Park the pork - federal spending on Lipscomb's garage
My alma mater (of many many years) is David Lipscomb University. When I went there it was a mere college. My children would say that I went there WITH David Lipscomb (circa 1880s), and I of course insist that I walked two miles uphill each way through snow deep enough to choke a bison. The reality is that I lived a block away and usually managed to stumble to school on time considering I never scheduled a college class before 9:00 AM. Lipscomb is a small Christian liberal arts school largely supported by churches of Christ and church of Christ members around the world. Lipscomb has received federal funding for some of their building projects through grants and has agreed not to teach any bible or religious courses in the buildings built with said funding.
Which brings me to the point of all this. Lipscomb is getting $3,000,000 bucks for a new parking garage as part of the, get this, recent highway bill passed by congress and signed by Bush (not that he's ever vetoed ANY spending bill). This bill is so loaded, larded and laded with pork that people of religious bent who eschew pork should probably not even read about the monstrosity.
The rationale - Lipscomb hosts a lot of 'public events' and needs more parking capacity for these events. At first, second, and third glance, this argument holds less water than a kiddie wading pool. Lipscomb is not holding these events for free. As one would guess, Tennessee pols, both Dem and Republican are behind this largess - Rep. Cooper AND Senator Frist.
Local blogsters S-townMike and Bob Krumm (and probably others) have weighed in on this porcinity earlier.
Some members of the current congress are questioning the huge spending that the Bush adminstration is proposing to spend on rebuilding the Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina. The worry is that an already bloated deficit budget will swell beyond even the capacity of the cliched financial responsibility of our grandchildren, as in the next freaking civilization after this one. As a parenthetical note, I would like to add right here that the 'liberal' Democratic administration before the world of 'W' handed the incoming Bush folks one of the largest budget surpluses in history.
So, what can we do? There are plenty of places to economize, and my first suggestion would be to for Lipscomb to forego the $3,000,000 and apply it to the relief in N'awlins. They're gonna need new parking a lot worse than Lipscomb does.
