Porkbusters.org
January 29th, 2007 | by Brian |Yet another notable part of an Arnold Kling article: Porkbusters.org. As quoting its Wikipedia entry:
Porkbusters is an effort led by mostly conservative and libertarian bloggers to cut pork barrel spending by the U.S. Congress in order to help pay for Hurricane Katrina recovery projects. The effort was launched on 2005-09-18[1], when the massive scale of the needed reconstruction effort became apparent. It quickly picked up steam as blogger Glenn Reynolds (aka “Instapundit”) began promoting the idea and the influential-though-anonymous blogger N.Z. Bear set up a website showing which members of the U.S. Congress had committed to cutting projects in their own districts to help offset the disaster recovery effort.
Reynolds encourages his readers to send him copies of pork-cutting letters they send to their representatives and Senators, along with the responses from the elected officials. He then posts these on his website under the heading “Porkbusters Update”.
In operation for less than six weeks, as of October 13, 2005 the project has already managed to garner $84,000,000 in specific budget cut commitments out of various Representatives and non-specific agreements out of many more. In addition, those Representatives who have been contacted and have negative responses are highlighted and their contact information is made available for their constituents.
A fine example of smart activism!
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