Politics is politics and that will never change. In the past few days, more has come from the famous Obama spending bill and as expected, there is a lot of pork in there.

What is Pork?

Pork is a term used in politics that refers to money spent on projects that really have no value to the American people but rather make certain individuals rich, as they own companies that the government gives money to s the lack of need for the product or service. It is often used to gain political ground as those individuals are high centers of influence in the community.

Here are some of the projects referred to as pork in this bill.

Tucked into pages 262 and 263 of the bill, for example, are provisions that will aid the manufacturers of “certain wooden arrows designed for use by children.” The bill will exempt the arrows from an excise tax of 39 cents. There are also tax breaks for race-track owners, for rum imported from Puerto Rico, for worsted wool makers, Hollywood film and television production companies and on and on. Then there is spending $100 million up on blueberry reserves? I am sure if we dissect the bill, there would be close to $10 billion in pork hidden in there.

As we all watched Obama take office, we believed that these pork spending bills would no longer exist. Have we been fooled?

Well, we can look at this two ways:

The first way would be to think that Obama has lied to all of us and that Washington still does not have a leader that cares about the people but rather making sure he gets re-elected. Almost all of our past Presidents have proven this to be true in their presidency, how could we expect Obama to be any different!

The second which is my personal opinion is that perhaps Obama has ran into a bit more resistance from the Republicans as he had planned. He called for bi partisanship and a unified government but reality remains that it will not happen in 2 months and nothing will unify something that has been divided for decades. I believe that this is simply a case of the greater good. Obama strongly believed in passing this bill and it may have required a bit of pork to influence certain people to vote for it.

I remain positive that Obama was the right choice for office and will wait till 2 years go by to truly see if Washington has truly changed.