Various conservative organizations

delight each year in listing some of the unconscionable ways in which

our elected representatives waste our money in order to buy votes.

While these efforts to raise

public awareness are commendable, one begins to wonder if there's the

slightest chance we'll ever start back up this slippery slope we're on.

It's especially hard to imagine

the nation ever making any progress, because it's difficult to imagine

a majority ever getting angry enough to rise up in protest.

For instance, in the examples

I'm about to give you, listed for our amusement by the Libertarian Party

of Georgia, I'm pretty ticked off about some of them, but I don't agree

that all of them are outside the scope of what government should be doing.

Here's a list of what the Libertarians

call "the most ridiculous pork barrel projects of 2001:"

- $250,000 to develop

pungency testing procedures to improve the quality and sensory consistency

of Vidalia onions.

As a strong believer in free

enterprise, I agree with the Libertarians. Let the people who stand to

earn a living off Vidalia onions fund their own product research.

- $400,000 for the National

Center for Peanut Competitiveness.

I bet you could trace that

one