two cheers for pork
I have seen lots of bellyaching in the press about
"pork" spending in the transportation bill recently enacted by Congress, and about how Congress should cut out the pork and use the money to rebuild New Orleans.*

But what is "pork"?

Some commentators assert that "earmarks" (that is, transportation projects folded into the bill by members of Congress, rather than through a bureaucratic formula) are by definition pork.

The condemnation of earmarks rests on the assumption that a project that an elected member of Congress has actually thought about for a few seconds is automatically less meritorious than one endorsed solely by unelected bureaucrats. This assumption strikes me as a bit anti-democratic. So I find it hard to be outraged by earmarks. (I do wish that Congress spent more money on public transit and less on highways- but that's another issue).

And even if earmarks are a less-than-ideal use of public funds, I am not sure that I want earmarked money diverted to hurricane-related reconstruction. I am all for helping hurricane victims. But I am not for rebuilding a city that should have never been built in the first place. At a time when hurricanes seem to be getting more frequent and more violent, I don't think the United States needs to have a big city below sea level (that is, New Orleans).

Perhaps New Orleans is worth preserving in some form for commercial reasons (i.e. that alternative sites for ports and refineries may be even less practical for some reason). But I don't see any reason why there should be a 500,000-person city at the site of New Orleans.

In fact, spending on reconstruction may be far worse than even the most worthless pork project. If we build a highway from nowhere to nowhere, the highway does no good but does no obvious harm. But if we try to rebuild New Orleans in its pre-hurricane glory, we are risking more loss of property and lives should there be another major storm in the region.

*For an example, see
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/22/94228.shtml