See if these two maps seem to have a running theme.  First, Map 1.  No titles, no labels, just ten pins:

If that doesn’t seem clear enough, try this one:

That is the ten richest counties in the USA according to the 2010 census.  What do you think the odds are that five of them would be within 30 miles of Washington, DC.  A city built on a swamp with no natural resources.

Now, let’s look at another map, shall we?

I’m gonna bet a bunch of people will know what this list is simply by the locations.  South Carolina, Mississippi, and eastern Kentucky.  For those that don’t get it real quick and easy, we’ll all sit back and let you figure it out.

Got it?  If not, they are the ten poorest counties according to the 2010 census.  Now, unlike Washington, DC, some of these areas are rich in resources.  But, for various reasons, have not thrived.  The top three in fact sit on some of the largest coal reserves on the planet.  Over-regulation and political fear-mongering in the 60′s and 70′s killed the industry that was lifting these areas out of the poverty.  It was done by people, drum roll please, who lived in the first map.  So how do you suppose people living in the first map made all that money?  They’re not doing it by mining coal.  They’re doing it to a huge degree there off of taxpayer’s backs.  What little money’s being made in Lee County, KY is being taxed and sent to DC so people can live nicely in Fairfax, VA.

And God forbid any man think about flipping it around occasionally.  The mere suggestion of spending any federal money in the poorest of the poor counties in the US automatically gets labeled as pork by any organization that feels they have the authority to call it what they want.  There’s all kinds of organizations that feel justified in persecuting anyone that feels like spending money where people need it most.  They don’t care at all that if a geographic area has nothing to immediately attach federal spending to, the only way they can get any money is by what they define to be pork.  In their perfect world scenario, the people of Fairfax, VA would simply get all the federal money and the rest of the country would have to fend for itself as well as chip in to cover it.  Think I’m making this stuff up?  Where do you suppose Citizens for Government Waste has their offices?

1301 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, NW, SUITE 1075, WASHINGTON, DC 20004

Right smack in the middle of the dots in the first map.  Their favorite target?  The guy who represents four of the dots on the last map.  Coincidence?

I know as well as anyone that some of the “pork” is waste.  But, I also know that there are no other means to target specific problem areas economically.  If a Congressman attempts to use federal dollars to stimulate economic development, it’s immediately lumped into the same category as “pork” even if it’s a well thought out program that can generate economic benefits.  The problem has never been pork.  Ever.  The problem has been wasteful spending.  Follow me for just one second with this.  CAGW and a whole long list of people target a particular type of spending.  What they never do, ever, is look at ingrained wasteful spending.  20,000 health and human service jobs around Fairfax, VA is a hell of a lot more wasteful than building one multi-functional building in Somerset, KY.  Has CAGW ever concerned themselves with that?  No.  Because there is no established mechanism in rural Kentucky for wasting huge amounts of money, it HAS to be pork.  If they want to do it around Fairfax, VA, they just hire another 1,000 government employees and Citizens Against Government Waste and Anderson Cooper are perfectly happy with it.

Tags: 2010, census, counties, employment, federal, Government, jobs, poor, pork, rich