Porkbusters

Posted at The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!:

In crazy times like these I find myself thinking crazy things. One of the craziest is the possibility that George Bush may be right about a few things in Lebanon. It gives me the shivers.

To his credit, George is right on many counts:

Hezbollah is a group of ululating thugs who can't even manage to get along with other members of their own religion, much less anyone else.
Hezbollah kicked off this latest round of violence when it kidnapped the Israeli soldiers and it keeps it going by lobbing rocket after rocket into Israel.

The Israelis are perfectly within their rights to defend themselves against the constant incursions of terrorists. Regular skirmishes and suicide bombings punctuated by the occasional outright war is no way to live and they deserve to be free of it.
There is little doubt that Iran and Syria are eyeball-deep in fomenting the current troubles. Their tiresome, "who me?" posture doesn't fool anyone, including other Arab states.
And foremost, the Middle East would be a far better place if a lasting peace were attained. A step back from the constant threat of WW (fill in the blank) would be a welcome change indeed.
But being right on many counts isn't the same as being right on all accounts.

While the Israelis are entitled to defend themselves, their current elephant-gun-to-kill-an-ant approach does nothing but stir up more stink than usual. Stink that lands on them in the form of additional rockets. The lopsidedness of the fighting and the fact that it's done little to dampen Hezbollah's rockets is proof of its folly. As often happens with Israel, they are so bent on avenging legitimate wrongs, they fail to see they are cutting their nose off despite their face.

Their claim that leveling southern Lebanon is a "surgical" campaign designed to weed out Hezbollah may be true on one level, but it's so much more at another. The last time Israel decided they needed to take out the local terrorists du jour they stayed in Lebanon for six years. This "limited" campaign has all the earmarks of following suit and we can all expect a tenser world full of more terrorists as a result..

The Condo-Israeli faction is making that mistake so much worse. While they're happy to plink diplomatic rocks at Syria and Iran for being meddlesome (a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, I think), they are unwilling to take them on in a meaningful way. Instead of going to the international community to impose sanctions or work out some other suitable means to calm things down, they allow a war to rage that only increases Iranian and Syrian Arab street cred. Meanwhile, the alarmed international community - already soured on the Bush doctrine - is less trusting than ever that Mr. President can control the issue safely. The end to this debacle is not via more Israeli bombs nor Katyusha rockets.

It's also not through the fantasy that George will be able to broker a lasting peace.

First, there's his track record. In the wake of the good ship George lies at least two broken countries - Iraq and Afghanistan - and other leaky diplomatic lifeboats ready to sink - Iran, Syria, North Korea, and other Axi of Evil. While he is a legend in his own mind, no one other than he and the most addled-brained would call his handling of Iraq and other international trouble spots rousing successes. If they were, we'd all be wearing a lifetime supply of victory flower-garlands and attending the Iraq Independence Day Fireworks and Texas Bar-B-Que.

There's also that annoying reality thing to consider. Muslims, Christians, and Jews have been steeping in a toxic brew of hatred for thousands of years. At worst, the region has been embroiled in deadly wars that last for years. At best, suicide bombers and other religious maniacs keep the pot simmering with a well-timed terrorist act, a kidnapping, or the occasional artillery shell.

George claims to speaks to God and I'd sorely like to believe him, because it'll take the intervention of a supernatural power to set right that which has been broken for so long. George may believe he's the chosen one who will bring peace to the Middle East. He may believe this is a golden opportunity to turn the place around so everyone can live in harmony. He may believe that not talking to the parties involved in the conflict will resolve it somehow. He may even believe that allowing unrestricted warfare for a few weeks to stomp out the fires of Hezbollah is the way to go.

Me? Not so much.

So God, if you're talking to George, could you give me a sign that everything will be all right?

Perhaps your image in a toasted pita would be appropriate.



The Poobah also appears at Bring it On!

Tech Tags: foia politics lebanon middle+east bush israel crapweasels bring+it+on omnipotent+poobah

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Posted at Daily Kos: State of the Nation:

Mark Schmitt has a must-read piece for anyone following this race, as well as every journalist and blowhard pontificating on this race:

Lamont supporters actually aren't ideologues. They aren't looking for the party to be more liberal on traditional dimensions. They're looking for it to be more of a party. They want to put issues on the table that don't have an interest group behind them - like Lieberman's support for the bankruptcy bill -- because they are part of a broader vision. And I think that's what blows the mind of the traditional Dems. They can handle a challenge from the left, on predictable, narrow-constituency terms. But where do these other issues come from? These are "elitist insurgents," as Broder puts it - since when do they care about bankruptcy? What if all of a sudden you couldn't count on Democratic women just because you said that right things about choice - what if they started to vote on the whole range of issues that affect women's economic and personal opportunities?

But caring about bankruptcy, even if you're not teetering on the brink of it or a bankruptcy lawyer yourself, is part of a vision of a just society. And a vision of a just society - not just the single-issue push-buttons of a bunch of constituency groups - is what a center-left political party ought to be about. And at the end of this fight, I don't expect that we'll have a more leftist Democratic Party, but one that can at least begin to get beyond checklist liberalism.

That's one of the big ironies of this race. As much as the traditional media and the status quo establishment want to make this about a "single issue" (that pesky little flare up in Iraq), fact is that we are looking to build a party that goes beyond the myopic single-issue groups and works to build -- as Schmitt says -- a "just society".

Who was looking out for the middle and lower class during the bankruptcy debate? No one, except the bloggers. The women groups were AWOL, as were the environmentalists, the gay groups, labor, and just about every other progressive issue or constituency group.

Our lack of single-issue focus divorces us from the politics of the progressive movement, the check-list mentality to running campaigns. We can see beyond ANWAR, choice, and affirmative action (important, but not exclusively so) to other important progressive causes that don't neatly slot into the traditional and formerly all-powerful groups. Things like bankruptcy, net neutrality, health care, and earmarks (pork) reform. What if, like Schmitt asks, women are no longer satisfied with hearing the right thing on choice, and demand progress on pay equality, mothering rights, and a rational health care system for them and their families?

It sort of complicates things, doesn't it?

Lieberman may check off the right boxes from the right groups, but on the war, on health care, on denying rape victims Plan B contraception, on bankruptcy, and so on -- Lieberman is the antithesis of the Democratic promise of a just society.

Update: Atrios has more.

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Posted at The Influence Peddler:

Roll Call (subscription required) covers the 'victory' of moderate House Republicans in delaying House consideration of legislation by Rep. Todd Tiahrt to establish a commission to streamline the federal government:

‘Sunset’ Bill Pulled From Floor Schedule
July 31, 2006 By Jennifer Yachnin,Roll Call Staff
Objections from moderate Republicans put passage of a key budget reform sought by conservative GOP lawmakers in limbo last week, prompting House leaders to shelve debate on the measure until after the August recess.
The Government Efficiency Act, authored by Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), had been slated to go to the floor late last week but was scrubbed from the schedule Thursday afternoon. The bill would establish a federal commission to evaluate government-funded agencies or specific programs and issue recommendations to Congress on whether those bodies should be consolidated, abolished, expanded or otherwise altered.
...Among his proposed changes, Boehlert targeted the commission’s composition, which under the current legislation would include seven members appointed by the White House with four of those individuals selected in consultation with the majority and minority leadership of both the House and Senate.
The amendments would require all appointments to be made by Congress and would add two House Members and two Senators to the panel.
In addition, Boehlert, who chairs the Science Committee, called for the commission to hold public hearings.
Another amendment would extend the period for Congress to review recommendations from the commission to 45 legislative days from the 30 days proposed by Tiahrt.
Boehlert has also called for language that would allow Members to offer amendments to the commission’s proposals, something that would be permitted only in committee under the current bill.
...While the Rules Committee reviewed the measures Wednesday, it has yet to vote on parameters of debate for the measure, including what amendments Members would be allowed to consider on the floor.
Without a decision on whether those amendments will be included in the bill, one Republican aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said: “Opposition has stayed quite strong from moderates and Democrats.”
...Despite the apparent setback, House conservatives expect the measure, as well as a broader proposal by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) to establish a sunset commission that would impose automatic expiration dates for federally funded programs, will return to the chamber’s calendar in the fall.
“We look forward to working with leadership to enact real budget process reform after the August district work period,” said one Republican aide to House conservatives.
The review commissions are among four budget reform measures — which also include earmark reforms, emergency spending guidelines and line-item veto legislation — that conservative Republicans demanded from House leadership during negotiations over the fiscal 2007 budget blueprint earlier this year...
I've argued for some time that it was not too late for House Republicans to focus more aggressively on controlling spending. I think that it might be too late now, because I fear voters are likely to view these as political opportunism. Had these procedural moves been paired with substantive victotries - substantive reductions in spending, or an actual line-item veto exercised by the President - voters might see them as more than politics.
Congressional leadership clearly disagrees; they probably feel it's more important that these measures be 'fresh in voters' minds' on election day. We'll see how they are received in the fall.
As for Boehlert's objections to the Tiahrt bill, I think that several of them are not worth fighting over. Public hearings, a 45-day waiting period... I don't think that either of those is likely to change significantly the way the commission would operate. Denying the administration the right to appoint members... that just strikes me as silly. Is Mr. Boehlert arguing that only the Congress has the expertise to take part in this process?

Back to the top.


