TPMmuckraker writes today about how the House Ethics Committee found no conflict of interest in Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) "used his power as a lawmaker to appropriate $5.6 million in taxpayer dollars to build a transit center that's within walking distance of seven of his properties."
The Committee found that since others would benefit too it wasn't a problem. That sounds a little suspicious to me but if you're representative you live in the district you represent and you're supposed to get things for your constituents, so you're likely to benefit from them too. Yes pork is bad, but I don't know enough about these deals to evalute them.
There are some interesting links at the end of the article including this one. CREW and other watchdog groups have been tracking several of these kinds of things on both sides of the aisle. "Taxpayers for Common Sense, is taking the effort a step further, by using the online satellite imagery and geolocating tools of Google Earth to map real estate holdings belonging to U.S. lawmakers, in the hopes of seeing where certain tracts match up with certain improvements." Clever.
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