A crowd gathers at the stage set up for the Woodstock rock concert on the great meadow of Max Yasgur's farm at Bethel, New York August 1969.(AP Photo)
by Matthew Hay Brown
It’s not just a Woodstock museum, Sen. Charles E. Schumer says.
The exhbition space set to open next year in Bethel, N.Y. – the site of three days of peace, love and music back in 1969 – will be a job-creating economic engine to arrest the long postwar decline of the once-thriving Catskills.
It’s to help turn around the fiscal fortunes of depressed Sullivan County in upstate New York that Schumer and fellow Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton are seeking a $1 million earmark in the 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education spending bill, he said today.
A group of Senate Republicans isn’t buying it. The patchouli-scented pet project drew fire today from the fiscal conservatives who have been manning the Senate floor during the appropriations process.
"It seems to me that we do have to ask questions like whether it’s the will of this body to fund an earmark for a museum celebrating a weekend-long party that occurred 38 years ago," Sen. Jon Kyl said on the Senate floor today. The Arizona Republican proposed stripping out the earmark and shifting the $1 million to a health block grant program for mothers and children.
Earmarks account for less than 1 percent of the federal budget; defenders say they enable the lawmakers who know their districts best to direct federal funding to the projects that need it most.
But the increase in their number, from 4,126 in 1994 to 15,268 in 2005, and examples such as the Bridge to Nowhere – the $223 million span proposed to connect a sparsely populated island in Alaska to the mainland – have helped to focus public anger against the practice.
"The Woodstock Museum isn’t the problem," said Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican. "It’s a symbol of the problem."
The $100 million Museum at Bethel Woods is being developed by a foundation controlled by billionaire Alan Gerry, a Republican who has donated to Hilary Clinton’s presidential campaign and to Schumer’s Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The State of New York has contribued $15 million to the project; Schumer and Clinton are seeking $1 million in federal funds.
Coburn, who identified himself as "part of the hippie generation," called it a "taxpayer-funded Woodstock flashback." But Schumer said it was a good earmark, backed by a county in need of help.
"Until about 1950 the area boomed. And then the airplane was invented," Schumer said. "And all the people from New York City and Philadelphia and Boston who vacationed in the Catskills started getting on airplanes and going to Florida, California … so Sullivan County became one of the poorest areas in our state."
"When you ask the people, what’s the number one thing they need? It’s jobs. Jobs. Now in this bill, we talk about jobs. But I daresay that the people of Sullivan County, the economic development experts, the town and local officials, have a better idea of what would create jobs in Sullivan County than the senator from Oklahoma, the senator from Arizona, and, quite frankly, the senator from New York."
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Comments
I dont see a need to earmark 1 million dollars to commemorate a weekend of dirty, heathen Bacchanalian hippies trashing farmland?
Feh..
If you want to revitalize the Catskills, bring back Borscht Belt comics with names like Shecky Greene, or Mort Sahl, or Stanley Myron Handelman.
Maybe Burns and Shreiber could do a reunion?
Oy, Chuckie Schumer, I could give you such a hit.
Posted by: Smirky McFlightsuit | October 18, 2007 7:33 PM
This is pretty wasteful...surely there are better uses of our tax dollars than a "hippie" museum.
Posted by: Brian M. | October 18, 2007 8:16 PM
We are stardust, we are GOLDEN.
Posted by: Kenny Bunkport | October 18, 2007 8:18 PM
Not surprising Chuckie Schemer wants tax money to benefit him not his district. The Schemer can't be trustd it's all for Dem victory in 08.Chuckie it ain't going to happen you guys squandered your right to govern and you know it. You want to just ruin Bush's Presidency but that is stupid. He ain't runnin in 08. Wake up Schemer it's time for leadership and you are not a leader. Jerry White, Springfield,Il
Posted by: Jerry White | October 18, 2007 8:38 PM
When are the people of New York going to wake up? Schumer is the biggest JOKE in the senate. (That is a task that is not easy to beat). Of all the blow-hards, he tops them all. It would do him good if he only would connect his brain with his mouth when he tries to comment on ANY subject that would get him some press. He seems to know it all. The people of New York should be ashamed of who they have representing them in the senate.