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Posted at Saracen: Arabian Knight:

I woke up yesterday only to receive a breaking news message from Al Arabiya on my mobile. I was shocked at what I read: Arabiya:BRK: At least 40 people have been killed or wounded in Israeli air strikes on buildings in Qana, south Lebanon, police sources say.That alone just made me half-faint. Then I heard my mom from the living room, who asked me, "Did you see what happened this morning?"

"No, I didn't, but I know what it was," was my reply. I went over to see the most gruesome images on Al Jazeera. This, by far, had to be Israel's bloodiest strike since this "war" started: dead bodies all over, houses completely demolished, livelihoods lost, people made homeless, entire families wiped out... What else could go wrong? For one thing, we can be sure that the new Israeli "Defense" Minister, Amir Peretz (who's originally Moroccan, but for shame, he cares not about his fellow Arabs) can wear the label of "war criminal". For another, the I"D"F has just hit its own state with a hammer: Hizbullah promised retaliation for this massacre.

While I was watching the continued coverage of the body search, I could only think of the first Qana massacre, about ten years ago. Now, Qana can mark two massacre anniversaries: the previous one and this one, even though the previous one was much more bloodier, in which over 100 people died. This one involved at least 55 casualties, most of them children... CHILDREN! What was their fault, really? All Israel could do is claim that Qana was a "missile launch site"; they did the same thing back in 1996. In fact, according to the same source I presented regarding the first massacre, that massacre was in fact pre-meditated, much like what we are seeing in Lebanon. The same land mines Israel refused to dismantle or help to dismantle killed a few innocents, and Hizbullah did pretty much the same thing it is doing today: fire Katyushas. The retaliation to the Hizbullah retaliaion was the Qana massacre itself, under the pretext that Qana was a "terrorist haven", even though it housed a U.N. site filled with civilians who were already housed up there. Let me direct you now to this caricature:



You might be asking, "Why the heck did I put that up?" Take a look at the contorted body, the face twisted in an expression of horror and dismay. The figure resembles the casualties at Qana, who were killed by the supposed "moral and humane" Israeli tsahal (I call it "tsahal" because the Israeli "Defense" Force nametag just doesn't suit this aggressive army). Now, why do you suppose the body is not under the boots of an I"D"F soldier, but instead stuck stabbed by the points of the Star of David on the Israeli flag? This is just to answer the question of why many Arabs, myself NOT included, have turned into anti-Semites (a.k.a. "Jew haters"). Well, take a look:



It's the continued acts of killing innocents, destroying buildings and livelihoods, and so forth, that has bred anti-Semitism through much of the Arab world. It's just that...



...the destruction...



...the death...



...and the misery of it all makes one desperate for justice, a goal sought by every man on Earth. It is the perceived "Jewish state", and has identified itself as such. So, why blame the Arabs for hating them? I don't hate Jews, nor do I like them either (I feel Jews are just human beings, like everyone else). And then again, so are Arabs,, but many people fail to see that; Israel is just the newest testimony of man's inhumanity to his fellow man, just for the sake of political/religious aims, and this is nothing new: racism and dehumanization is the earmark of aggression and past imperialism. But seriously, as per this editorial (apologies to my English readers), who is going to try Israeli military and political figures for war crimes being committed in Lebanon? When will justice be served? Only time will tell, but either way, the resistance has to win, and Israel has to lose this war, just so it may know that it can't go unpunished for its many atrocities that it has committed on the Arab people.

Salaam, from
Saracen

P.S. Thanks to Palestinian Pundit for providing me with the pics, though I hope you guys don't mind spreading them around. People have to see this catastrophe, and hopefully work to stop this chaos altogether.

...read complete post at Saracen: Arabian Knight

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Posted at Desicritics.org: Media, Culture, Politics, Sports and More with a South Asian Focus:

Kwaidan brings together a number of discrete, yet inter-related artistic traditions to produce a visually satisfying, emotionally rich, scary film. The Japanese film, which won honors at Cannes in 1965, does not seem dated in the least, despite building on tales by Lafcadio Hearn, the German-Irish immigrant writer, who moved to Japan from the United States in the 19th century, and embraced the culture of his second adopted country.

The film, directed by Masaki Kobayashi, contains four of the stories from the book, Kwaidan, which is available online, being in the public domain. The book was published in 1904, when the world was watching intently the escalating conflict between Russia and Japan. That conflict had the earmarks of the later World War, with an Eastern power, hitherto occluded by the rising powers of the West, flexing it's muscles with the help of modern Western technology.

The same ethos is expressed in the center-piece of the film, Hoichi the Earless, about a blind musician, a professional biwa-hoshi, known for his peerless recitations of the historical battles between the Genji and Heike samurai clans, which culminated in the destruction of the Heike in the twelfth century at the battle of Dan-no-ura, in the Straits of Shimonoseki.. This final battle saw a pitched fight between the two clans, with Genji archers breaking the Heike defense through the use of relatively modern archers, as well as a daring horseback ride down a steep cliff. The Heike were completely routed, unable to reach shore. The Rojo, or matron of the Royal Household leaped into the roiling seas with the infant Heike emperor. The film recreates this violent event through Kabuki - vividly depicting the horrors while highlighting the honor of the warriors. (It influenced the battle sequences in Conan the Barbarian)

The bloodshed reportedly left it's marks on the area, which features crabs named after the Heike, that have human faces on their backs. A Buddhist monastery was built there to the Amida Buddha, in whose name numerous samurai saw their doom, but that's another story. Hoichi makes his residence at this monastery, and one evening is summoned by a samurai to recite at his lord's court. His chanting is much appreciated, but little does he realize the true nature of this ghostly court.

The film, like the story, succeeds by drawing us in to the terrors of the dead commingling with the living. A yearning for fulfilment and a need for recognition make Hoichi unable to distinguish the reality. The priests of the temple strive to save him from the fell creatures, but make a critical error in their efforts.

The first and second stories in the film, "Black Hair" and "The Woman In The Show" are more personal in their horror. In "Black Hair", a samurai leaves his wife for reasons of personal ambition and striving away from poverty. Through his service to the lord, whose daughter he marries, he often thinks of his hard-working wife. He compares her to his new superficial bride, who can be transported into heights of bliss by the smell of fine silk. After a few years he gives up this languid life and returns to his hometown. His wife is still there, slaving away at her loom. He discovers his true love, but things have changed.

"The Woman In The Snow" or "Yuki-Onna" tells the tale of two wood-cutters caught in a blizzard one night. They stumble into a ferryman's hut to take shelter from the storm. A strange woman drifts in from the snow. The terrified younger wood-cutter watches her drain the blood from his father with a breath. She spares him for his youth, but warns him never to speak of her to anyone. Years later, he marries a beautiful woman he meets in the same woods, and has three children. He admires her beauty, but fails to notice that she never grows old. One night, he does look closely, and his discovery changes their relationship.

Both stories perhaps depict the neglected Japanese woman, one of history's silent sufferers. While the males went off to fight their futile wars, the woman were relegated to a role of weaving, artistic pursuits and housework. The samurai and the wood-cutter discover too late what they had ignored.

The final tale, "In a Cup of Tea", tells of a writer who keeps seeing a man's face in his cup of tea. The simplicity of this tale masks its innate complexity, and its horror is less obvious than the others.

The film combines fine story-telling with visually stunning sets and tonal music that sets the atmosphere, one of a winter's night, when a traveller might pause to tell a dark tale or two, then move on, into the night.

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Posted at treppenwitz:

I appreciate everyone's patience. I haven't been responding to comments over the past couple of days because I have been busy corresponding with the many generous people who sent in donations to check if they want to earmark the donation...

...read complete post at treppenwitz

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Posted at Kentucky Progress:


Congressman Jeff Flake's 19 amendments in June brought earmarking out into the open.
The bright light illuminated a pretty ugly picture.
U.S. Representatives Hal Rogers, Anne Northup, and Ben Chandler joined 278 other members in voting for all 19 pieces of pork.
This is where Democrats really don't serve America well as an opposition party. It goes without saying they would only be worse on spending, so there is no way to hold GOP legislators' feet to the fire on this stuff.
The Club for Growth does good work knocking off the worst big spenders of both parties. They represent our best hope to restrain federal government waste. Help them if you can.

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Posted at one small voice:

My so-called representative.

The Club for Growth reports:

Thanks to Congressman Jeff Flake's 19 anti-pork amendments, we now have every House member on record regarding their positions on earmarks. Before now, House members have been able to avoid scrutiny because their pork was co-mingled with other projects and tucked into the dark corners of big spending bills. Or they were able to withstand the scrutiny because they were attacked as a whole chamber and not directly attacked themselves. But because of Flake's amendments, they were recently forced to cast up-or-down votes on specific projects.

Diana DeGette, my representative in Colorado's First District, voted for all 19 of the listed pork projects. Methinks that someone in Denver needs to start shadowing Ms. DeGette's every vote. Here's a list of web pages that might be of assistance:

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Posted at Rocks In My Dryer:


With prices increasing all the time, saving money can be harder and harder to do. Here are some solutions for saving a little so that you can still meet your needs and still find ways to trim off a little for the future.

1. BUDGET – Get one and stick with it! And set aside at least a small portion for savings while you’re at it; savings for your future, your retirement, your education, your vacation, whatever. Head to your local office supply store for planning workbooks or budget sheets to use. Or head to your favorite search engine and type in, “budget planning” for hundreds of sites with articles, free downloads, tips, ebooks and other resources to help with your budget setup and follow up.

