Your very own suspected terrorist

In article N4gQb.132988$xy6.545923@attbi_s02, Jay Honeck
wrote:

WHY has Congress approved a rain forest for Iowa? It doesn't make any
sense...

$50 million would buy a lot of airline tickets to El Junque, Puerto
Rico, the only rain forest in the US Park Service.

EDR wrote:

$50 million would buy a lot of airline tickets to El Junque, Puerto
Rico, the only rain forest in the US Park Service.

What? Olympic National Forest doesn't count?

Rob

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 21:10:05 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

WHY has Congress approved a rain forest for Iowa? It doesn't make any
sense...

No one here knows. This lame-brained idea has been proposed as an
environmental and educational tool by a wealthy businessman from Des Moines.
He's been shopping the idea around for four or five years now, with little
success or interest from local developers.

Somehow he has managed to get Sen. Grassley involved, who apparently had the
clout to ram it into the overall spending bill. (Can you say "Major
Campaign Contribution?")

What the hell our federal government is doing building rain forests in Iowa
is simply beyond me. Even the local newspaper -- as left wing, pork-barrel
project loving as you can imagine -- has publicly ridiculed the idea.

Iowa doesn't have the yearly precipitation needed for rainforest
climates, does it?

It's going to be built IN-DOORS, under a roof that would dome over three
football fields!

I'm dumb-founded. Even though it will probably bring more guests to my
hotel, I think it's the dumbest idea I've EVER heard.


It's pork, pure and simple. Pork was never required to make sense.
The only requirement is that it brings money into the state. No need
to try to rationalize it beyond that.
Rich Russell

I have long advocated that house and senate rules require that any
amendments to a bill have to be directly related to that bill, no
non-related riders, period...
The chances of the public getting their elected representatives to make such
a rule and actually earn their keep by openly voting on every piece of pork
as a separate bill in it's own right, range between zero and minus
infinity...
I suspect that whoever will write the book, The Rise, Decline, and Fall, of
The United States of America, roughly a thousand years from now, will cite
that specific issue as being directly responsible for the final economic
collapse of our country due to every dollar of the GNP becoming someones,
"entitlement"...
denny

"Richard Russell" wrote in message It's pork,
pure and simple. Pork was never required to make sense.
The only requirement is that it brings money into the state. No need
to try to rationalize it beyond that.
Rich Russell

In article , Richard
Russell wrote:

It's pork, pure and simple. Pork was never required to make sense.
The only requirement is that it brings money into the state. No need
to try to rationalize it beyond that.

Of course it's pork! It is Iowa, after all.

Jay Honeck wrote:

What the hell our federal government is doing building rain forests in Iowa
is simply beyond me. Even the local newspaper -- as left wing, pork-barrel
project loving as you can imagine -- has publicly ridiculed the idea.

I take it that the lunch counter there will specialize in barbeque.

George Patterson
Great discoveries are not announced with "Eureka!". What's usually said is
"Hummmmm... That's interesting...."

Oh, like one of these!

http://www.edenproject.com/

Paul

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:N4gQb.132988$xy6.545923@attbi_s02...
It's going to be built IN-DOORS, under a roof that would dome over three
football fields!

"Jay Honeck" writes:

I'm dumb-founded. Even though it will probably bring more guests to my
hotel, I think it's the dumbest idea I've EVER heard.

I like Reason's take on it.
http://www.reason.com/hod/rr020304.shtml

The indoor rain forest gets a whopping $50 million. This faux
paradise for parrots will be built in Coralville, Iowa, a town
with a population of 17,246 according to the latest Census
Bureau survey, or about 5,000 households. The $50 million, in
other words, averages out to $10,000 per household, not bad for
a place that doesn't even have an airport.

The implication, of course, is that towns should invest in airports before
crazy stuff like this. (IOW is under 4nm away though, so I'm not sure why
it's significant.)

--kyler

Exactly.
--
Gene Seibel
Hangar 131 - http://pad39a.com/gene/plane.html
Because I fly, I envy no one.





Rob Perkins wrote in message . ..

WHY has Congress approved a rain forest for Iowa? It doesn't make any
sense...

Well, compared to the $50 million Congress just approved to build a RAIN
FOREST here in Iowa City, Iowa

It should do wonders for the motel business, Jay.

I mean, who'd want to see a rain forest in Louisiana or even worse
Guatamala? Too hot and sticky.

all the best -- Dan Ford
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