Matt Drudge Dictates U.S. Agricultural Policy

Reports of Matt Drudge‘s irrelevance are greatly exaggerated. Just yesterday, the top headline on his site drew a personal statement from the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and caused a federal website to change its wording.

Recovery.gov is a government site devoted to tracking spending through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the major economic stimulus package passed by the Obama Administration earlier this year. Yesterday, as the site began releasing stimulus spending receipts, Drudge was hot on their trail: his top headlines listed what sounded like absurd amounts for trivial things, like “RECOVERY.GOV // AWARDED: $1,191,200 FOR ‘2 POUND FROZEN HAM SLICED'” and “RECOVERY.GOV // AWARDED: $351,807 FOR ‘REPLACE AND UPGRADE THE DUMBWAITER.'”

Evidently, the headlines drew top notice pretty fast. In a statement titled “Response to Drudge Item on Recovery Act Funding,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack attempted to clarify what some of the items meant, explaining, for instance, that ‘2 POUND FROZEN HAM SLICED’ referred to the unit size and not the quantity, and that the government had actually purchased 760,000 pounds of ham. He further pointed out that the expenditures were meant to feed people hit hard by the economic downturn. By the end of the day, recovery.gov appeared to have changed the terms it used to list expenses.

Drudge’s headlines drew cheers from conservatives and stiff rebukes from liberal bloggers. Daily Kos went through his list item-by-item in an effort to prove that the costs actually made sense, pointing out, for example, that it usually costs between $250,000 and $500,000 to buy and properly install a state-of-the-art dumbwaiter.

All of this back-and-forth can be exhausting to read, however it also demonstrates why government transparency is a good thing, and why the political blogosphere is actually useful from time to time. Particularly when they’re keeping the government honest instead of arguing over Sarah Palin’s Runner’s World interview, everybody benefits, even if it still sounds like a shouting match from beyond the screen door.