2. PLAN AHEAD – Make sure to plan for emergencies and the unexpected, like an appliance break down or garage door malfunction. Even if you can only set aside $50 or so each monthly, place it in an account and earmark it for this “Miscellaneous” fund. Then when things go wrong, and they will – nothing’s perfect – you’ll be better prepared.

3. NON-MONTHLY ITEMS – Work out a monthly payment for items that you don’t pay monthly and set this up in your regular monthly budget. For example, for items like annual home owner or renter insurance, quarterly water bills and automobile insurance payments and annual trash bills, take the amounts and determine what they would be monthly. Then list the items on your budget log and pull these amounts aside, saving them in your account for those purposes. This way, when the bills hit, you won’t be caught off guard and have to scrounge for the payments.
What works well, instead of handling multiple savings accounts for each company owed, is to use index cards and one savings account. Create one index card for each bill. Then simply log the amount you’re setting aside on the card and deposit it into your savings account. Keep the index cards with your savings passbook to remind you what the balance covers. The total of all your index cards should equal the balance in your savings account. (Make sure to create an index card for your regular funds that you are saving each month in step one above and a card for your Miscellaneous fund in step two above).
So next time you get paid, take three giant steps forward. Grab your index cards, follow your budget and invest in yourself and your future. Get a grip on your money handling.

Controlling Debt

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Posted at .: Strengthening and celebrating American patriotism :. .: All American Patriots :.:

U.S. Senators Coburn, Obama, McCain, Carper Applaud Senate Committee Approval of Bill to Help Taxpayers "Google" Federal SpendingJuly 27, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - U.S. Senators Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK), Barack Obama (D-IL), John McCain (R-AZ) and Tom Carper (D-DE) today urged the full Senate to pass S. 2590, the "Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act," a bill that will create a Google-like search engine and database to track approximately $1 trillion in federal grants, contracts, earmarks and loans. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs approved S. 2590 unanimously today. The House has already passed similar legislation that is limited to grant disclosure only.

"Passing this bill will help end the culture of secrecy in Washington and restore some measure of the public's confidence in government. Technology has made it possible, like never before, to fulfill our founders' vision of enabling all citizens to understand our nation's finances, investigate abuses and hold elected officials accountable," Dr. Coburn said, adding that a hearing being held today in the House Government Reform Committee on abuses in homeland security contracting highlights the urgent need to include contracts in the database.

...read complete post at .: Strengthening and celebrating American patriotism :. .: All American Patriots :.

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Posted at MOBANGE!:

There has been a great deal of energy spent in the blogosphere regarding pork, spending that is put into legislation at the last minute without debate. This is a bad practice just on principle, and it's even worse in that it has grown substantially in recent years.

I am pleased to report that Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ) has done a good deed to help stop this practice. He offered 19 anti-pork amendments to bills. The reason they were anti-pork amendments in that they separated the pork from the bills themselves, and demanded that legislators go on record for or against the pork in the bills. The legislators did so.

I happen to live in the Minnesota 4th Congressional District, represented since 2000 by Betty McCollum, and represented by Democrats since the late Jurassic period. Actually 1948, when Eugene McCarthy was first elected. Since then, only 4 people have held this seat: McCarthy (10 years), Joseph Karth (18 years), Bruce Vento (24 years), and McCollum (6 years).

I am pleased that The Club for Growth has done a good deed. They have compiled the votes on the 19 anti-pork amendments so that the public can see where their legislator stands on the issue of pork.

I am displeased to announce that Betty McCollum has a perfect record: a perfectly bad record that is. I'm further displeased to announce McCollum joined the majority of the House in telling Jeff Flake to get the public's nose out of the business of Congress, by voting against each and every one of Flake's anti-pork amendments. Here are the pork items for which McCollum voted. The links are links to the actual votes. A "Yes" vote on any of these amendments is a vote against pork.

House Vote 190 - Dairy education in Iowa ($229,000)
House Vote 191 - Hydroponic tomato production in Ohio ($180,000)
House Vote 192 - National Grape and Wine Initiative ($100,000)
House Vote 204 - Virginia Science Museum ($250,000)
House Vote 205 - Juniata Locomotive Demonstration ($1,000,000)
House Vote 277 - Swimming pool in Banning, CA ($500,000)
House Vote 278 - "Facilities" in Weirton, West Virginia ($100,000)
House Vote 279 - Multipurpose facility in Yucaipa, California ($500,000)
House Vote 280 - Strand Theater Arts Center in Plattsburgh, New York ($250,000)
House Vote 298 - Mystic Aquarium in New London, Conn. ($1,000,000)
House Vote 299 - The Jason Foundation in Ashburn, VA ($1,000,000)
House Vote 302 - Northwest Manufacturing Initiative ($2,500,000)
House Vote 303 - Lewis Center for Education Research ($4,000,000)
House Vote 304 - Leonard Wood Research Institute ($20,000,000)
House Vote 334 - Arthur Avenue Retail Market ($150,000)
House Vote 335 - Bronx Council for the Arts in Bronx, N.Y. ($300,000)
House Vote 336 - Johnstown Area Regional Industries ($800,000)
House Vote 337 - Fairmont State University ($900,000)
House Vote 338 - Tourism Development Association in Kentucky ($1,000,000)

This comes out to $34,759,000 of U. S. taxpayer money that was spent without debate. I plan on writing about the recipients of your money in future posts, and I hope you will join me in mocking them to scorn. I hope the day will come, and soon, when seeking an earmark will be an occasion of shame instead of a day of rejoicing for having pulled a fast one on the taxpayers.

Jeff Flake Betty McCollum The Club For Growth earmarks

Digg This

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Glenn Reynolds

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Posted at Cleverly Blogged:

An earmark in a
Congressional appropriations bill requires that a portion of the money
being allocated to a certain agency (let's say the Department of Defense) must
be spent for a specific—often extremely local—purpose (say
building an aquarium in some congressman's home district). Because congressmen
can add an earmark to a budget bill without needing to offer up much of a
justification, appropriation bills become vehicles for massive amounts
of wasteful pork-barrel spending.

As the Club for Growth noted in their call for 435 blogs against pork:

It's time to blog against pork!

Thanks to Congressman Jeff Flake's 19 anti-pork amendments, we now have every House member on record regarding their positions on earmarks. Before now, House members have been able to avoid scrutiny because their pork was co-mingled with other projects and tucked into the dark corners of big spending bills. Or they were able to withstand the scrutiny because they were attacked as a whole chamber and not directly attacked themselves.

But because of Flake's amendments, they were recently forced to cast up-or-down votes on specific projects. They could no longer deflect attention.

One Utah blogger has already blogged about Representatives
Bishop, Matheson & Cannon's votes.

Surprisingly Rep. Jim Matheson, a Democrat, appears to be much more fiscally responsible than either of the Republicans, Rep. Rob Bishop & Rep. Chris Cannon. Kudos to Rep. Matheson!

What started out as a quick "can you believe the kind of wasteful spending Utah's congressional delegation supported?" post has grown over the past three days into a much longer one. I've discovered and dived into the online version of the Congressional Record to read the transcripts of the debate on the House floor that preceeded each vote.

I've excerpted some of what Rep. Flake said on the floor when he offered up each of his ammendments. (And he offered more than nineteen, but many failed on voice votes.) In the process of researching these votes I've gained a real admiration for Rep. Flake and a renewed interest in the civic process. If I lived in his district in Arizona I'd definitely vote for him. As it stands I've donated $19 toward his re-election campaign today.

Read on to see where $34,669,000 of our tax dollars (let alone the interest on the added debt our children will eventually pay) are going... It'll probably be an eye opening experience; it was for me.

H.R. 5384: Making appropriations for Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies

$229,000 for dairy education in Iowa?

The only reason we limit it to dairy education in Iowa is to ensure that our amendment was made in order. Believe me, if there were dairy education for Arizona, I would strike that as well. We simply shouldn't have programs like this.

Let me just say, according to the Iowa State Dairy Association, the Iowa State dairy industry contributes more than $1.5 billion to the economy and provides more than 26,000 jobs. I would submit that spending $229,000 isn't going to do much to change that trend one way or another. It is simply something we shouldn't do.

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), May 23, 2006, Congressional Record, H3105

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 92 to 325. The $229,000 will be spent as earmarked.

This is a hydroponic tomato production earmark that we are challenging here. Again, let me make the broader point, what business is it of the Federal Government to pick winners and losers in the economy, to decide that we ought to be promoting hydroponic tomato production earmarks instead of promoting the cherry tomato or grape tomato or others out there that any Member could get an earmark for? Why is it this is important and the others are not?

We as legislators have to decide how we are going to husband the Nation's resources. I would submit that when we have 10,000 earmarks a year or more and when we are growing it at a rate of 872 percent over the last 10 years, at some point, I do not know where that point is, maybe it is with hydroponic tomatoes, some point we have got to take a stand and say enough is enough. We simply cannot continue spending money like this.

Again, we are not potted plants here. We are legislators. We are here to make these decisions. I would submit that when we are spending $180,000 on hydroponic tomatoes that something has gone awry and we have lost our focus. That is what this debate is about.

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), May 23, 2006, Congressional Record, H3110-H3111

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 90 to 328. The $180,000 will be spent as earmarked.

