According to the following websites, it sounds like the stimulus bill only funds high-speed rail in general. This suggests that the package does not specifically call out LA-to-Vegas. If true, then the LA-to-Vegas route can compete with all other routes, and then it does not meet the definition of “pork”.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2185659/posts

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2009/02/12/high_speed_rail_to_las_vegas/

Considering that the Secretary of Transportation is a good-government Republican, unless there is very directive language, I do not think LA-to-Vegas is a done deal by any means. There are a lot of competitors for this funding. In fact, I could see the Secretary of Transportation going out of his way to make sure that LA-to-Vegas does not get favorable treatment.

If you have a source that provides specific language from the stimulus package, making it clear that this is pork, please share.

– Al

As I said, I had not seen it “yet”. Assuming your information is accurate, now I have.

– Al

You don’t think that Harry Reid’s eight-billion-dollar maglev train from LA to Vegas counts?

RICHARDB: Al, thanks for the laugh. Its loaded with hundreds of billions in pet projects spread across all 435 Congressional districts plus territories, not all $800 billion perhaps is pork, so the adverb “some” is appropriate.

Richard,

Words have meanings, and being clear on those meanings is important. The word “Pork” has a clear meaning with regards to congressional spending.

Just to be clear the vast majority of the money in the bill does not fit the definition of “pork”, but it could still be judged to be “wasteful spending”, or at least not “spending with a high rate of return”. In fact, I have not (yet) seen a clear example of pork that is in the final stimulus package. (I am not saying it does not exist.)

PORK is a special kind of congressional appropriation that is clearly & narrowly targeted at a very specific location, company, or congressional district, or a very specific & narrowly defined project. It is congressional micro-management with the clear intent of taking power out of the hands of the administration to make decisions on “who” and “how”. Reading through *some* of the bill (there is no way I could read all of it, even if I wanted to), the language is much more general (and non-specific) than the language Congress usually uses. The general language does not fit the definition of “pork.”

Let me use the NASA language as an illustration. It gives $400 million to “exploration”. As Jeff reports, Congress gave absolutely no description on how the money is to be spent. This funding could be spent in many different ways. In other words, the Administration has a lot of flexibility. Flexibility is the opposite of pork.

Now the $400M for exploration may turn out to be wasteful, ineffective, inefficient (or not), but it is not “pork”. It also may turn out to be a good long-term investment (depending on how it is spent, which is mostly dependent on who becomes the next Administrator).

FWIW,

– Al

What are they going to do, buy gilded chairs for a bunch of climatologists? Cover Antarctica with a thousand weather stations for a decade?”

Quoting from the actual article, the $400M is for “for Earth science and climate monitoring projects” — not “climate change”, “gilded chairs” for anyone, or “a thousand weather stations”.

If we want to debate climate change (and there’s nothing wrong with that), this is the wrong forum — this is a space policy forum, not an environmental policy forum. And if we’re going to debate climate change, our arguments should be based on evidence and logic, not hyperbole and misquoted legislation.

“What I especially don’t like here is diffusing the focus of NASA to something it is not. Weather studies are better suited for the National Science Foundation or even the “National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration” (NOAA)…”

NASA has been in the Earth observation business since it was created. NASA built and operated the first two weather satellites, Vanguard 2 and TIROS-1, launched in 1959 and 1960, respectively. NASA was conducting “weather studies” before it was performing robotic planetary science or human space flight, and has been doing “weather studies” more than a decade longer than NOAA.

Please, let’s do a little research and not post such ignorant statements here.

“It isn’t like the ‘National Weather Service’ (a part of NOAA) might know a thing about climate studies or have established procedures on how to collect climatological data.”

Come on, one can’t be that misinformed. Do we really have to explain that “weather” and “climate” are not the same thing?

Oy vey…

With quotes from Senate advisor Jeff Bingham about the money and the future, with mentions for the alternatives like EELV and Direct, and Extension of Shuttle. Was published 12 hours ago

What are they going to do, buy gilded chairs for a bunch of climatologists? Cover Antarctica with a thousand weather stations for a decade?

Both would be vastly better places for spending money than to dump it down the rat hole of a feasibility study to send up yet another earth observing satellite based on a political philosophy. And they would get some real data about climate change (or at least make the climatologists comfortable when reviewing actual data).

What I especially don’t like here is diffusing the focus of NASA to something it is not. Weather studies are better suited for the National Science Foundation or even the “National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration” (NOAA) that is explicitly involved with climate studies. It boggles my mind here. It isn’t like the “National Weather Service” (a part of NOAA) might know a thing about climate studies or have established procedures on how to collect climatological data.

This sounds like more bureaucracies in more places to waste more money doing the same thing.

$400M for space exploration
$400M for climate change
$150M for aeronautics
$50M to repair damages caused by Katrina
$2M for the Office of the Inspector General

http://www.space.com/news/090212-senate-nasa-stimulus-update.html

nasaspaceflight.com/2009/02/extra-nasa-funds-initial-step-towards-gap-reduction/

FWIW…