Good ideas?

Disclaimer: The following post expresses the editor's opinion.

Looking at the list of earmarks below, I certainly have to admit that they all look like good ideas. But if you consider James Madison's words on the masthead, I don't think Congress is empowered to fund 'good ideas'. Further muddying the water is the question of whether these programs actually are 'good ideas'. Consider the $100k for "Canton City School District, for the PE 4 Life project". This article calls into question whether school PE is worthwhile or not.
Such is the danger of funding 'good ideas'. One person's good idea is another person's waste of time (and money).

Request to Rep. Regula

To try to ensure the accuracy of the post below, I've sent the following message to Rep. Regula via his website:

Rep. Regula,

I'm the proprietor of the weblog "Ohio 16th District Pork Watch Blog". I've identified what I believe are your earmarks to the Labor-HHS bill. Would you please take a look at the list here:
http://oh16porkwatch.blogspot.com/2006/09/labor-hhs-earmarks.html
and confirm or correct this information?

Best Regards,
[...]

I'll post any reponse received.

Labor-HHS Earmarks

Background from Instapundit, The Club For Growth, and The Examiner.

I filtered the Ohio earmarks by cross referencing the locales against Rep. Regula's zip code list to identify the earmarks in the OH16 district. If anyone can suggest why Blogger is inserting all of this whitespace below, I'd love to know - it's just a plain old HTML table.

$700,000.00	Alliance	OH	Mount Union College for facilities
$100,000.00	Alliance	OH	YWCA of Alliance for the Alliance Neighborhood Center Apple Seed Project
$50,000.00	Apple Creek	OH	Apple Creek Historical Society for the Community Learning Center
$150,000.00	Ashland	OH	Ashland County-West Holmes Career Center, for the Northeast Central Ohio Bioscience Consortium's creation of a customized, tiered training model in the biosciences
$150,000.00	Ashland	OH	Elderly health care delivery demonstration at the Good Shepherd Home
$100,000.00	Ashland	OH	Hospice of North Central Ohio, for equipment for the Hospice Inpatient Center
$50,000.00	Ashland	OH	Ashland County Oral Health Services for facilities
$750,000.00	Canton	OH	YMCA of Central Stark County for facilities
$700,000.00	Canton	OH	Malone College for facilities and equipment
$700,000.00	Canton	OH	Mercy Medical Center for facilities
$700,000.00	Canton	OH	Aultman Health Foundation for equipment for the Aultman Hospice Center
$100,000.00	Canton	OH	Prescription assistance to the uninsured at the Stark Prescription Assistance Network, Inc.
$100,000.00	Canton	OH	Canton City School District, for the PE 4 Life project
$100,000.00	Canton	OH	Canton Symphony Orchestra Association, for implementation of the Northeast Ohio Arts Education Collaborative
$75,000.00	Canton	OH	Stark Education Partnership to implement the P-16 model
$50,000.00	Canton	OH	Voyager Program Inc, for domestic violence prevention"
$50,000.00	Canton	OH	Early Childhood Resource Center, for early childhood teacher training
$50,000.00	Canton	OH	Heartbeats to the City, for education mentoring programs
$50,000.00	Canton	OH	McKinley Museum for exhibits
$50,000.00	Canton	OH	Stark County Park District for exhibits at the Canalway Learning Center
$1,000,000.00	Medina	OH	Medina General Hospital for expansion of its Emergency Department
$100,000.00	Medina	OH	Medina County Schools Educational Service Center for the Workforce Initiative program
$50,000.00	Medina	OH	Medina County Office of Workforce Development for the Building Careers in the Building Trades Initiative
$50,000.00	Medina	OH	Medina County Office of Workforce Development for the Building Careers in Healthcare Initiative
$50,000.00	Medina	OH	Camp Fire USA Northeast Ohio Council, for the Young Leaders Serving Ohio program
$800,000.00	North Canton	OH	Stark State College of Technology for facilities and equipment
$700,000.00	North Canton	OH	Walsh University for facilities
$250,000.00	Orrville	OH	Orrville Hospital Foundation for Dunlap Memorial Hospital for equipment
$700,000.00	Wooster	OH	Ohio State University Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center for facilities
$100,000.00	Wooster	OH	Tri-County Educational Service Center for a pilot project of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program
$100,000.00	Wooster	OH	Tri-County Educational Service Center for technology education
$8,675,000.00

Recent pork

$1.2M for agricultural research, and technology and equipment for a hospital, social service residence and historical society in Wayne Co. All private concerns or State facilities.


$5.05M for 2 hospitals, a YMCA, 1 state and 3 private colleges. Looks like general, "here's tax money, buy stuff" kind of largess to mostly private institutions.


$21.5M to various local companies for DoD projects. (Editor's note: I tend to be least concerned with Defense-related pork, since that's actually a Constitutionally approved expenditure. I'm still going to call it out, and you can decide for yourself if it's for a worthwhile program or not.)

Total for June 2006: $27.75M

The above data are from Rep. Regula's website.

Welcome!

In response to the call issued by The Club For Growth, I've set up this blog to monitor the porcine activities of Ohio's 16th District U.S. Representative, Ralph Regula. Let me start off by saying that I like Rep. Regula. He's on the right side of many issues that I care about, and I plan on continuing to vote for him. But! I firmly belive that the only course to end profligate federal spending must begin with citizens voluntarily releasing their grasp on the federal teat. The only way to do that is by making it clear to our representatives that we will no longer be bought through government largesse.

I will try to post regularly my observations of Rep. Regula's votes with as little editorial comment as possible. If you find something I've missed, e- me at OH16PorkWatch at gmail dot com.

Thanks to Prof. Reynolds for pointing the way.