Again, this is another example of the Federal Government funding a program that can and is funded by the private sector. I should note here the vision of the initiative says: "By 2020, the American grape and wine industry will triple its economic impact and become the undisputed world leader in consumer value and sustainability. The target is an economic impact of $150 billion within 16 years. This is based on a conservative estimate of current annual impact of approximately $50 billion a year."

I would submit that if an industry out there has a $50 billion-a-year impact on the economy, $50 billion, then the Congress need not spend $250,000 for strategic research and a plan to enhance the grape industry's competitiveness and contribution to the U.S. economy.

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), May 23, 2006, Congressional Record, H3114

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 87 to 328. The $100,000 will be spent as earmarked.

H.R. 5427: Making appropriations for energy and water development

$250,000 for the Virginia Science Museum?

I call attention to this earmark today because there is so little information available about its purpose. It appears inconsistent with the program that would fund it.

The committee report lists this earmark, for the Science Museum of Virginia, in the Biological and Environmental Research program.

My amendment would prevent funding for this purpose.

I know that some museums do scientific research, but the background research on this earmark turned up very little by the way of research being done by the Science Museum of Virginia.

As an aside, I would note that the museum will soon open a traveling exhibit on candy, sponsored by the Jelly Belly Candy Company. It does not sound like much research to me.

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), May 24, 2006, Congressional Record, H3199

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 64 to 359. The $250,000 will be spent as earmarked.

Mr. Chairman, this is $1 million for the Juniata locomotive shop. I believe that it goes to a locomotive shop owned by Norfolk Southern. I can't know for sure, because there is no description of the earmark anywhere in the bill.

Let me read a quote from Norfolk Southern Chairman David Goode in 2005: "Thinking back to the beginning of my rail career in the late 1960s and early 1970s, rail systems were failing badly. There were strongly held beliefs that we were headed for a failed and nationalized system. In that context, you began to realize the strength of an industry that rebuilt itself, albeit with a lot of government policy help, although essentially no government money."

But now it seems that we are giving them money as well.

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), May 24, 2006, Congressional Record, H3206

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 46 to 372. The $1,000,000 will be spent as earmarked.

H.R. 5576: Making appropriations for the Departments of Transportation, Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary, District of Columbia, and independent agencies

$500,000 for the city swimming pool in Banning, CA?

This $500,000 is part of nearly $12 million provided to the State of California in HUD earmarks. Now, I live in the Southwest. I know the desert can get awful hot, and there is nothing better than taking a swim. But I do not know why we ought to give the Federal taxpayer a bath every time somebody wants a swimming pool.

That being said, again here, I wonder what criteria we use when these earmarks come forward. If we can say that swimming pools, city-owned swimming pools are eligible for Federal funding, then what is not eligible for Federal funding? Do the criteria mean anything in that regard? Is anything open?

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), June 14, 2006, Congressional Record, H3925

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 61 to 365. The $500,000 will be spent as earmarked.

Again, I would ask again, we do not know, is it a facility? Is it not a facility? I guess it is planning for perhaps a facility, maybe not. Are we simply subsidizing the city of Weirton, West Virginia? Are we in the practice of subsidizing all cities who are having trouble with their budget? Where do we pick and choose?

Again, we are tasked with providing oversight. How do we provide oversight if we do not even know if we are funding a facility or not?

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), June 14, 2006, Congressional Record, H3928

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 73 to 353. The $100,00 will be spent as earmarked.

Funding for a California community college project should be under the jurisdiction of the State, not for Congress.

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), June 14, 2006, Congressional Record, H3929

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 58 to 368. The $500,000 will be spent as earmarked.

As I mentioned here, this is funding for the Strand Theater Arts Center, $250,000 for the conversion of the theater in Plattsburgh, New York, to a performing arts center. There are other earmarks in the bill of this type: $100,000 for the Village of Jamestown, Ohio, for building renovations to the Jamestown Opera House; $100,000 to the Metropolitan Theatre Foundation in Morgantown, West Virginia, for the construction, renovation, and buildout of facilities; $100,000 to the Houston Zoo in Houston, Texas, for the construction of the Outdoor Life Science Learning Center.

It goes on and on and on and on. Again, you have to say, where do we stop? Where do we say this is not the role of the Federal Government? Where do we say local government knows best.

We say that we know better than Federal officials and bureaucrats over in the Department of Transportation or elsewhere where to spend money, then it stands to reason that those at the local level know a lot better than we do about what to spend money on. Sometimes in these cases these are facilities that they have decided specifically not to fund, yet we are going to go ahead and fund them.

That may or may not be the case in this case. But when we are saying we know best, we are going to decide where these monies are going, whether or not it is leveraging local funds, we simply can't justify it to the Federal taxpayer.

We need to remind people again and again we have a deficit this year of somewhere between $300 billion and $500 billion, depending on how you count and what you count. We have a Federal debt approaching $8 trillion, and yet we are spending money to renovate theaters in small towns across the country.

Where do we say we have done enough? This ought to be done at the local level or it shouldn't be done at all. But how can we justify using taxpayer money at the Federal level for projects like this?

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), June 14, 2006, Congressional Record, H3929-H3930

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 61 to 366. The $250,000 will be spent as earmarked.

H.R. 5631: Making appropriations for the Department of Defense

$1,000,000 for the Mystic Aquarium in New London, CT?

Mr. Chairman, when I saw this earmark, which is $1 million for research at the environmental center at Mystic Aquarium, Connecticut, I thought I was experiencing deja vu. We had a similar amendment in the Energy and Water bill just last week, or 2 weeks ago. Now we are looking at the defense bill, and the only difference is the amount of the earmark. I believe it was $400,000 then; this defense bill earmark is for $1 million. My amendment would remove this earmark from the bill.

Now, during our debate a few weeks ago on this subject, we learned that the aquarium has been in operation for over 20 years, that it is an educational and research institution with expertise in ocean environmental studies and in deep sea exploration. We learned that it provides activities and learning for boys and girls clubs. All of these are worthy activities, certainly.

We learned that the world's foremost deep sea explorer collocates his operation at the aquarium. That is Dr. Robert Ballard, I believe.

What we didn't learn was why this aquarium gets favorable treatment over aquariums in Arizona or Massachusetts or Kansas. We didn't learn what enumerated Federal function the aquarium fills. We certainly did not learn, and we haven't learned yet today, and I hope to learn in the next 5 minutes, how the aquarium contributes to the most basic and critical function of defending our country.

We just heard a great discussion about how we need to free up more funding for helmets for our military. I would suggest this is a great place to start. It is often said you can't vote for the Flake amendments because the money will simply be spent anyway by the agency. In this case the agency is the Department of Defense, and I think it would be hard to believe that they could make a case for a program less wise than this on their own, that they have something that fitters away more dollars than spending on an aquarium.

I like the Boys and Girls Club, but they aren't fighting for us and defending our country. Maybe they have programs that benefit them at this aquarium, but I would submit that it is no way to spend our defense dollars.

By voting against this amendment, you are saying that we place more value in the defense bill for funding aquariums than we do in funding defense.

Now we were trying to find out when we were researching this amendment, and we were not told much by the Appropriations Committee, so we tried to find out what this is, if it really is Connecticut, and I was told today, no, I think it is in Ohio on Lake Erie. I don't know what the aquarium does. I am anxious to learn what it does and how it contributes to defense.

In this process without a unanimous consent agreement on this bill, I am unable to ask questions and then speak later. I hope whoever is sponsoring this legislation or supporting this will please tell us how it is more vital to fund aquariums in the defense bill than funding helmets for our troops, for example, or anything else the Defense Department can do.

I would ask, please, for the sponsor of the amendment or whoever is defending it to tell us why we should be funding aquariums in the defense bill.

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), June 20, 2006, Congressional Record, H4287

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 77 to 347. The $1,000,000 will be spent as earmarked.

With corporate sponsorship and support from the likes of Oracle, Sun Microsystems, EDS, Shell, and Texas Instruments, the JASON Foundation has very good backing. However, this earmark raises questions that apply to too many other earmarks: Why is it in the defense bill? Should it receive any earmark funding at all? Who requested it? We don't know. I to this moment do not know who requested this earmark. I am hoping the author will come and say. Has there been a hearing on the subject? What essential Federal purpose does this serve; and doubly, what defense purpose does this earmark serve?

I think the mission of the JASON Foundation is noble, but the fact that we are funding it this way with this vehicle without real transparency is very disconcerting. This is not the Labor-HHS-Education bill. And frankly, given a lack of transparency and many problems that the current earmarking process presents, I don't think that it belongs in that bill either when we have a situation where I still to this moment have no idea who authored this earmark or what else it is supposed to do. All I know is what I have read, and yet we are being asked to approve a million dollars for it.

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), June 20, 2006, Congressional Record, H288

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 69 to 352. The $1,000,000 will be spent as earmarked.

My question is, why in the defense bill are we offering help to manufacturing companies in the Northwest? What about the Southeast or the Southwest? What about companies in Arizona or California or Colorado? Why don't they get similar treatment? How does the Federal Government decide, all right, we are going to help manufacturing companies there, but not here? Again, we are picking winners and losers here. It is not the job and should not be the job of the Federal Government.

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), June 20, 2006, Congressional Record, H4305

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 56 to 369. The $2,500,000 will be spent as earmarked.

