PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Yeah, I’ve had a lot of these, but they just keep giving me so much material to work with:

It was the $500,000 that Congress gave the Sparta Teapot Museum that made it a poster child for wasteful Washington spending.

But North Carolina’s notorious “pork barrel” project also illustrates other ways that earmarks influence lobbying, political contributions and spending.

Looking for a way to help pay for the northwestern N.C. memorial to items with both a handle and a spout, the museum’s backers decided in 2004 to team up with other area organizations, such as a local hospital, looking for federal aid.

Working through the Alleghany County Economic Development Corp., together they hired a Washington lobbying firm, the Ferguson Group, with close ties to North Carolina.

It was a good move for the museum, which ended up with a half-million dollar allocation from the 2005 Department of Housing and Urban Development budget. But it also received top billing in the 2006 “Pig Book,” an annual publication issued by Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group that monitors federal spending.

The lobbyists charged the Alleghany County group $260,000 between 2004 and 2006, Senate records show. The museum’s project manager, Jonathan Halsey, says it no longer participates in the lobbying contract because the museum isn’t seeking more federal money.

Ferguson lobbyists have given thousands of dollars in recent years to the campaigns of N.C. lawmakers, including the three who helped secure the money for the teapot museum.

It’s not just about waste. It’s about corruption. You want to clean up campaign finance? Getting rid of this sort of thing would do more than McCain-Feingold ever did.