America's latest controversy -- turtle fences
 Turtle fence along US 31. (Source: WoodTV) 2007.10.25
With American foreign policy in a shambles, our war spending beyond comprehension, this week our elected officials decided to argue about ... turtles.
Michigan has started construction on a fence to keep turtles off of US Highway 31. Republican congressman Peter Hoekstra believes it's a waste of taxpayer money[1].
(Perhaps he believes the 300k could be better put to use in buying a bolt for a jet in Iraq. In the state vs federal power debate, I often favor state rights over federal. I love the following rebuttal. -- Tometheus (talk) 13:01, 28 October 2007 (CDT))
- Your elected leaders in Lansing have not had the luxury you have had of repeatedly rubberstamping unbalanced federal budgets. In fact, the federal budgets of the past several years have grown at an average annual rate of more than seven percent since 2002, while Michigan's general fund spending was lower in 2007 than it was in 2002. With all due respect, I do not believe your state budget advice would advance our state budget or economic climates.
- -- Governor Granholm[2]
Brian Dickerson points this out[3]:
- In reality, Hoekstra's alarm is about as genuine as Claude Rains' shock at discovering that gambling was going on in Humphrey Bogart's Casablanca café.
- As Michigan transportation officials pointed out in a more private exchange of letters with Hoekstra in 2005, federal restrictions he and his congressional colleagues approved require each state to spend a portion of its highway money on nonconstruction projects -- and specifically suggest wildlife preservation as an appropriate use of such funds.
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