Brendan really is calling: Tracking down the facts on “pork”

Brendan Skwire is performing an invaluable public service today: The Philly blogger is fact-checking Maureen Dowd — and, by extension, Sen. John McCain — on her characterization of a number of “pork” earmarks in a new spending bill before Congress. Dowd writes:

Before the Senate resoundingly defeated a McCain amendment on Tuesday that would have shorn 9,000 earmarks worth $7.7 billion from the $410 billion spending bill, the Arizona senator twittered lists of offensive bipartisan pork, including:

• $2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York. “quick peel me a grape,” McCain twittered.

• $1.7 million for a honey bee factory in Weslaco, Tex.

• $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa.

• $1 million for Mormon cricket control in Utah. “Is that the species of cricket or a game played by the brits?” McCain tweeted.

• $819,000 for catfish genetics research in Alabama.

• $650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi.

• $951,500 for Sustainable Las Vegas. (McCain, a devotee of Vegas and gambling, must really be against earmarks if he doesn’t want to “sustain” Vegas.)

• $2 million “for the promotion of astronomy” in Hawaii, as McCain twittered, “because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy.”

• $167,000 for the Autry National Center for the American West in Los Angeles. “Hopefully for a Back in the Saddle Again exhibit,” McCain tweeted sarcastically.

• $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii. “During these tough economic times with Americans out of work,” McCain twittered.

• $200,000 for a tattoo removal violence outreach program to help gang members or others shed visible signs of their past. “REALLY?” McCain twittered.

• $209,000 to improve blueberry production and efficiency in Georgia.

“When do we turn off the spigots?” Senator McCain said in his cri de coeur on the Senate floor. “Haven’t we learned anything? Bills like this jeopardize our future.”

Rather than snicker at the punchlines, Brendan is doing something important: Research. He’s finding out the stories behind those earmarks, through a series of calls and web surfing.

On grape genetic research: “According to Associate Director Mark Smith, the reason for the money is to do research on grapes, a $3.5 billion chunk of NY’s economy. Grape cultivation is located upstate in the Finger Lakes region, an area of HIGH unemployment. The research helps identify disease and pest resistant traits, traits that increase production, and consumer research. when asked, Smith told me that this money will help put people to work and shore up an important industry to upstaters.”

On honeybees: “It took a few calls, since the office was closed, but I spoke to Mr. Kevin Hackett, a USDA researcher. he told me that the $1.7 million that Dowd objects to is to study colony collapse disorder, a looming threat to our food supply. Hackett confirmed that 1 in every three bites of food, 33%, is produced through the work of bees. No bees? Then no squash, no apples, no almonds, and no beef either, since the alfalfa and clover cows eat is pollinated by bees.”

On beaver management: “Flooding caused by beaver dams can also destroy agricultural crops. The flat areas throughout many of the important agricultural regions of Mississippi allow just a few beaver dams to flood significant acreage of cropland. This flooding often makes parts of the field inaccessible to farm equipment. Sometimes beaver enter crop fields, cut the plants, and use them for food or dam building material.”

There’s other posts, and more to come, apparently, in Brendan’s series. I won’t make the case that every earmark is a worthy thing, nor that all 9,000 earmarks in this particular bill are wise and just. But I think Brendan is doing a smart thing to push back against politics by punchline — the same scenario that had Bobby Jindal mocking volcano monitoring that could well save lives. The fact that he’s doing it on his own time just makes it a little more amazing.