Cutting `Academic Pork'

The editorial regarding federal grants to universities, ``Cutting `Academic Pork','' Dec. 9, provides a simple way to distinguish between pork and beef. Money for laboratories can be considered beef, while most other projects can be classified as pork. The Monitor cites Rep. George Brown Jr. (D) of California along with Sen. Sam Nunn (D) of Georgia, the current meat inspectors for Congress, for their splendid work in reducing pork.

In the same issue, however, we read in the front-page article, ``Clinton Doles Out Favors in California, Looks to '96,'' that the president, presumably with the blessing of Mr. Brown, has promised a nice chunk of beef to Stanford University, for a high-energy physics laboratory, which made him a lamb in California. But Cornell University submitted a lower bid for the same project.

It looks as though the old rule is still in force: If you really want pork, you have to go out of state to get it. And any way you slice it, it always turns into beef at home and the taxpayer is the goat. Cora S. Bullock, Geneva, N.Y.

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