John McCain and Tom Coburn appear not to know what a lighthouse is for

[Lunar]

I don't know anything about this particular project, but the fact that earmark spending is miniscule doesn't make it okay.

1.  This is from the economic stimulus package, do you think that repairing this light house was even in the bottom 50th percentile in terms of waste?  To me this project seems completely reasonable as does the pricetag.  Perhaps lighthouse repairs should be funded from port fees or something else instead.

2. Even if it's wrong, as you imply, the point the posters in this thread were trying to make was that McCain & Coburn themselves are wrong by lying to the American people to make them think most of  our money is  being spent on the silliest of small projects they pull out of a trillion dollar budget. 

3.  Earmarking rules are getting better.  Hopefully Young and Murtha are in jail soon (not likely).

[Lunar]

Well, that's the point they should be making Cynic.  Whether or not an island is inhabited has very little to do with whether or not there are dangerous waters and shipping lanes nearby.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomoy_Point_Light

Yeah that just seems like they're rebuilding it for historical value...probably not the best use of emergency economic stimulus funds.

[Lunar]

Well, that's the point they should be making Cynic.  Whether or not an island is inhabited has very little to do with whether or not there are dangerous waters and shipping lanes nearby.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomoy_Point_Light

Yeah that just seems like they're rebuilding it for historical value...probably not the best use of emergency economic stimulus funds.

Perhaps by uninhabited, they were referring to the lighthouse (thus making it pointless to do work on its living quarters) - not sure - just throwing ideas out there.

I think you're giving them too much credit.
They just thought that the whole lighthouse project it sounded bad enough and used it as a whipping boy, without bothering about the details.

um, I HIGHLY doubt either of them conducted the research or wrote the list.  I'd be surprised if they gave it more than a quick read.

[Lunar]

Whoah, I flipped my position on this issue mid-thread and I forgot to notify everyone (although not on earmarks as a whole or Coburn's intelligence).  

The quoted bit on the topic post looks ignorant of what the purpose of lighthouses have.  Upon further research it is not a bad overall position on this individual item, but it is expressed like a fool wrote it [not uncommon in Senators' press releases].  The project doesn't seem that overpriced -- some seismic retrofits on one of the houses an organization I'm on the board of runs just cost us $8m, and that's in a major population center and not on a deserted island where costs are even higher.

In retrospect I fired too soon defending the project though and I was wrong to defend this individual project.  Cynic's quick research pretty much immediately proved the project more or less relatively useless in terms of emergency federal economic stimulus spending...I don't see the economic output from a historical site compared to building a decent public transportation system in this country

[Lunar]

Um, it was probably just a mistake.  There's no logical reason to say that the island was uninhabited (almost irrelevant to the purpose of a lighthouse) but not mention that the lighthouse isn't actually being repaired to make shipping lanes safer. 

[Lunar]

Yeah yeah, not very relevant to the millions of dollars though