Mr. Chairman, the Lewis Center has hosted more than 100,000 students, teachers, and parents participating in educational activities. The center's Web site contains a wish list for funding for three log cabins for third graders, an amphitheater, a schoolhouse shed, a large water wheel for panning gold during the gold rush educational fourth grade outreach program, and similar activities to that.

Mr. Chairman, these are undoubtedly worthy educational tools. My question is this: Why are Federal tax dollars intended for our national defense being used to fund this type of institution? It seems that corporate sponsors of the center abound, including corporations like JPL, Allied Signal, Boeing, Verizon, Lucent Technologies, Lomac Information System, Mitsubishi, RFG, Rockwell Rocketdyne Aerospace. Surely these donations can keep the center in good stead.

The center has already received $3 million in earmarked funds in fiscal year 2004 and an additional $2.5 million in 2005. It looks as if the center is back for more in this bill to the tune of $4 million.

The description of the earmark in this bill provides no detail on how the $4 million is to be spent on the Lewis Center. If there is a defense angle for this earmark, I am simply not seeing it. Again, it seems as if we are debating the Labor-HHS bill at this point or some other education bill and not the defense bill. These may well be worthy programs, but should we be funding them with defense dollars?

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), June 20, 2006, Congressional Record, H4306

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 50 to 373. The $4,000,000 will be spent as earmarked.

I am all for seeing the Missouri business sector grow as I would other States' business sectors as well, particularly Arizona. But it seems to me that American taxpayers are being asked to spend Federal defense dollars on promoting Missouri businesses rather than on the war on terror. Again, we are picking winners and losers here. I know that there are institutions in Arizona, business sectors everywhere else, that would like to get this kind of funding, $20 million, in the defense bill.

So why are we choosing one State? Why are we picking the businesses of that one State as the winners here?

I would ask the chairman of the subcommittee or the sponsor of the amendment to explain to the taxpayers and every other State outside of Missouri why we should support this earmark. Frankly, dollars in the defense bill should go to the war on terror. They ought to go to the troops. They ought to go for body armor. They ought to go for vehicles, for ammunition, for everything else we spend on defense. I do not believe they ought to go to support businesses that are simply looking for defense contracts or looking to promote business in one particular State.

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), June 20, 2006, Congressional Record, H4308-H4309

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 62 to 363. The $20,000,000 will be spent as earmarked.

H.R. 5672: Making appropriations for Science, the Departments of State, Justice, and Commerce, and related agencies

$150,000 for the Arthur Avenue Retail Market?

Mr. Chairman, I am a big fan of Italian food. My district is home to a great Italian restaurant, Anzio's Landing. You can order many of your favorite dishes, good Italian bread, and there are many former New Yorkers in my district, and they know it well. But if the owner of this restaurant, whom I know well, if he approached me to get a Federal earmark to modernize his restaurant, I would have to tell him "fuhgetaboudit."

Today I am bringing this amendment to learn whether the rest of the House will agree with me on that premise. The bill before us today asks us to spend $150,000 in Federal taxpayer dollars to the Arthur Avenue Retail Market, an Italian grocery market in a neighborhood labeled Bronx's Little Italy. Over a dozen merchants currently reside in the market, including Joe Liberatore's Garden of Plenty, Peter's Meat Market and Mike's Deli, a two-generation family-owned business that sells antipasti, breads, meats, pasta, and imported cheeses. The market is also home to the La Casa Grande Tobacco Company, which offers hand-rolled cigars.

In 2004, the market received $300,000 in earmarked Federal dollars for renovations. The market received another $400,000 in Federal transportation appropriation dollars for a new parking facility in 2005. We are back.

In 1940, Mayor LaGuardia built an indoor Arthur Avenue Market to take street vendors out of the cold. This is where this originated.

In the 1980s, the merchants of the market formed a co-op and paid for renovations to that market. Now, there are long lines at the market on weekends to get great Italian bread, cheese and salami.

I would ask the sponsor of this amendment why close to $700,000 has been spent on this Italian grocery market and why another $150,000 in taxpayer funds is needed.

There is a lot of Federal prosciutto to bring back to the District, or that is, a lot of Federal prosciutto to bring back to the District for a private Italian grocery market. I think we need to slice off some of this appropriations bill. If there is a place to slice, this is certainly it.

What possible Federal purpose does this earmark serve? Does the taxpayer even get a free Italian cookie assortment? If we allow our tax money to go to this grocery market, what benefit is there for the Federal taxpayer? There are certainly plenty of private benefits, but what Federal benefit? How do we justify this?

I would argue that this is one cannoli the taxpayer doesn't want to take a bite out of.

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), June 28, 2006, Congressional Record, H4717

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 76 to 345. The $150,000 will be spent as earmarked.

I would ask Members of this body, how would you define irony?

I define it as providing a Federal earmark money to the Bronx Council on the Arts, which is an entity that is advertising an event on its Web site called, Pay to Play.

Pay to Play, according to the Bronx Council's Web site is "a multimedia exhibition ala Abramoff, Scanlon, Cunningham, Halliburton and on and on and on." The Web site states that "artists are asked to offer a bribe to participate in the show that will be on display alongside selected work. Please note that special consideration will be given to work that addresses corruption, greed, scandal, cover-ups, failures of democracy, the transparent veneer of public interest that masks rampant self-interest, and such other things."

I am not saying the earmark for Bronx Council of the Arts fits any of these categories, but I am saying that it is sadly ironic that we are funding artistic parodies of congressional earmarking with earmarks.

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), June 28, 2006, Congressional Record, H4720

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 74 to 343. The $300,000 will be spent as earmarked.

Aside from all other arguments that can be made against this kind of earmarking, I want to point out what appears to be a trend toward obfuscation in the language of earmarks. In drafting a limitation amendment to prevent funding to the JARI Regional Business Incubator, we used the earmark language exactly as it appears in the bill.

We then asked the Parliamentarians to review it to make sure it would be in order. We were informed that the "region business incubator" verbiage was too vague to be considered in order. So in drafting this amendment, we had no choice but to limit funding to JARI, period. The effect of this amendment would be to prohibit any funding from the bill going to the organization, whereas our initial intention was to limit the funding to the business incubator.

That is part of the problem we have here. All we have is the language in a report that is so vague or confusing that it is even difficult to draft an amendment to cover it.

Now I have no problem limiting any funding to the organization, let me tell you, but I also want to be clear that I have nothing against JARI. I wish the organization well in its efforts. I do, however, have a problem with the increasingly opaque process by which Congress hands out earmarks.

For the first half of this year, we debated ways to bring transparency to what we do here. When it comes to the earmarking process, Members have proposed a longer notice period before consideration of bills, making bills and reports more accessible, attaching Members' names to earmarks, compiling earmarks in tables, including earmarks in the text of legislation, and on and on and on. I think all these ideas are fine, and I have introduced my own proposal.

After a good deal of compromise, this House approved the Lobbying Accountability and Transparency Act last month. Yet here we are, just a few weeks later, and there has been no apparent effort to comply with the proposals that we made in the House and the entire House approved.

How can we explain this to our constituents? Was the lobbying and transparency legislation just for show? I certainly don't think it was, but it is starting to look that way to most Americans.

We need to demonstrate how serious we are about establishing transparency in Congress. We have made a strong effort, and there is nothing preventing us from making good on what we said. Waiting until this bill becomes law before we act would appear as though we are under compulsion to comply with the public demand for transparency. I think we need transparency now.

A small handful of our colleagues contend that we should not change the process until the other Chamber changes its process, that if we enact unilateral reforms in the House, we would shortchange ourselves.

Who is this about? Are we here to serve our country, the best interests of our country, or simply to look out for the interests of the House?

What are we waiting for? We are almost done with the appropriation process for the year, yet nothing has changed. Where are the names next to earmarks? Where is the transparency that we say that we want?

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), June 28, 2006, Congressional Record, H4721

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 63 to 356. The $800,000 will be spent as earmarked.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would prohibit $900,000 in Federal funds from being used by Fairmont State University in West Virginia for a small business initiative.

Fairmont State University is located in Fairmont, the county seat of Marion County, which has a population of 20,000 and is located in north central West Virginia. Similar to other earmarks I have challenged in this appropriations season, this earmark is vague in its description, offering no more than a general sketch of the purpose of the funding and making true oversight nearly impossible.

In addition, this is not the first earmark to benefit the school. In recent years, Fairmont State University and its partners have regularly benefited from earmarks in this appropriation bill.

For example, the 2005 Justice Department budget included a grant for nearly half a million dollars for the Fairmont State partner program looking at decoding criminal digital documents. Similarly, the 2006 SSJC appropriation bill included over $2 million in earmarks assisting the school's aviation program and aerospace curriculum.

And I guess the third time is the charm. We are likely to continue this trend in 2007 with an earmark for $900,000 for a small business development initiative.

In fact, according to some estimates, northern West Virginia has received more than $480 million in earmarks in various appropriation bills over the last 10 years.

This earmark illustrates the problem with earmarks. Year after year, we approve these vaguely described projects by the thousands. Not only do taxpayers not know how the money is being spent, the current earmark process makes those types of patterns, the same area benefiting time and time again at the taxpayers' expense, difficult if not impossible to detect.

