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
I'm pretty disappointed that Coburn didn't include that fact in the argument. He's a crazy moralfag but he is usually well versed when it comes to fiscal issues. I guess I was wrong.