Posted by: Ray Gorak | October 18, 2007 9:02 PM
Have Chuckie and Hillie been smoking some left-over Woodstock weed? Or maybe this is their appeal to the doper vote. Oh, wait; they already have it.
Posted by: Jimmy C. | October 18, 2007 9:05 PM
Ray Gorak,
My nomination is Larry Craig.
Posted by: Doug Zook | October 18, 2007 9:34 PM
Hey if they get that museum
with tax payers money then I want one in Wisconsin where I and many thousands watched the first Monsters of Rock concert Tour... now that concert was far better than woodstock ever was
Posted by: Steve T | October 18, 2007 10:45 PM
Don't eat the brown acid!!!
Posted by: Abby Hoffman | October 18, 2007 11:02 PM
Earmarks, earkmarks, earmarks! Interesting story; I hadn't heard it. Listen, you need to see Public Agenda's new site at www.facingup.org. Sound off...dialog...this issue is really interesting. America has some serious budget issues to contend with.
Posted by: William Hallowell | October 19, 2007 12:35 AM
That one million could be far better spent on poor children starving in America....but,Hillary and the democRAT libs can't forget Woodstock, which to them,is far more important than hungry American children that went to bed without any food in his/her stomach tonight.
This is our future... hippy Hillary?
I say,let's feed our children first and then take care of Woodstock later...Hillary!
Purple Haze is in her brain...
Paulo
Posted by: Paulo | October 19, 2007 2:19 AM
How come no one asks Hillary if she was at Woodstock and if she inhaled? That surely wasn't her wallowing around in the mud....was it? Get the old photos out!
Posted by: Mary Jane | October 19, 2007 7:41 AM
Funny how all the Paulo and Jerry Whites are now up in arms over a $1 million in the budget. What about the BILLIONS we are wasting in Iraq??
Oh and Jerry - Chuck Schumer is a Senator - he represents a state, not a district.
Posted by: BobinATL | October 19, 2007 9:52 AM
Earmarks are earmarks. The Dems campaigned against them and now they are for them.
There is no need for a Woodstock Museum. What's next? A Lollapooza Museum? An Academy Awards Museum?
No to ridiculous earmarks.
Posted by: John D | October 19, 2007 10:50 AM
Johnny D:
That's 1 down - only 222 more earmarks until the Democrats match the Bridge to Nowhere.
Posted by: BobinATL | October 19, 2007 11:35 AM
What's with all the negativity about earmarks, man? Earmarks are a great tool for political payoffs dude! Woodstock museums, bridges to nowhere, quick drying (and flammable) underwear for our military, Iowa rainforests, unwanted Coast Guard boats, and all sorts of other useless garbage is bought from campaign contributors as a reward for their generous gifts.
Republican Jeff Flake is doing a great job highlighting wasteful earmarks from both parties on his website. Earmark spending exceeded $50 billion while the Republicans had the majority. I'll bet Congress could find a couple billion dollars for SCHIP funding if they cut a few more Don Young memorial bridges or Missouri feral hog hunts or Woodstock museums.
Posted by: Tom O | October 19, 2007 11:52 AM
And idf Mr. & Mrs. Middle America think the democrats are going to clean-up wasteful spending, then John E has a PHD in math.
Posted by: Terry | October 19, 2007 6:28 PM
This would actually be better spent $$ than say, the Osprey.
Posted by: C.Morris | October 19, 2007 7:14 PM
I live in Bethel, NY and we know that the museum would create jobs and boost an economy that has been depressed for decades. The museum is about the Baby
Boomer Generation, and not limited to the Woodstock concert. Get your facts straight.
Posted by: Rich Klein | October 20, 2007 8:34 AM
Mr. Klien,
If the museum is such a good idea, why don't you invest some of YOUR OWN money in it and not the money from 300 million people?
Posted by: Terry | October 20, 2007 4:48 PM