For those of you who were not watching events in Texas in 1993, the collider that is just being started up in Europe - a gigantic scientific device to explore sub-atomic particles - was first planned to be built in Texas just south of Dallas/Ft. Worth. In fact, half of the $8 billion project had been built and thousands of scientists from all over the world had either already moved to the area or were planning to do so. So what happened? How did this historic project get derailed?
It was a victim of the so-called "anti-pork" movement. Or put another way, this was a classic case of what happen when Congress acts stupid! The Texas collider was the earliest and most significant victim of the insane "anti-pork:" hysteria, led by Congressman Joe Barton’s buddies, Dick Armey, Grover Norquist and the so-called "budget hawks" of the Republican Revolution that gave us the impeachment of Bill Clinton amoung other brain-dead ideas.
Half way through this project, the penny-smart-pound-foolish anti-pork faction decided they would "cut the pork" to rebuild Los Angeles, after the Watts riot (remember that?) and Chicago, after their flood, (remember that?); so the California and Illinois delegations REMEMBERED THOSE VOTES and decided that Texas didn’t need a collider after all! It was purely a case of what happens when a small group of Congressman and their partisan allies dedicated to a stupid theory of federal budgeting are willing to play gotcha games with the scientific future of the country. What should have been the first clue that Republicans can win elections but they cannot govern the country? Think Superconducting Super-Collider!!! This IS the perfect monument to "anti-pork" stupidity.
Every major advancement in this country - from the Erie Canal and the building of the post roads to TVA, the Colorado River Authority, the Manhattan Projecty, the Interstate Highway System and NASA - is a product of what some people today would label "pork."
How many ways can I say that THIS IS A STUPID IDEA? It is foisted off on a trusting public by a small cabal of billionaires and their well-oiled propaganda apparatus who want your tax dollars to flow into their pockets in the form of tax cuts and not into the Main Streets of average American towns and cities in the form of better and safer streets, cleaner water and air, better schools, scientific advancements and an environment that is sustainable.
If this group had been around in Jefferson’s day, they would have told the French, "Thanks, but no thanks!" to the Louisiana Purchase!