One tried-and-true criterion of dystopian societies — immortalized in�sci-fi B-movies aplenty (which your friendly local Four Star employee�will happily rattle off for you) — is the “perpetual construction and�renovation.” �In an effort to mask the futility of perfectionism, the�logic goes, bureaucrats will leave no space undeveloped, no�unrequested building un-built, no unaffordable construction project�unfunded.

And since students these days just flat aren’t getting their deserved�fill of dystopian literature — and buying a red cup has a less�complex payoff than renting “Brazil” from Netflix — our state budget�committee continues to show us how it’s done. And God bless them for�it. At the top of everyone’s wish list this Christmas was obviously a�new $47 million nursing facility at UW. The facility was in such high�demand that no administrators asked for it and Gov. Jim Doyle (not�exactly the prototypical fiscal conservative) omitted the�clearly-necessary building from his budget request. So the budget�committee, of course, listened to the clear signs of nursing�catastrophe and approved the borrowing of $28 million to fulfill the�public wishes. Good lord.

I doubt that Doyle or the Legislature will approve this�project, but the gesture should not go unnoticed by the public. Once�again, construction is being proposed at UW whose relative urgency�falls somewhere between replacing your shower squeegee and preparing a�state funeral for David Carradine. �This kind of thing is called�”pork,” if you have any doubt — legislators given discretion to fund�any number of pet projects without much regard for public need or�affordability. We heard a lot about it in 2008, and the Democratic�Party spent a lot of time promising to — you know — get rid of this�shit. Clearly the priorities of national parties are blissfully�ignored by their state-level surrogates.�According to news reports, your elected representatives on the budget�committee, exhausted from a late-night debate over funding priorities,�saw fit to compromise on a facility that was not on anyone’s radar.

The brainchild of this project was Senator Judy Robson, D-Beloit,�described by the Wisconsin State Journal as “a former nurse,” which�apparently gives the good senator license to slowly destroy the�state’s vulnerable bond rating. The nominal reasoning for this is a�very-real “nursing shortage” in the state. This is the hidden genius�of pork — it is almost always framed in relatively unobjectionable�terms, by people with the occupational street cred to propose fixing�specific problems, leaving opponents looking like evil bastards who�are militantly opposed to making peoples’ lives better. �Who can argue�with addressing a nursing shortage, after all? �Who can argue against �having enough nurses?

Well, I can, in this case, because I possess a modest understanding of�what democracy is and what it isn’t. �Pork is the opposite of�democracy. �It sucks the life out of democracy and leaves decisions to�the bureaucrats. Even under relatively-tranquil democratic�conditions, the relationship between the University of Wisconsin and�taxpayers is frigid enough without this recent partisan movement to�spend money on the university without meaningful internal discussion.�And the stupidity of this gesture would be breathtaking enough in�isolation, without a backdrop of UW-supported building projects whose�own frivolousness could fill another 10 columns. These late-night�unsolicited government shopping sprees, down all the wrong aisles for�all the wrong reasons, deserve more contempt than this writer is�capable of expressing.