Morning Metro: Senator Criticizes Agnes Scott Study, Zaxby’s at N. DeKalb, and a Naughty/Nice List
Decatur Metro | December 22, 2011
- Sen. Tom Coburn puts Agnes Scott’s chimp study in his “Wastebook 2011″ [Atlanta Unfiltered]
- Decatur’s Resource Conservation Coordinator Lena Stevens interview [blogtalkradio]
- Zaxby’s coming to North DeKalb Mall area [TNT]
- Atlanta airport has least healthy food [ABC]
- Photo of Atlanta artesian well circa 1883 [ATL Urbanist]
- Naughty: New York Times’ Atlanta writers, Nice: Thomas Wheatley’s mom [pecanne log]
- Mark Bittman’s suggestions of gifts for “non-cooks” [NYT]
Photo courtesy of wwarby via Flickr
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Ironic that Coburn would be so quick to denigrate a study of poo-slinging when he himself is seemingly a master of it.
Funny, I had a similar thought, but I was thinking the findings are probably suspect since the author of the study was probably pre-disposed to find in favor of the poo-slingers. After all, Hopkins has to be able to sling the sh*t pretty well himself to have convinced someone to pony up the big bucks in the first place.
“Some of the $592,527 was used for the chimp study.” No matter if it’s a few thousand for a chimp/poop study, hundreds of thousands for bike paths and sidewalks, or maybe $1million for stream restoration, it all totals up to billions of dollars the national government borrows to keep people in many communities from having to pay for these projects themselves. Would the trustees and alumni of Agnes Scott be willing to pay for this study? Would the taxpayers of Decatur be willing to pay for 100% of the cost of bike paths, sidewalks, and every other amenity that some special interest groups in this town crave? I don’t think so.
Keep up the good work Senator Coburn. This taxpayer appreciates the information.
So you’re arguing that a the best possible society would be made up of people with exactly the same priorities (financially or socially)? Good luck with that.
What is a priority — or a “special interest” to use your terminology — to you may not be a priority for someone else. I’ll grant you, this study is perhaps not the most shining example of the usage of tax dollars, but it does have some value (and incidentally, we don’t know exactly how much of the funds cited actually went to this study, a conspicuous and likely deliberate omission to avoid undercutting Coburn’s indignation). But the minute you start trying to a la carte this kind of spending, everyone’s going to lose something they care about.
That’s actually a nice candid photo of Sen. Coburn enjoying his lunch.