My question is, where does it end? Where does Congress start to say enough is enough and add accountability and transparency to this runaway train that earmarks have become? If not with earmarks like this, then I do not know when.

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), June 28, 2006, Congressional Record, H4723

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 70 to 350. The $900,000 will be spent as earmarked.

According to our research, since 1987, the Southern and Eastern Kentucky Tourism Development Association has received more than $18 million in Federal grants, loans, and earmarks. In fact, last year, in the fiscal year 2006 Science, State, Justice and Commerce appropriation bill, the Southern and Eastern Kentucky Development Association received a $3 million earmark.

Now I love traveling, as everyone here does; and I am all for seeing Kentucky tourism continue to grow. But again, here, how do we justify favoring this tourism association and not others?

We have one in Arizona. Virtually every State has one. Many regions in our State have their own tourism associations. How do we decide that one is worthy of earmarks and another one is not?

— Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), June 28, 2006, Congressional Record, H4724

Results from the roll call vote on the ammendment to cut this earmark:

The ammendment was defeated by a vote of 56 to 363. The $1,000,000 will be spent as earmarked.

In summary...

Rep. Matheson did the best among the Utah delegation: fourteen yes votes (to only five noes). He voted to cut $29,169,000 out of $34,669,000 in pork (84.1%).

Coming in a mediocre second place, was Rep. Bishop with eight yes votes (and eleven noes). He voted to cut $2,890,000 out of $34,669,000 in pork (8.3%).

Embarrasingly Rep. Cannon didn't even bother to show up for ten of the nineteen votes. Of the nine votes he did bother attending he voted yes five times and no four times. He voted to cut a meager $1,510,000 out of $34,669,000 in pork (4.4%).

If it were up to me to give Utah's delegation grades in fiscal responsibility, Rep. Matheson is the only one who would get a passing gr

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Posted at W.C. Varones Blog:


The Club for Growth has a chart of every member of Congress's record on 19 Jeff Flake anti-pork votes.
My representative is the Queen of the Democrats, Nancy Pelosi. She voted in favor of pork all 19 out of 19 times. Why would a partisan like Pelosi support Republican pork so consistently? Simple. If there's one principle she holds above partisanship, it's "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." She supports their pork and they'll support hers.
How did your Congressman do?

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Posted at Don Singleton:


Ed Morrissey wrote on The Heritage Policy Weblog: Business managers responsible for budgets often review planned spending on a monthly basis to spot and eliminate unnecessary spending. Taxpayers might believe that a similar mechanism would exist for a federal budget that now tops two trillion dollars, but they would be wrong. Congress has no formal mechanism of budgetary review that allows members to force votes to trim wasteful spending at any time after the federal budget gets signed into law. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) wants to change that with his Cut the Unnecessary Tab (CUT) resolution. This resolution would make any unspent federal funding vulnerable to a recorded vote for rescission at the beginning of each fiscal quarter. Any Member of the House could offer an amendment to these quarterly rescission bills that revokes the appropriation for any program in the approved budget. That would force House members to go on record supporting or opposing each specific program.

The only improvement I would make is I still want to see a constitutional ammendment for a line item veto by the President, and I would like to see a law that calls for the surgical removal of any legislator that sneaks an earmark into legislation without a recorded vote (I would really prefer to outlaw earmarks altogether, but maybe this would be enough to get their attention).

How much of an effect will this have on spending? Perhaps not much initially, but it does have the potential to put some brakes on the sillier line items in the budget once they get exposure in CUT reviews. Budget hawks will have four opportunities every year to propose elimination of programs they see as superfluous or incompetent. If enough of these programs get eliminated, it could start a new paradigm for the campaign trail-- incumbents could outline all of the money their rescissions saved, while challengers could highlight the programs they would try to eliminate if elected.
Heritage's Alison Acosta Fraser notes the potential for incremental improvement in proposals like CUT:This is another in a series of small steps to control spending that Congress is considering. All proposals like CUT would do some good in the short term if they were adopted and then seriously used to their full effect. Steps like these could create momentum towards reining in the huge growth in the federal budget. Members of Congress should be encouraged to come up with innovative ideas to tame the federal budget and then to follow through with them. Hopefully this would encourage them to tackle larger spending issues like the future exploding spending on entitlements.CUT may not solve the gargantuan problem of budget bloat. It does, however, give Congress a tool that individual Members can use to shame the chamber into commonsense rescissions. No longer would any congressman have the excuse that one individual acting alone has no options to reform the federal government.

CQ blogged Will this result in an increase in spending discipline? It may not solve the entire problem, but it does give Congress another tool to control pork-barrel spending. I discuss this in greater depth at Heritage; be sure to read the entire post and let me know your thoughts.
UPDATE: In another post at Heritage, I note that the Coburn bill creating an on-line federal database of all spending has passed unanimously in Senate committee. It now has a number of co-sponsors from both parties, including Harry Reid and Bill Frist. (Trent Lott, oddly, is not among them!) Hopefully it will come to a vote in the full Senate very quickly. However, one major hurdle has to be overcome when it goes into joint conference. Read the post to see where the extraordinary coalition supporting S.2590 could fall apart.

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Posted at Word Around the Net:

"I'll just say this about the so-called porkbusters. I'm getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble ever since Katrina."
-former GOP Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott
As I noted last week, I'm registered independent. Democrats don't appeal to me as a party and have not as long as I've been old enough to vote, and I pointed out last week why. The Republican Party is

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Posted at Curiouser and Curiouser:

The attack and shooting of six workers at the Seattle Jewish Center, with one killed, by a Pakistani named Naveed Afzal Haq is being played down as a hate crime or the actions of a lone nut job. But I don't think that is accurate. It is an act of terrorism, but nobody wants to admit it. Here are some of the details from a news report:

Authorities said a man walked into the Jewish agency on Friday and opened fire, killing one woman and injuring at least five others in what they call a hate crime. Naveed Afzal Haq, 30, was booked into the King County Jail for investigation of homicide and attempted homicide, police said.

The gunman, who employees said claimed to be a Muslim angry at Israel, forced his way through the center's security door after an employee had punched in her security code, said Marla Meislin-Dietrich, a co-worker who was not at the building at the time.

Staff members said they overheard him saying "'I am a Muslim American, angry at Israel,' before opening fire on everyone," Meislin-Dietrich said. "He was randomly shooting at everyone."

It has all the earmarks of a terrorist act. Since all terrorist acts tend to also be hate crimes, it is a hate crime too. But to ignore the fact that this shooter was a Muslim, that he found a way past the security systems, and that he randomly shot civilians who were present at the Jewish Center all point to terrorism. Three more of those shot are in critical condition and may or may not recover. This is a hate crime and it is an act of terrorism and should be dealt with in that fashion. Playing it down by the media, the government, or anybody else serves no one.

UDATE: Here is a link to a page that has a picture of the killer Naveed Afzal Haq. The site also posts the lyrics to a tune by Leonard Cohen that seems eerily poignant to the situation. Below, I've sampled the tune and you may listen to it by simply clicking on the player. Lyrics for this sample are after the jump.

Posted by from the blogosphere at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at RedState - Conservative News and Community:

Tonight, the House will vote to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour over three years. It will be attached to a permanent reduction in the death tax that falls short of full repeal but provides roughly $260 billion plus in tax relief over ten years. The package will also include a $5 billion new entitlement for Rick Santorum’s Reelection Campaign, ostensibly to fix an “Abandoned Mine Lands Fund". In short, the federal government will now be picking up the burden for cleaning up abandoned mines and paying the healthcare for retired coal workers. Not surprisingly, the Santorum piece blows through the budget. The Senate claims to have the votes to pass the omnibus bill next week so this is a question of what will become law.

Some conservatives may view this as a fair tradeoff. I do not. Raising the minimum wage means that people who have never had a job will have a harder time securing one. It will mean that many individuals in their first job will lose it. It will affect the very lowest in our society, and worse, those who actually want to climb upwards. Raising the minimum wage gums up the engine of the American dream, which of course, is freedom. It causes the cylinders not to fire. It is not something to be traded for tax cuts—as great and cherished as any pro-growth tax cuts undoubtedly are. Raising the minimum wage is something this Majority was put in place to oppose and never let see the light of day—no matter how many moderates “need” it for reelection. There are just some fundamental issues that House Republicans should stand for, and it is up to House Leadership to protect its members from having to choose between such fundamentals.

Now add in the $5 billion in new entitlement spending, the fact that it grossly violates the budget when the fiscal situation is already so damaged, and the idea that it is literally an attempt to throw hard-earned taxpayer dollars Senator Santorum’s way. Isn’t that an earmark to some extent? Isn’t that what Americans have repeatedly found so distasteful about the business of legislating in recent months? Isn’t that the mindset that Americans put this Majority in office to change?

Tonight’s vote will be party line. House Democrats are voting no. Republican arms will be twisted. Ultimately, House Leadership will pass their bill because about 30 moderates want to sacrifice their soul for a minimum wage hike, about 90 conservatives will inevitably grab too quickly for the tax relief, and most of the Republican majority could really care less. They just want to go home. There may be a few hardy GOP souls who vote no—but they will not be many. Tomorrow will tell us who they are. November 7th will tell us whether this is one of the last late nights of the Republican Majority.

Well, what do you think? Is this bill good for America? Would you vote for it? Watch the debate and decide. Consider this an open thread.

