups out there. One of which is bound to have a message that you agree with.

Ah Fear, what ever happened to Lee Ving anyway?

$100M To "Research" A Commuter Rail

[Doug Dante]

The US Federal government has given a $100 Million grant to "research" Ann Arbor To Detroit mass transit system that just won't be built!

All of the important decisions about the rail have already been made, and the "research" mainly consists of trying to convince people that it's worth the astronomical costs to invest more money in such a system. We get so much federal funding from gas taxes specially allocated to mass transit, and Michigan has very little besides cars, so it's use it or loose it, but the proposal is just not going to happen in a region with a local recession, reasonably limited traffic congestion, and stable to declining population.

Sadly, this "research" gets in the way examinig of potentially useful and applicable solutions, which might actually be installed, and might actually have a net positive impact, especially in Detroit where poverty is so aweful and people have a genuine lack of transportation. Cheaper and faster solutions such as Mini Pods, more buses, or even rentable GPS tracked electric motor bikes might be considered instead.

Heck, just toss aside a measly 3% and double the M-Prize and you'll do the people of Metro Detroit more good.

Water-free urinals?

[Dhar]

Ain't that an alley?

-g.