It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood; Blog Focuses on U.S. Rep. Rogers.

Now this is a good watchdog site, albeit a bit limited in focus. Rep. Mike Rogers, who represents parts of mid-Michigan, is a polished politician who delivers a pretty standard moderate Beltway rap – the feds spend too much (now that the president is a Democrat), we need a strong defense, the auto industry is in trouble, blah blah. Nothing truly courageous.
To one end, he recently introduced his own site in the name of government accountability. Notice the links go to mostly government-administered Web sites. Talk about the wolves watching the hen house. It's a true bureaucratic answer to transparency. "Let us do it."
But Mr. Rogers Neighborhood rightly focuses on the hypocrisy that comes from our elected representatives, and with some good humor.

Taxpayers Foot Travel Bill for MSU Staffers – Both Business and Pleasure

When MSU staffers travel, they have an $11 million budget and that means some serious frequent flier miles. With 18,500 flights, at an average of $260 one way, that comes to $7.4 million in air fares figuring an ave price of $400 round trip. Let’s be charitable and say these fares averaged 500 miles, which comes to 9,250,000 air miles. And let’s also assume a 25,000 reward. We’re talking 370 free trips that are being earned.
So while some schools are paring back travel costs – Evergreen State College in Washington has frozen out-of-state travel, says college spokesman Jason Wettstein, as has Temple University – Michigan State University proudly ignores the free travel perks and trudges on.
We give props to some other Big Ten schools who put taxpayer-funded frequent flier miles to business use, including University of Iowa, University of Wisconsin, University of Minnesota, Ohio State University and Indiana University. MSU is truly arrogant and uncaring as it raises tuition, gobbles pork and ham-handedly tries to build a $160 million dollar art museum that started with a $26 million gift.