Update [2006-7-28 20:51:0 by Dales]: In the words of VodkaPundit... I need a drink. Good thing it is Friday.

Posted by from the blogosphere at 08:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at RovinsWorld:

Captain's Quarters has posted:

Has Hezbollah Folded?
Hezbollah politicians have agreed in principle with the Saniora government to an international military force to occupy Lebanon and, more importantly, to disarm the "guerillas" that touched off the war:

Hezbollah politicians, while expressing reservations, have joined their critics in the government in agreeing to a peace package that includes strengthening an international force in south Lebanon and disarming the guerrillas, the government said. The agreement — reached after a heated six-hour Cabinet meeting — was the first time that Hezbollah has signed onto a proposal for ending the crisis that includes the deploying of international forces.The package falls short of American and Israeli demands in that it calls for an immediate cease-fire before working out details of a force and includes other conditions.

Ed's complete post here

And this from ColdWarrior:

Even Islam recognizes that calling for a cease fire/truce is not the earmark of a winner...We, the US, the West, have failed to recognize this basic tenet, going back to Korea. Perhaps a bit of unconditional surrender should be at the heart of everythnig wer do regarding militant Islam? This play acting with truces, and cease fires, and such, over the decades has accomplished what? It has merely strengthened the resolve of militant Islam to press onward, knowing that the West has no stomach for war, for sacrifice and we have a vocal press/media that reinforces this notion, constantly.

Hezzbollah wants an end to hostilities? Sure. When the last Hezzbollah fighter looks skyward aasking Allah "Where in the hell did that F-16 come from???"Come at Hezzbollah, and Syria, and Iran, and all other forms of militant Islam with the steady message....NO truces...NO cease fires...NOTHING until militant Islam is disarmed...disarmed by themselves or by us.

Once this is accepted as a fact of life, militant Islam will be less willing to engage in this sort of garbage, and Moslems may finally see a time when they themselves are no longer held hostage to every wannabe Mahdi that comes down the pike, be it bin Ladin, or Nasrallah, or Ahmadinejad....We'll trade with you, we'll invest with you, we'll help educate your kids...but fire one shot, set off one bomb, attack one American interest anywhere, and all bets are off. Police yourselves, or we will police you ourselves.That, my friends, is what needs to be at the root of ALL our diplomatic efforts across the globe.

Posted by: coldwarrior415 at July 28, 2006 10:00 PM

...read complete post at RovinsWorld

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Posted at Freedom Democrats | Online community for pro-Freedom Democrats:

The Club for Growth has a new scorecard out looking at how the members of the House of Representatives voted on 19 anti-earmark amendments offered by Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona. I love this because of its purity, unlike the earlier scorecard from the Citizens Against Government Waste. Here are the votes:

House Vote 190 - Dairy education in Iowa ($229,000)

House Vote 191 - Hydroponic tomato production in Ohio ($180,000)

House Vote 192 - National Grape and Wine Initiative ($100,000)

House Vote 204 - Virginia Science Museum ($250,000)

House Vote 205 - Juniata Locomotive Demonstration ($1,000,000)

House Vote 277 - Swimming pool in Banning, CA ($500,000)

House Vote 278 - “Facilities” in Weirton, West Virginia ($100,000)

House Vote 279 - Multipurpose facility in Yucaipa, California ($500,000)

House Vote 280 - Strand Theater Arts Center in Plattsburgh, New York ($250,000)

House Vote 298 - Mystic Aquarium in New London, Conn. ($1,000,000)

House Vote 299 - The Jason Foundation in Ashburn, VA ($1,000,000)

House Vote 302 - Northwest Manufacturing Initiative ($2,500,000)

House Vote 303 - Lewis Center for Education Research ($4,000,000)

House Vote 304 - Leonard Wood Research Institute ($20,000,000)

House Vote 334 - Arthur Avenue Retail Market ($150,000)

House Vote 335 - Bronx Council for the Arts in Bronx, N.Y. ($300,000)

House Vote 336 - Johnstown Area Regional Industries ($800,000)

House Vote 337 - Fairmont State University ($900,000)

House Vote 338 - Tourism Development Association in Kentucky ($1,000,000)

According to one blog, the average for the Republicans was five votes against pork, while the average for the Democrats was not even one vote (0.55 of a vote). That's still marginal at best for the GOP, and I think it ignores that these votes (proposed by a conservative Republican) should have been easier for Republican to support than cutting other items (like subsidies to energy companies) that have been clogging up our country's fiscal arteries. The math is a bit surprising; the blog also observes that 112 Republicans had scores lower than the Democratic score. With 112 Republicans below 0.55, that means the remaining 118 Republicans must have had an average of about 9 votes. That would be a pretty big divide in the party, no?

Here are the Democrats scoring better than the Republican average:

Bean (IL-8) 19 of 19 100%

Cooper (TN-5) 19 of 19 100%

Matheson (UT-2) 14 of 19 74%

Ford (TN-9) 13 of 19 68%

Blumenauer (OR-3) 5 of 19 26%

Frank, B. (MA-4) 5 of 19 26%

Taylor, G. (MS-4) 5 of 19 26%

Udall, T. (NM-3) 5 of 19 26%

Some names (Blumenauer, Udall and Frank) that we've talked about before.

...read complete post at Freedom Democrats | Online community for pro-Freedom Democrats

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Posted at Heartless Libertarian:


And sadly, he is the least-pork addicted member of the collection of hogs the state of Washington has sent to the House of Representatives. (Scroll to the last page to find the Evergreen delegation.)
Brought to you by the Club for Growth:

Thanks to Congressman Jeff Flake's 19 anti-pork amendments, we now have every House member on record regarding their positions on earmarks. Before now, House members have been able to avoid scrutiny because their pork was co-mingled with other projects and tucked into the dark corners of big spending bills. Or they were able to withstand the scrutiny because they were attacked as a whole chamber and not directly attacked themselves.

But because of Flake's amendments, they were recently forced to cast up-or-down votes on specific projects. They could no longer deflect attention. ... A "YES" vote on any of the Flake amendments is a good, anti-pork vote. A "NO" vote is a bad, pro-pork vote. Therefore a score of 19-for-19 is a perfect, pro-taxpayer record. A 0-for-19 record means hostility to taxpayers.

What exactly did Rep. Adam "84% The Other White Meat" Smith vote to spend those taxpayer supplied dollars on?

House Vote 204 - Virginia Science Museum ($250,000)

House Vote 205 - Juniata Locomotive Demonstration ($1,000,000)

House Vote 277 - Swimming pool in Banning, CA ($500,000)

House Vote 278 - “Facilities” in Weirton, West Virginia ($100,000)

House Vote 279 - Multipurpose facility in Yucaipa, California ($500,000)

House Vote 280 - Strand Theater Arts Center in Plattsburgh, New York ($250,000)

House Vote 298 - Mystic Aquarium in New London, Conn. ($1,000,000)

House Vote 299 - The Jason Foundation in Ashburn, VA ($1,000,000)

House Vote 302 - Northwest Manufacturing Initiative ($2,500,000)

House Vote 303 - Lewis Center for Education Research ($4,000,000)

House Vote 304 - Leonard Wood Research Institute ($20,000,000)

House Vote 334 - Arthur Avenue Retail Market ($150,000)

House Vote 335 - Bronx Council for the Arts in Bronx, N.Y. ($300,000)

House Vote 336 - Johnstown Area Regional Industries ($800,000)

House Vote 337 - Fairmont State University ($900,000)

House Vote 338 - Tourism Development Association in Kentucky ($1,000,000)

Altogether, $34,250,000 worth of pork.

Oh, the rankings for the rest of the Evergreen State Pork Assocition?

Leading the way to the trough, voting against all 19 amendments, 100% pork:

Larsen, D-2ndBaird, D-3rdDicks, D-6thMcDermott, D-7thReichert, R-8th

Actually voting for one of 19, removing one pork item, leaving them at 95% pork:

Inslee, D-1stHastings, R-4th

And voting to remove two of 19 slices of bacon, 90% pork:

McMorris, R-5th

So my home state's delegation has at least one thing they can be bi-partisan about: spending your money on pork.

...read complete post at Heartless Libertarian

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Posted at Tapscott’s Copy Desk:


Rep. Tom Davis, R-VA, is chairman of the House Government Reform Committee and is
an apparently softening opponent of posting all federal contract spending data on the Internet as required by the Coburn-Obama Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act.

Davis has previously supported putting federal grants on an Internet database but he opposed including contracts because, he said, contracts are competitively bid and therefore public access is not needed. In fact, as many as 40 percent of all federal contracts are awarded without competitive bidding, according to some experts. Many of Davis' campaign contributors are associated with federal contractors.

In any case, Davis has recently run into an unexpected series of PR hits that may herald a rough road ahead for the long-time Virginia congressman who represents a district populated mainly by federal employees and people who work for companies that depend upon federal contracts.

Hit one came last week when The Washington Examiner editorialized on consecutive days against the $1.5 billion federal bailout earmark Davis is seeking for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the Metro bus and subway system.

You can read those editorials here and here. You can also read the slashing response that erupted from Davis in response to the Examiner here. In the latter, Davis is referring in his opening paragraph to transportation expert and former federal contracting-out czar Dr. Ron Utt of The Heritage Foundation, who called the Davis Metro measure the "largest earmark" ever.

