At Doug Ross’ request, here’s a link to the list (it’s a PDF file) of pork handed out through the Competitive Grants Program.
You can find it at the Budget and Control Board site, so it’s not hidden, but it’s not exactly advertised to the world, either. Trouble is, we sort of had to know it existed to look for it. We sort of had to piece this together from some oblique references made by lawmakers over the last couple of weeks.
And if you’re like this other guy and want to bid for YOUR piece of the pie, here’s the main page. But here’s hoping we can shut this down before you get your money.
Happy reading. Or unhappy reading, as the case may be.
By the way, Doug — Cindi’s now done two columns on
this grant thing, there’s an editorial written and scheduled to run, and news has
done two articles, including today’s lead front-page story. I don’t know about news, but that’s more work than any of us in editorial ever did on any one outrage of Andre’s.
Anyway, thanks for raising the question about the list.
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Brad, you’ve got my attention. As a journalist you can take this the next step by publishing the names of the offending legislators responsible for this pork outrage and strongly recommend the voters vote them out.
Thanks. I travel out of state Monday-Friday now so I don’t always get to see The State. Excuse my dig about Andre… I have this idealistic notion that the power of the press might actually be able to rid our state government of these people but it will require DAILY exposure and facts, facts, facts. How many people know about Andre’s speeding tickets versus this issue?
There is so much pork in that list, it ought to be served with a side of slaw and beans.
Where’s the details? Who received the check? Who cashed the check? When was the check delivered? Who requested the funds?
How was the money spent?
Let’s not mention that the misspelling of “Discription” in the table title. Must be some relative of some politician doing the editing.
I’m going to do my own research on these items when I get the chance. First one that struck my eye was $5500 for Chester’s Hilarity Festival… there actually appears to be a Hilarity Festval… but why it should be subsidized by taxpayers dollars is beyond me.
Don’t complain about education spending until we kill this golden goose.
I mentioned the golden goose… I guess I had the wrong species.
There’s an entry for “Friends of Swan Lake Gardens” for “Acquisition of bronze sculpture”. Amount provided? $100,000!!!
That’s probably one new school bus…
$50,000 for a July 4th party for David Wilkins in Canada is awesome. Why the hell are we footing that bill?
“that’s more work than any of us in editorial ever did on any one outrage of Andre’s”….BW
What a “chicken – – – – “ thing to say. Simply amazing the effort you will expend to take cheap partisan shots at Andre’.
With all the crap going on in the General Assembly (and this list of pork is just a small part of it)…u still can’t miss an opportunity to take a cheap shot.
Do not continue to be surprised when good men and women fail to seize the opportunity to be of public service. Why would anyone want to be subjected to the petulant and loathsome piety of the State’s editorial writers? We are stuck with the partisan hacks that care not about the public because the State and others like it can not place partisan concerns behind it.
What shot? I’m missing something.
Thanks for the link. The application page is really breathtaking, even for this state. The “frequently asked questions” page says essentially that no proposals are rejected (Question one) – isn’t that what they mean by “If you have not been funded, your existing application is still active unless that application was for a date specific event and that date has passed.”
Q3 says there’s no limit to what you can ask for…and Q4 says you can carry the money from one fiscal year to the next. I didn’t know any state programs were allowed to carry money over like that. That would allow somebody to drop the money into an interest bearing account indefinetly. You could use this program to set up an endowment for your organiztion.
I think my favorite was the DAR request for $50K for “Francis Marion Grave Improvments.” That’s a much better use of state $ than, say, providing care for the mentally ill. And why would the mentally ill want to be cooped up in hospitals anyway when there are all these festivals going on?
The vast majority of these grants are pure socialist money wasting nonsense. It’s interesting that the INdian tribes haven’t jumped on this government ATM program. And people criticized Sanford for bringing the piggies into the legislature. Slop the hogs, the pigfest is on.
If I were running The State, I’d have the bottom right corner of the front page reserved every day for an in-depth analysis of each of these items. The politicians rely on the apathy of the public to keep the money flowing.
Every item on there was cash that ended up in some local cronies pockets, and with nothing of value received.
The sad thing is that this is chump change compared to the handouts in the $500,000 to $200,000,000 range in the form of grants and tax abatements for businesses who “donated” to the right campaigns.
The tax system in this state is an integral part of this wholesale corruption.
Brad frequently makes snide remarks about anti-tax people and Libertarians but I can’t see how anyone could look at this list and NOT be ashamed to be a Republican or Democrat. These are YOUR candidates.
A lot of Demopublican party faithful live to get their faces in this trough.
It is us, the taxpayers, against them, the tax eaters.
Too many so-called “journalists” have chose sides against us.
Doug, I criticize “libertarians,” and most of those are Democrats or Republicans. The Libertarian Party is so small and powerless as to escape notice on this blog.
The only political PARTIES I criticize — and I criticize them loudly and often, and if you haven’t noticed that you’ve missed what is probably the main theme of this blog — are the Democratic and Republican parties.
Where libertarians come in is that of all the people who adhere slavishly to those two parties, their libertarian branches are probably the ones I disagree with the most, from the rabidly anti-government people in the GOP to the pro-abortion, gay rights Democrats.
Of course, in SC the latter group is hardly heard from in the corridors of power. So you’ll see me writing more about the economic libertarians. Why bother yelling at the powerless, whether it’s powerless Libertarians (the party) or powerless liberal Democrats? If they’re powerless, what harm can they do?
If the only libertarians we had to worry about were the ones in the party of that name, we wouldn’t have a problem with that ideology. It would be inconsequential.
Okay… as a big L Libertarian, I personally don’t think there is a small L libertarian wing of either party…. although I think Sanford is closest to that ideology.
What is surprising is that you can look at this list of pork and in good conscience say, “Well, that’s the system I’m most comfortable with even if I don’t like it”.
I can look at people committing crimes in America and still appreciate the country. And these aren’t even crimes; they are just not the proper way to disburse state funds.
If I were comfortable with the pork, I wouldn’t expose it. Such things must be laid bare, and officeholders held accountable for them, to keep the system healthy.
The alternative to government is chaos. A republic is the best form of government. We must be always vigilant to keep it clean and honest. Of course, there is nothing dishonest in this pork. These people were elected by their districts to do things their constituents want, and these are things their constituents want.
These things simply are not defensible as statewide expenditures when they are not vetted by the full body. Bad decisions are not inherently wicked; they are simply bad decisions, and voters at large should know about them.
By coincidence, an email from the SC Libertarian Party showed up in my inbox this morning. At the top was a quote which pretty much sums up our form of government:
“Men have an immoderate love of pleasure, influence, prestige, power…And, at the same time, they are driven by a powerful impulse to obtain these things at the expense of others.
“Plunder, which plays such an important role in the affairs of the world, has but two instruments: force and fraud,
and two impediments: courage and knowledge.”
– Frederic Bastiat, Economic Sophisms, 1845
This pork is outside the bounds of a republic with Constitutional limits on its scope and spending. These legislators are devoting most of their time to lining their own pockets, transferring tax monies to the special interest groups who invested in their election, and in government activities which are of no public benefit, or are actually harmful to the general welfare.
If it is not criminal in the strict legal definition, it is only because these people wrote the laws which they use to enrich themselves. But this government is criminal.