What Pork Really Looks Like

Want your very own view of making sausage? It's all here at Stimulus Watch, a great web tool designed to give the folks ultimately paying the bills (that'd be you and me) a birds-eye view of just what Uncle Sam, Cousin Ted and Nephew Don want to do with all those billions.

My first visit went to the site for Akron projects, and it's a whopper -- more than a billion dollars worth of gimme put together by the City of Akron. It also makes very real what is often a powerful position for politicians: that all that spending is pork.

You might think so as well until you see your street, your school or your idea of what government should pay for on the list, and one the list of dozens and dozens of projects odds are you'll see plenty that ought to get a piece of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid pie. After all, who would complain about getting federal money to fix the crumbling roads and bridges we're seeing in the Akron area now that the snow and ice are off the highways?

You get the same look-see at what Mayor Healy in Canton says his city needs; there's even a separate page for Stow, almost five million dollars worth to finish Seasons Road and pave the road to Bulldog Prosperity. It is disappointing we don't see Hudson belly up to the bar here as well...one must imagine how much federal recovery dollars would help build new off-site parking for the boutiques on the Square.

Sorry, can't help but being cynical even while recognizing all this money would certainly do plenty of good. The problem is the majority of folks who are as cynical as I am living in Texas, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Virginia and the rest of the 49 states other than Ohio (see what the state is asking for here to get a gander of the 847 projects the Strickland Administration forwarded Washington ) will take a look at these projects and wonder just why their hard-earned tax dollars need to go to a state with a $55 billion dollar budget. Then again, those of us in Ohio will think the same thing about a dime spent in Texas, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Virginia and the rest of the 49 states other than Ohio.

That's the point: our "must have" list looks like a chunk of Bob Evans' most popular product to anyone on the outside, while anything outside Ohio's borders looks like it's all pork to those of us between the Ohio River and Lake Erie.

The interesting thing about pork in 2009, however, is we get to ride along and even report on our own what we think is good, what we think is bad, even what we think is B.S. (that's not short for bachelor of science...) and needs to be exposed. We still have to pay the bill for what Washington says we need but don't necessarily want. The difference between life under Bill and W. is with tools like Stimulus Watch we can get a better look in the Obama butcher shop on how the sausage is made -- including how much pork is really in the mix.

StimulusWatch.org is the creation of a couple George Mason University types with help from web professionals; they claim no affiliation with Presidents, Governors, County or City officials and even provide a Google Excel site to grab the database yourself and sort to your heart's content.