So I’m sitting at work and I decide to bust out the google reader to see what news stories were fresh and hot all ready for my greedy little mind to read over, and I immediately discovered this story.
“Tom Rogers, a retired Indianapolis detective, toils away most days in his suburban home office reviewing sexual Web sites and other Internet traffic to see whether they qualify as obscene material whose purveyors should be prosecuted by the Justice Department.”
So reads the opening paragraph. You know what that sounds like? Someone gets paid to look up porn and toss one off while the wife and kids are out. Where can you and I find a job like this?
The Justice Department.
That’s right folks. This program is funded by your money. Someone is PAID by you to sit at home and report what lewd porn gets to lewd. And not just any porn, we’re talking about internet porn. The most sordid and degrading porno out there. The lowest common denominator in pornography is the stuff that one finds online, and this guy gets paid to search for it. Shit.
The article goes into deeper detail about report numbers, but what is significant is the number of lawsuits filed over the issue. Zero. This was a $150,000 earmark to create this annual grant that has been in effect (as far as I can tell) since 2001. That’s a lot of money to not find a single case of porn getting too…….pornish.
And we as citizens can thank this man:
Representative Frank R. Wolf, R-Virginia. The surprising thing is that he’s not an incompetent representative according to his wiki page, including being the dude that initially recommended the Iraq Study Group. Seems like a standard republican. I guess we all do dumb things.
The grant money goes to an organization that runs the website obscenitycrimes.org do check out some of their reading, like ‘Could it be that pornography prevents rape?’, With God’s grace, I will redeem my wasted time, “Marketplace of Ideas” or Anarchy: What Will Cyberspace Become? and, Dial-A-Porn And Cell Phone Porn. This is an agency that I help fund with tax dollars. What the crap people? On the main page you can report an obscene porno site that you “happen” to find on the internet. These people have been waging a war on porn since the 60s. Even the hippies gave up at some point.
According to the Times article it seems that the justice department may be a little ashamed of this groups efforts and works hard to downplay the grant. Funny, they’re not ashamed at the covering of the bare breast of Justice, they’re not ashamed of Al or his firings, they’re not ashamed of domestic surveillance, or even mincing words about torture but somehow it gets awkward when you start discussing such an obvious waste of money.
“Department officials, however, seemed less than keen to talk about ObscenityCrimes.org. Spokesmen for the criminal division said officials there had nothing to do with the program, which they had been obliged to start because of the earmark.”
Now I’m all about the porno. I’m a full blown supporter of orgasms and people’s biological need for them. I dig it. But I also totally get that some people are creeped out by midgets shitting on quadriplegics while horses masturbate in the background with Martha Stewart real dolls.
If someone wants to make it a life goal of theirs to shut down porn, hell I’m not going to stop them, it’s a losing battle. I can even tolerate the site spamming the Justice Department, anything to hassle those incompetent fucks, but I’ll be damned if I don’t get pissed about my tax money going to this when AmeriCorps and other domestic programs keep going down the tubes.
It’s a sad state of affairs when tax money is so poorly spent on something so obviously not needing it. Almost like a bridge to nowhere…
~C
P.S. And for all those out their clamoring about child porn protection? I’m on your side, and this program has nothing to do with it. Check out the end of the Times piece for the details.
(x posted)
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