Word: pork-barrel
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...train service to the free market will high-speed rail have a real shot at success. Since it was cobbled together from the ruins of the freight railroads' dying passenger business in 1971, Amtrak has chugged through $23 billion in federal funds and been plagued by an entrenched bureaucracy, pork-barrel politics, high labor costs and stagnant ridership--all the things, in short, you might expect from a state-run monopoly...
Perhaps. But what he has most conspicuously arranged in the past has been pork-barrel projects for his home region in western Japan, including an unnecessary $14 billion bullet-train route. Mori made it clear last week that he will continue the profligate spending of his predecessor, who during his brief, 20-month tenure doled out more than $300 billion for government projects, making him Japan's all-time biggest spendthrift. Don't count on Mori to close the spigot. Government spending "has a natural impact on the economy," he said last week. "Right now the economy is slowly recovering...
Then there's Airbus, long ridiculed by Boeing as a massive pork-barrel project for second-rate aircraft manufacturers. Last year the European consortium captured 55% of global-passenger jetliner sales, outflanking Boeing for the first, but probably not the last, time. Competitive prices and superior salesmanship are factors in the success of Airbus, but so is technology. Airbus beat Boeing to the market with computer-laden "fly-by-wire" technology, which, it says, enhances safety while lowering costs. The flying experience is so similar from model to model that Airbus-equipped airlines save millions of dollars in training costs...
...morning, a rarity in parched Arizona, they had an omen of victory. Early Tuesday afternoon, McCain gathered with his staff in the sprawling kitchen of his Phoenix home, where he had just had a haircut. His four younger children ran in and out of the room. "Jack's a pork-barrel spender," joked 11-year-old Jimmy about his 13-year-old brother, using one of his father's favorite insults. Aides chowed on grilled cheese sandwiches while McCain cycled through a round of radio interviews on the phone. Political strategist Murphy got a call from a network-television source...
...basic argument goes like this: McCain's campaign-finance rebellion--and the force of the Republican reaction against him--was a seismic shock that knocked him free from G.O.P. orthodoxy. And so he attacks Republican pork-barrel projects, questions the need for increased military spending, worries about the gap between rich and poor, and supports new health-care entitlements (insurance for children, a prescription-drug benefit) and even, in the vaguest of terms, universal health care. McCain has also been butting heads with Bush on the question of tax cuts--arguing that the truly conservative position is to keep...