Bobby Jindal and volcano monitoring

Cartoon from Town Called Dobson

Governor Jindal, rest assured - the Shaking Earth blog takes no public funds!

Personally, I found Bobby Jindal's Republican response to President Obama's speech last week to be bankrupt of new ideas, but at least the presentation style was totally wooden and robotic.

But what about his comment on volcano monitoring? As you can read more about at Scientific American, Gov. Jindal blasted elements of the economic stimulus package as “wasteful spending”– among them, “$140 million for something called volcano monitoring” at the USGS.

“Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.,” Jindal said.

Congress authorized some of that $140 million to be spent on volcano monitoring, but not all of it. That line, ProPublica says, is directed to “U.S. Geological Survey facilities and equipment, including stream gages, seismic and volcano monitoring systems and national map activities.” Next thing you know, federal earthquake monitoring will be attacked.

Then we will all be New York state.