The New Pork

Another one from the WSJ. The bit about all presidents upping their pork spending during re-election years is quite revealing, I think... and quite hypocritical for a man like Reagan, who was supposedly above that sort of thing, right? Well, at least that's what I've been taught by Reagan fans in this neck of the woods. If I'm off base here, please fill me in...

WASHINGTON — Presidents have become dramatically more generous in issuing federal disaster declarations, offering politically popular aid to storm-damaged communities in what one expert calls "the new pork."
President Bush is the most generous chief executive in U.S. history, averaging 53 disaster declarations a year. That is up from Bill Clinton's average of 47 declarations a year, which was a bump over George H.W. Bush's average of 39 a year, which was an increase over Ronald Reagan's 23 declarations a year.
Each of these four presidents issued the largest number of disaster declarations of their administrations in the year they ran for re-election. The odds of that are one in 1,280 that political considerations were not involved, according to statisticians. The dollar amounts at stake are enormous in a process that disaster experts complain has become highly politicized.