Update On Louisiana Pork At Taxpayer Expense

I wrote earlier about the lack of leadership in Louisiana and how neighboring states did not have the same difficulties because they had good leadership. I also stated that Louisiana has submitted a plan worth $250 billion dollars to rebuild the state. I also told how much of it was pork and had nothing to do with the hurricane. Tech Central Station has an article about how Mary Landrieu expects taxpayers to foot 100% of the bill. I want the liberals out there who keep complaining about how Louisiana is “getting screwed again” to read this article and then tell me if this is still the case. It is beyond me how these dysfunctional people can be so brazen as to completely screw up the emergency, cause all the problems, complain that big brother was not there to jump right in and then introduce a bill for billions of dollars in pork. I think that if Mississippi can get by with no more than $50 billion we need to be looking very closely at Louisiana. If they do not scrub this list then something is very wrong.

That being said, I thought it would be informative to know what we are asked to pay for. A not so quick read of the 440 page bill soon demonstrated that the Louisiana lawmakers stuffed it with everything they could think of including many items having nothing to do with hurricane relief. The items include:

  • $35,000,000 for the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board
  • $8,000,000 for direct financial assistance to alligator farmers
  • $12,000,000 for the restoration of wildlife management areas
  • $25,490,073 to complete the Sugarcane Research Laboratory
  • $120,000,000 for a laboratory, facilities and equipment at the Southern Regional Research Center
  • $28,300,000 for the restoration and rehabilitation of forest lands
  • $34,193,591 to support the research and education activities of the Agriculture Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service
  • $19,000,000 for the acquisition of first-responder mobile communications, deployable cellular towers and for equipment necessary for public Internet access in a 100-block area of downtown New Orleans using wireless-fidelity technology.
  • $250,000,000 for assistance to firefighters
  • $100,000,000 for early intervention, prevention, and disorder treatment for children who are 0 to 5 years of age
  • $100,000,000 for early intervention, prevention, and disorder treatment for school age children.
  • $100,000,000 for substance abuse assessment, early intervention, prevention, and treatment.
  • $600,000,000 for early childhood education
  • $20 million for the establishment of development plans for development districts in the State of Louisiana
  • $160 million to implement the 2005 recommendations of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission related to the Federal city development in Algiers, Louisiana
  • $7 billion for rebuilding evacuation and energy supply routes on top of $5 billion for expansion of road and transit capacity.
  • $150 million for a small business loans fund and tax breaks on top of $50 billion in block grants.

But Sen. Landrieu and her delegation also asked for lost sales revenues for many commercial entities. Never mind that all such loses could have been covered by private sector business continuity insurance if the owners had the discipline to think ahead. For instance:

  • $27 million for lost timber sales revenues from the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area
  • $250,000 for dairy cattle losses of dairy producers
  • $11 million for livestock losses
  • $1,000 per head of cattle without any limitation on the maximum amount of payments that a producer may receive
  • $5 million for dairy spoilage losses
  • $5 million for a livestock compensation program to make payments for livestock-related losses

So there is a small list of some of the things that they want to spend our money on. We really need to keep a close eye on this or Landrieu will have 3 summer homes and Nagin will own a casino.

This is the kind of corruption that caused all the problems down there during the hurricane. If they had been spending their money on the right things perhaps they could have evacuated the people and saved lives. Now they want to fleece us. How nice.

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