A while back, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington went to great lengths to preserve a $500,000 earmark for the Olympic Sculpture Park, a project of the Seattle Art Museum.

What’s surprising (to me at least) is the amount of money that the museum spent to win that $500,000 in federal funding. Adding up the figures reported to the Senate Office of Public Records between 2002 and 2005, I come up with a total of $220,000 worth of expenditures to lobby Congress. That almost seems like it’s not worth the trouble, considering that the project altogether cost in the neighborhood of $85 million.

In any case, let the record show that for every federal dollar appropriated for the Olympic Sculpture Park, 44 cents was spent on lobbyists…