PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Investor’s Business Daily says put the pork online:

Information is power, right? Transparency makes for good government, right? So why all the congressional foot-dragging over a bill to expose how our tax dollars are spent?

Sure, the question sort of answers itself. These are congressmen, after all, and even their party affiliation doesn’t curb their impulse to conceal as best they can all the grants and contracts for which their constituents ultimately must pay.

Unless you’re a maverick such as Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn. He’s pushing a bill to create a database where taxpayers, using popular search engines from home PCs, can easily find which companies and which nonprofits have been awarded their money.

Read the whole thing. I’m for it! (Via NewsBeat1).

UPDATE: A journalist reader who (tellingly) requests anonymity emails on the novelty of Coburn’s amendment:

It would highlight all the pork that sneaks out asgrants to non-profits, advocacy groups and professionals. That’s novel, because nearly all previous media discussions of pork focused on the pork delivered to industry via obvious, signed, published, announced contracts.

Coburn’s amendment is particularly noxious because it allows much easier oversight of the pork handed out to our peers, our fellow professionals, not those distasteful businessmen working in weapons companies, the road-building industry, etc. Our professional pork includes grants for diversity training, anti-smoking campaigns, peace promotion, voter registration, ad nauseam. . . .

I’m guessing there will be less media support for this aspect.