It looks like fundraising just became more difficult.There was an article in Newsday today about spending on “pork” projects by state politicians. I expected to see a listing of the usual pet projects. However, I was surprised to see that State Senator Owen Johnson’s $100,000 donation to the SBPLI regional was one of the grants under scrutiny. It looks like we still have a lot of work to do when it comes to spreading the word about FIRST.
When times are tough people will take swings at things they deem “unimportant”.
It’s not a surprise that someone would call out government funding of a FIRST event.
Wow! I’m stunned. The fact that they included, no wait, complained about FIRST, and yet they have no clue what FIRST is about, just stuns me. This just tells how much the media is clueless about their surrondings, except the bad news of course!!!
So ignorant.
One note that the newspaper doesn’t cover at all…
Putting on a FIRST event doesn’t just cost $100,000. We’d see a lot more if it did. A typical regional can run to a quarter-million easily. So that’s less than half of the cost of a regional. And it isn’t “pork” because it benefits a lot of schools in a lot of districts. (“Pork” typically refers to very specific grants to a small group of people, especially in the wrong type of bill or in a very limited area.)
Just reading the title for the thread, but reading the article it doesn’t criticize the program.
What I want to comment on the government though: Any opportunity that money goes towards the children is a great moment and should be remembered due to the scarcity of those we have seen outside of FIRST. I love how everyone says that the nation should invest in our children, the future…when all I see is money getting taken away from them to the war.
Yay temporary fixes! I can see why FIRST doesn’t let us use duct tape. Thank god election day is just a few more agonizing months away.
Did we read the article?
The article is describing the process by which New York’s legislators place funding for their pet projects in the state budget. The article is fairly neutral on the subject, noting that it’s controversial and often partisan, and gives several examples. Only once, in a table below the article itself, is the SPBLI grant mentioned, and it’s not in the form of a complaint, nor is an opinion of any sort provided.
In any event, a $100 000 donation (to any organization) is large enough that it’s worth a little legislative scrutiny.
Well there’s an opinion section of the paper. When people don’t understand: educate them. I do it all the time in my local paper whenever FIRST comes up.
I understand that some of you are up in arms over this and are upset… But did anyone else notice that FIRST wasn’t all capitals?
$100,000 isn’t a small amount of money. I say good job to the newspaper for letting the public know where our money is going.
That being said, someone go inform this paper what FIRST is and get them to do an article on it. And why that $100,000 should be the beginning of more money flowing to the program.
I read it. Took me a while to find it.
You’re right, it is worth a little scrutiny. I just wish that California had the same opinion! Some years ago, a proposition was on the ballot that was for transportation. All well and good, right? Not when there’s an allocation of lots of money for a performing arts center for a particular city! I don’t remember what happened to that bill.
As I said earlier, there’s a reason it isn’t “pork”, and that is that it benefits a relatively large area. (OK, maybe not in terms of size, but still…)
As you say, there is no opinion. However, it is with an article that is somewhat negative in tone towards such things, which in itself constitutes an opinion.
Also, read the comments. Now that’s a negative set of opinions, save for one person (who is easy to find…)
The title of this thread’s somewhat misrepresents the article - I didn’t see criticism of State Senator Johnson’s support to the Long Island First Robotics Competition (sic) or other special projects funded by the legislators.
I venture to say that Senator Johnson strongly believes his support to FIRST is a GOOD thing. I doubt that he has any qualms with the story; it reports budgetary items of public record that may be affected due to budgetary issues.
FIRST teams generally do a good job of acknowledging the support of sponsors. This is a good time to remind the public how well-spent that money is for our future. Financially difficult times can lead to the “seed corn” being consumed. Defending the funding for worthwhile programs is a lot easier when good “outreach” is practiced by those programs. Publicly thanking the sponsors can make a difference. I really like Koko Ed’s advice: write a brief letter to the editor to help educate their readers about FIRST.
I’m glad to see some people are interjecting a little bit of reason into this thread. There wasn’t a great deal of “criticism” in the article, although there did seem to be some negative connotations carried through-out (just my opinion). FIRST was not a specific target in any way shape or form, nor was the contribution to the regional or the state senator. In fact, there were quite a few other programs and initiatives listed there worthy of equal merit as FIRST (and even a biased group such as CD could agree). Time to take a step back and breathe, people.
