Even with his pork, Senator Trent Lott, R-ubberstamp MI, cannot get priorities straight.
It turns out that the recommended first-responder communications network didn't get funded in Mississippi, according to James Barksdale's testimony, while the Mississippi "railroad to nowhere" for $700 Million got included in the GOP's 109th Congress' "emergency" spending porkfest. (Barksdale was chair of the post-Katrina rebuild-it Commission in MI and currently has a proposal for the FCC to sell-off some of the most valuable spectrum to industry in exchange for building out a national public safety network).
As I think Bill Moyer's has documented, few know how to work the system of financing quite like Lott. Does this just mean that the real-estate lobby is stronger than the telecommunications lobby in Mississippi?
Don't bet on it:
Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., believes in traveling in style. After Congress recessed for the Thanksgiving holiday, Lott and his wife avoided the commercial airport hassle and hopped a BellSouth corporate craft from Washington to Jackson, Miss. Cost: $1,335. Comfort: priceless. Lott's political action committee picked up the tab, which covered both passengers.
