May 13, 2008

What's It Like To Have A Big Pile of Government Waste Named After You, Bob?

Ben Cunningham writes elequently about the waste-of-tax-dollars known as the Clement Landport. Bob Clement spent millions of tax dollars building a mass transit hub that was unwanted, unnecessary and poorly planned, not to mention a complete waste of time, money, land and effort.

I worked at Nashville Business Journal for the first three years of the 1990s, roughly coinciding with Clement's final few years in Congress, when he was pushing for the landport funding.

Al Gore hadn't created the Internet yet, so we still got press releases via fax. The fax machine was regulary stuffed with new releases from Clement's congressional office touting this project or that project for which he had secured federal funds. Until election season rolled around. Then, suddenly, we started getting faxes from Bob claiming Bob was a fiscal conservative who sought to restrain government spending.

The truth is, Clement was a congressional pork pig, and it is only fitting that the landport is named after the ex-Congressman,

If Bob Clement ever runs again for any office above the level of constable, the stupidity that is the Clement Landport is a good enough reason to vote against him.

Bob, naturally, still thinks the Clement Landport was a good idea.