You’d be amazed at what most people consider “pork”, as long as it’s outside of their own congressional district.
There are millions of people who hate seeing the government spend billions on “pork projects”; however, if those projects are for things in their own community they welcome them with open arms.
As such, allocating $100,000 for a FIRST Regional can almost definitively be considered “pork”. It’s money that is going to a small audience (to the benefit of several thousand high school students) with a very specific scope (robotics competition). It’s no different than the “pork” projects where a local municipality gets a $1,000,000 grant to build a paved bike trail or playground or to buy new school textbooks or whatever.
Now while I am most definitely for having the government help fund FIRST teams or events, I’m just cautioning everyone that just because something is “pork”, doesn’t automatically mean it’s bad and should be vetoed and slashed from the budget. There are just as many legitimate pork projects as there are wasteful pork projects. The key thing is being responsible by knowing there is only so much money to go around, and that some legitimate pork projects may have to wait a while before they can get federal/state grants.
Which is why I have no problem with a newspaper (or any other individual or corporation) looking into the sources and organizations where politicians are pushing for pork projects. Having a higher government transparency will only help get more federal monies for good and well-meaning pork projects (of which I’m sure FIRST-related projects would generally end up here), while exposing all the sketchy pork projects to the newspapers, independent committee, and general public.
Hey, at least they aren’t wasting money studying the mating habit of killer bees or something silly. Oh wait, maybe that wasn’t a great example …
When I read “Sponsor” I thought something terrible happened.
Since when was it government’s job to fund these things? Our cooperate sponsors don’t do a good enough job? I hate brining politics into this, but it isn’t our job to beg for money out of peoples pockets, it is our job to make sure that there are no legal hurdles. If we need money, it is our job to figure out how to profit off of it like Americans, unlike other countries that do depend on government grants.
Everyone (responsible) talks about cutting government spending, at any level. What no one realizes is why it never gets done: When you end up looking at the list to choose cuts from, you realize there is no way to do it without being called names.
I think it would be helpful if everyone read up on the Wikipedia consensus on “Pork barrel.”
According to Wikipedia it’s not pork. Hah. 
Keep your divisive political opinions to chit-chat please.
$100,000 in state funding is a drop in the bucket compared to what was ultimately spent on this very notable project funded with federal money.
Sometimes good ideas that might benefit a particular community are just too costly and/or inefficiently implemented - I think that justifiably raises the ire of taxpayers, especially those who stand to never benefit from the end results. When you’re talking about an “earmark” (the gentler way to describe pork), that’s pretty much the vast majority of the taxpaying public.
Relatively smaller earmarks - $100,000 in state funding to support a FIRST regional or $180,000 to support FIRST robotics and STEM expansion within a particular region - aren’t going to upset too many people as long as those who are responsible for managing the funds once received do so in a responsible and effective manner.
The Big Dig is again but a single one of hundreds of projects around the country funded by the government; unfortunately, the Big Dig just started hemorrhaging funds left and right, almost as quickly as the Boston Harbor tried in earnest to flood the tunnels. (But as someone who has been to and remembers Boston before the Big Dig, it is definitely a LOT better now).
But at the same time, had it not been for government funds, we wouldn’t have had the first transcontinental railroad (and the economic boom that went with it), there would be no Interstate highways, and the Internet would have still been but a dream. All of those were funded by government projects, which could be considered “pork”, and yet they all returned immense economic dividends many times more than the initial investment from the government.
I’m sure back before any one of those projects was proposed, I’m positive there were people who were like “Why should we spend millions to fund some research to get a computer to talk to another computer? There’s only like five computers in the world, why is it worth it?” Now look where we are here today.
But at the same time, there are tons of other government projects which wasted money on useless things. But sometimes we don’t know whether something will turn out to be the next best thing or a total dud until after we’ve studied it.
There is no magic answer; no definitive solution in absolutely no government funding or in total government funding. Rather, as in everything else in life, there’s always that happy medium in the middle where everything usually settles out to that works the best.