Of Mice And Men
The Big Rightard Talking Point Of the Day involves Nancy Pelosi, 30 million dollars and an endangered mouse.
Talk about a pet project. A tiny mouse with the longtime backing of a political giant may soon reap the benefits of the economic-stimulus package.
Lawmakers and administration officials divulged Wednesday that the $789 billion economic stimulus bill being finalized behind closed doors in Congress includes $30 million for wetlands restoration that the Obama administration intends to spend in the San Francisco Bay Area to protect, among other things, the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse.
I'm not the least bit surprised that the Moonie Times would print this story - but it's pretty amazing that this story has been spun from whole cloth. Greg Sargent explains.
How did this one get going? Yesterday a House Republican leadership staffer circulated a background email, which I obtained, charging that GOP staffers had been told by an unnamed Federal agency that if it got money from the stim package, it would spend “thirty million dollars for wetland restoration in the San Francisco Bay Area — including work to protect the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse.”
The GOP staffer’s email didn’t say what agency it was. It didn’t say the money was actually in the package — just that an unnamed agency had said they would spend it on that if they got it.
But conservatives picked up the claim and began stating as fact that the mouse money was in the bill. On Fox News yesterday, Mike Huckabee blasted the bill for containing money for Pelosi’s mouse, and today GOP Rep Dan Lundgren hammered the alleged mouse money in the bill as “absurd.” Today’s Washington Times ran with a story called: “Pelosi’s mouse slated for $30M slice of cheese.”
But I just contacted the House GOP staffer who wrote the initial email laying out this talking point, and he conceded that the claim by conservative media that the mouse money is currently in the bill is a misstatement. “There is not specific language in the legislation for this project,” he said.
The staffer held to the claim that the mouse money would ultimately be spent, however, arguing that the bill’s passage would ensure that money would ultimately go to the unnamed agency. “If the bill passes, the project will be funded according to what the relevant agency told our staff,” he said. “The bottom line is, if this bill becomes law, taxpayers will spend 30 million on the mouse.”
Let's recap, shall we?
An anonymous Republican staffer circulates an email stating that an unnamed person from an unnamed agency maintains that $30 million dollars is going to be spent on a project that isn't even mentioned in the Economic Stimulus legislation. The email makes it to the Moonie Times, which naturally reports this all as fact.
Pretty thin soup, even by Republican standards. In order for this 'story' to be taken the least bit seriously, I'd suggest the following steps be taken:
1. Reveal the name of the Unnamed Agency.
2. Reveal the name of the source at the Unnamed Agency, so we can gauge what that person's interest is in advancing this story.
3. Reveal the name of the Unnamed Congressional Staffer who sent the initial email around, so we can get a handle on his interest in this legislation.
Until all of that happens, there's really no way to take this 'story' seriously. Just the same, there are probably some Moonie Times readers who now believe in their hearts that Nancy Pelosi intends to trudge out into the salt water marshes of San Francisco and personally deliver $30 million in cash to a pack of mice. Thanks, Moonie Times.