Pick the pork

Our economy is currently tanking for lack of smoker cessation programs, tribal alcohol and substance abuse counseling and STD prevention.

Or that’s what the authors of the current stimulus bill that’s passed the House and is before the Senate think. In addition to the legitimate tax cuts and public works projects intended to get the economy moving again, the bill also contains a lot of questionable items that could be described as pork.

What is pork, you may ask? Pork is government spending for silly projects — like cow flatulence studies or multi-million dollar bridges to islands populated by 10 Eskimos and an irate reindeer — located in communities other than your own. If the wasteful spending is located in your community, it’s referred to as “infrastructure.”

Here’s a challenge for the Eagle’s canny readers. The following is a list of real items in the stimulus bill and fictitious items I pulled out of that place where I keep my head. See if you can tell one from the other.

—$88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker. Doesn’t all this global warming business render icebreakers a little unnecessary?

—$50 billion to convert all public schools in America into prisons. A senator who did not wish to be identified explained it this way, “You’ve heard of that school-to-prison pipeline right, well we’re focusing more on the destination than the journey now.”

—$500 million to do something about the critical shortage of buildings named after Jack Hawkins at Troy University.
—$4 million for research into whether those Extenze pills really work. (Sponsored by Sens. Ted Kennedy and David Vitter.)

—$75 million for “smoking cessation activities.” Because it’s really smart to get people to quit consuming the product you rely upon for a large stream of tax revenue.

—$125 million for the Washington sewer system. The U.S. Capitol apparently needs a facelift.

—$15 million for self-esteem counseling for male residents of Pansey referred to as “Pansey man” or “Pansey boy” in the Dothan Eagle. Additional programs will be made available to residents of Effeminate, Ky. and Sheep Fetish, Mont.

—- $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters. Thanks to the War on Terror, our Ottomans are now made out of real Ottomans.

—$1 million “big-boy panty” professional development grant for the City of Dothan. $2 million foot-in-mouth avoidance grant for Houston County.

—$8 million to buy TurboTax software for Obama Cabinet appointees.

—$650 million converter-box coupon program for the digital conversion. For that much couldn’t you just buy all the cave people with rabbit ears some basic cable?

—$200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations. This is actually exciting because scientists have discovered a way to run tanks on all the acronyms and gibberish . Who needs gasoline when you can put TRADOC, TDY and warfighter in the tank.

Instead of spending all this money on coal plants and rural garbage hauling, I suggest the federal government give the money to me and some of my buddies to spend on a tour of exotic dancing lounges throughout the Southeast. This plan would put dollars directly in the hands ... er, garters of thousands of single mothers and college students throughout an economically-challenged region. And it would give a whole new meaning to the phrase “stimulus package.”

Jim Cook can be stimulated with an e-mail at . No Pansey men or boys need apply.