PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Blogger LawHawk offers a defense of Trent Lott’s railroad-to-nowhere project. I’m not sure I’m convinced, but given that I’ve just come to dislike Trent Lott in general, I feel that I should go out of my way to link suggestions that I’m wrong about this project.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Mark Hessey emails: “Hmm, before I clicked thru I was skeptical as well, but I came away thinking LawHawk makes a pretty good argument.” Reader Christian Lane thinks that LawHawk’s argument underscores Trent Lott’s problems:

I think what this shows is that Trent Lott has become an ineffective advocate for his constituents’ needs. The relocation of the railway may be a good idea or even necessary, but Mr. Lott’s support for it obscures the merits. If his first priority were serving the needs of the citizens of Mississippi, he would either (i) take a strong stand against pork, including specific pork for Mississippi, to (hopefully) demonstrate that he is against pork, but the railway project isn’t pork or (ii) step aside. I doubt that will happen and I think the failure to do so implies that Mr. Lott’s real motivations as a Senator are not necessarily in line with the needs of the citizens of Mississippi.

Ouch!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Brent Ramsey emails:

Have to give you some input on the CSX railroad project supported by Senators Lott and Cochran. I lived in Long Beach, MS for 23 years. That project has been on the books at least that long and longer. The way that railway crosses the towns of Ocean Springs, Biloxi, Gulfport, Long Beach, and Pass Christian with literally dozens of road crossing many of which have no physical barriers, just a warning sign for a railroad crossing kills dozens of Mississipians each year. It is a worthwhile project to protect lives and to improve rail transportation across the MS gulf coast. I retired and left MS in 2002 and now live in western NC so I have no vested interest just an opinion that it is a worthwhile project and really is not correctly described as pork.

Hmm. Well, it may be worthwhile, though that still leaves open the question of whether federal taxpayers should pay for it. And, even if that’s true, a project that Mississippi has been trying to get for so long shouldn’t be funded as Katrina relief, much less snuck into a war appropriations bill. It should stand, or fall, on its own merits. One characteristic of “pork” is that it avoids the normal budgetary scrutiny. That seems to be what Lott has been trying to do here.

Mississippi reader Lisa (last name withheld on request) writes:

If I did not know the local history of this project, I might think differently than I do. I just think it stinks to use the worst disaster in American history to get funding for a local pet project, when so many people are still so devastated.

I live on the Ms. Gulf Coast . . . Gulfport has wanted a new east west corridor for decades and could not come up with the money to fund it.

Relocating the CSX railroad and using the right of way for a new road will not take all of the traffic off of Hwy 90, the casino’s are located there.

So Hwy 90 will still be a vital road, you are just adding another road to be rebuilt in case of another Katrina.

And I could mention that the railroad acted as a dam preventing the devastating storm surge from going even further inland.

The project has enough merit that Gulfport has been looking into it for years. They have just come up with a clever way for you (the federal taxpayers) to pay for it.

Sounds like pork to me.

Me too.