No wonder it takes Congress so long to do anything

I mean it takes them over 8 months (and counting) to get their facts straight.

Vox Populi links to this story about a list of the worst pork of 2009 put together by two Congressmen, Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga. It included the SmartBike expansion. Sort of. They called it:

-- $3 million for bicycle racks in Georgetown -- the Washington, D.C., neighborhood that is one of the wealthiest areas in the country. 

As Molly Redden astutely points out. It's not for bike racks, it's for bike sharing kiosks and bikes. And it's not just Georgetown (only two would be in Georgetown last I heard), it's District-wide and it isn't even guaranteed to be Georgetown.

Now, again as she notes, this might not be so bad, if Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) hadn't made the EXACT SAME erroneous claim back in March of '09 and then been corrected by the League of American Bicyclists.

It's almost like they know that what they're saying is untrue...but that couldn't be possible. That would make them liars right? They must just have the most idiotic set of staffers in DC - completely incapable of doing a simple Google search.

I haven't scanned the whole budget, but I bet I can find 11 pieces of really awful pork without making something up.

Kirk, by the way, is running for Senate in Illinois. If this is indicative of the kind of intellectual honesty we can count on, God help us all. 

Here's Fox News coverage of the story if you can stomach it. They really do a through job of researching the list(sarcasm off). Not that CBS did any better. How is spitting out a politician's press release reporting?

Comments

[IMGoph]

no need to be diplomatic. yes, they are liars. that's their job. politican is to lie and cartographer is to make maps.

[Daniel]

I wouldn't bother correcting the information with Fox News. After all, they're just the mouthpiece.

Instead, it might be useful for WABA to write the newspapers in Kirk and Price's states/districts to correct the record. If Kirk is interviewing for the job of Senator, voters in his state should know about how sloppy he is with his homework.

[Daniel]

Sorry for the double post, but I also thought, any spending in DC can't be "pork," strictly speaking. "Pork" is a voting member "bringing home the bacon." DC doesn't have any voting members. So no one is bringing home the bacon.

Kirk, Cantor, and Price have problems bigger than their truthiness, they have trouble understanding basic political terms. But, Washington and Wall Street are the two places you can fail so fabulously and find yourself promoted.