I often wonder what could be done to reduce the amount of pork in our public expenditure. I always end up coming back to reducing the size of government. In nice meaty chunks too, entire departments simply closed for business.

What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses’.

I imagine he was paraphrasing this:

When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.
-Benjamin Franklin

That is obviously what we are seeing. Here in Rhode Island I often hear people excusing government pork by saying “oh, that’s federal money.” What a frustrating thing to hear! But we have a well-connected congressman (Teddy Kennedy’s son) who brings home the pork pretty reliably.