Science pork immortality

Physicist Bob Park, in his "What's New" column:

McCain, Obama and Clinton voted for the bill to ban earmarking, but only 26 other senators joined them. The plague of earmarking is out of control, and is at least partly responsible for the budget disaster that struck science this year. It's always been there, but 30 years it was largely confined to public-works projects such as sewers. It expanded into academic pork in the eighties. Many influential scientists cheered because it meant more money for science; What's New took a lot of flak for opposing the practice.

I interviewed Park for an Insight magazine article on earmarks way back in 1993.