Tuesday, March 31, 2009

He Calls It, "Wasteful Spending." She Calls It Vital.

Just another glimpse at why cries to cut "waste" are so difficult to put into policy. Often the call is being made by someone who doesn't understand the problem.
"Recently there were some comments made about federal spending for volcano
monitoring being wasteful," [Alaska Senator Lisa] Murkowski
said
from the Senate floor, without naming Jindal directly. "I can assure you that
monitoring volcanoes is critically important to the nation and especially to my
home state of Alaska."
Her comments referred to a rebuttal speech given by Louisiana Governor and Stimulus Denier, Bobby Jindal. Jindal doesn't understand that:
"Volcano monitoring" in some parts of the country is not all that dissimilar
from "hurricane monitoring" on the Gulf Coast.

1 comment:

Ordinary Jill said...

Not to mention all the U.S. military assets that were moved in advance of volcanic eruptions in the Phillippines. Without spending money on volcano monitoring, we would have spent far more money replacing expensive military planes.