Hit number two came earlier this week when Davis was named by Citizens Against Government Waste as its Porker of the Month for his Metro bailout earmark. You can read CAGW's citation of Davis here.

Hit number three came today with a front-page story in The Washington Post detailing the relationship of Davis and a long-time friend and former business associate who employes the Virginia congressman's wife, Devolites, in a consulting firm that helps businesses gain federal contracts. Mrs. Davis works for the firm, IDG, Inc., and is a Virginia state delegate.

While the Post story doesn't contain the proverbial "smoking gun," it does contain this interesting passage that sheds some much-needed light on one of Washington's worst-kept secrets:

"Devolites Davis said her ICG work is not lobbying because she does not try to influence votes or the awarding of contracts. 'We help make connections so that folks can build relationships on their own,' she said, adding that the firm's main business is educating industry and government officials."

People who know people in government often have access by virtue of those relationships and are able to use that access to put individuals and business firms seeking federal contracts in touch with key officials in the government agencies with billions of dollars of procurements to award and administer. It is analogous to the profiting-by-access-and-relationship that former Members of Congress use as registered lobbyists when they lobby their former colleagues.

But as the Post story points out, when you call yourself a consultant and describe your business as "educating industry and government officials" in the executive branch, you don't have to register as do those who are lobbyists of the legislative branch.

Hit number four is also contained in the Post piece in form of a sidebar that highlights a former senior official in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Angela Styles, who tangled repeatedly with Davis during her tenure in the White House agency.

The sidebar notes:

"Among those opposed was the Bush administration's top procurement official, Angela B. Styles, the former chief of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the Office of Management and Budget. Styles, a politically connected corporate lawyer and Bush loyalist from Texas, thought Davis's proposals would be costly and overly favorable to businesses. "In a series of speeches and testimony on Capitol Hill, Styles criticized some of the proposals, including one that would allow contractors to determine how much they were saving the government in costs and then share in those savings.

"On May 3, 2002, Styles e-mailed her boss, then-OMB chief Mitchell E. Daniels Jr.: 'David Addington [then Vice President Cheney's chief counsel] probably did the best job of summarizing Mr. Davis' legislation. . . . 'I hear the whosh of taxpayer dollars out the window.' The bill is not fiscally responsible and cannot be supported in its current form.'

"She described 13 of the legislation's 29 provisions as 'problematic' and said they would result in 'policy changes that the administration cannot support.' Among them: a plan to allow more contractors to bill the government for their 'time and materials' with no fixed cap on the total amount."

The fifth and final hit comes in an online chat among the two Post reporters who wrote the Davis piece and some interested readers, including one with this timely reminder:

"Washington, D.C.: Scott & Rob:

"Great piece, but you only scratched the surface. The trade press has well documented (although from a cheerleader perspective), Davis near total dismantlement of the procurement oversight and regulatory functions of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) at OMB. In addition, he was largely responsible for putting David Safavian in as Administrator of OFPP (Safavian's wife is Davis chief investigative counsel). There's just so much to choose from, why don't you expand your story?

"Scott Higham and Robert O'Harrow: That's an interesting prospect and a good idea."

Safavian was convicted earlier this year on four counts of lying and obstruction of justice, as a result of the federal investigation of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Earmarks

Pork

Corruption

The Washington Post

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Posted at Hard Starboard:


For all the talk about how unpopular Republicans supposedly are right now, it doesn't look as if the Democrats are in any better PR shape according to this Wall Street Journal poll:

The Journal/NBC poll shows that Democrats have made little progress in improving their party's standing. The party's favorability rating, 32% positive and 39% negative, is as unflattering as the Journal/NBC survey has ever recorded.Of course, generic party polls are meaningless, just like generic congressional ballots. I seriously doubt whether either party would poll all that well even in the best of times - which these times actually are, the shadow of nuclear war in the Middle East notwithstanding. It's the actual individual candidates who will determine the overall parties' success this fall.
And, intrigingly, the WSJ poll shed some context-providing light on what criteria may govern voters' decision processes:

The 14% of voters who remain undecided in congressional races are especially interested in local issues. By 41% to 25%, those undecided voters say performance in the district will be most important to their vote.
"Performance in the district," translated, means "How much bacon did Congressman Bunghole bring home?" In a year in which nationalizing congressional elections seems exceedingly unlikely (apart, perhaps, from the usual national security mismatch), the runaway "earmarking" that so many of us on the center-right have decried (sometimes "angrily") starts making a lot more sense from a purely pragmatic point of view.
That's not a defense of pork, by any means. I want to see runaway federal spending brought under control as much as anybody (though I'm much more interested in averting the looming fiscal crunch of federal entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security, compared to which earmarks, no matter how promiscuous, are a drop in the bucket). It's also not a cavalier eschewment of philosophical commitment. But darned if I'm not still a realist at heart. And as the adage goes, you can't do anything about anything if you're not in power.
Sometimes medicine tastes nasty. But if it's the only way to get well, who can seriously argue that it isn't worth it?
(h/t: RCP)
UPDATE: If the Republicans do not remain in power, will there be any chance for anti-pork remedies like this and this? Could that not make the current flurry of earmarks analogous to innoculation?


...read complete post at Hard Starboard

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Posted at Gates of Vienna:

The Club for Growth has published the record of the Porkers who reside in the hallowed halls of The House of Representatives. It does not look good:

Thanks to Congressman Jeff Flake’s 19 anti-pork amendments, we now have every House member on record regarding their positions on earmarks. Before now, House members have been able to avoid scrutiny because their pork was co-mingled with other

...read complete post at Gates of Vienna

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Posted at Politics In Alabama:

Shelby has big plans for arsenal
Senator earmarks money for FBI lab, ATF bomb school
Alabama\’s senior senator has been quietly beefing up the Department of Justice budget over the past couple of years with the hope of adding forensic science, computer analysis and bomb disposal work at Redstone Arsenal.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, has put $88.4 million [...]]]>

...read complete post at Politics In Alabama

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Posted at Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space:

U.S. Representative Tom Davis from Fairfax County, Virginia is the leading proponent of dedicated tax streams to support WMATA, the local subway and bus transportation authority for the DC region. As a sweetener, he proposes that the federal government provide $150 million/year for the next ten years in additional funds to support the system.

In today's Examiner, Congressman Davis has a long letter in response to a couple of editorials in last week's Examiner that liken this proposal to "the biggest earmark in history." In "Funding Metro is a good investment for the federal government," he discusses the importance of the subway system to the transport of federal workers, and the fact that these 300,000+ riders don't use a car reduces demand for and congestion of roads.

Speaking of cars on the road, there is a fascinating letter to the editor, "More Lanes, Longer Commutes," in today's Post about induced demand from adding more roads. Ernest De Corte from Lovettsville, Virginia writes:

In 1968 I traveled 40 miles to work, going east on two-lane Route 7, in Loudoun County. There were two signal lights, and it took me 55 minutes.

In 1980, on four lanes, it took one hour and 25 minutes. I don't remember the number of signal lights. I recently drove the same route on six to eight lanes, and it took me over one hour and 45 minutes. I was too busy dodging traffic to count the number of signal lights. But there were plenty!

As has already been shown in Los Angeles, you cannot build enough roads or lanes to accommodate the number of cars brought on by development ["More Houses, More Traffic," editorial, July 18].

While I would say that you can accommodate more development, if land use complements a transportation and mobility infastructure that works to reduce the number of single occupancy vehicle trips. This is something that A. Barton Hinkle discussed in an op-ed piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch earlier in the week, "Transportation, Cont'd: State Can't Fix Its Roads Without Changing How It Uses Land."

There's a lot of good stuff in his piece, but here's something to think about:

Several years ago a study of traffic in Northern Virginia found another equally astounding datum: 74 percent of the vehicle trips from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. have nothing to do with the daily commute. In fact, the only hours when commuting accounts for the majority of drivers on the road in Northern Virginia is the two-hour stretch between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. The rest of the time drivers are attending not to business, but to the business of life. That's because, in many places, you have to go 10 or 15 miles just to get a gallon of milk.

But in other news, Congressman Davis, along with his colleague Congressman Wolf, still demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of transit-efficiency and design and land use policy that is urban and compact, along the lines of Arlington County Virginia or Washington DC.

Both Congresspeople are pressuring the State of Virginia to not consider underground tunneling of the Dulles Corridor subway extension, fearing that delays will limit the ability to garner funding from the Federal Government. See "Wolf, Davis Say Tunnel May Delay Dulles Rail."
Illustration of the guideway on Route 7 at Spring Hill Road, 27 feet above street level. Photo Credit: Dulles Corridor Metro Project.

Frankly, I have no desire to help Tysons Corner fix itself. My concern is for the District of Columbia foremost and primarily. If it's easier to get around in Northern Virginia, then it makes it that much more difficult for DC to compete. These days, I think we can hold our own nonetheless. But it's important to have a great transit system. DC depends on it. In fact, it's one of the city's primary competitive advantages.

Baltimore Maryland should prove that if you design a crappy transit system, people won't ride it. For example, the light rail system has many problems. It doesn't go where a lot of people want to go. Many of the stations are not located within neighborhoods, but require a distant trip. For many years, many sections of the line were single-tracked which reduced frequency. Then, when they double-tracked the system, the construction process led many people to stop riding the system.

The result is that few people ride light rail in Baltimore. The busiest bus lines in Washington, DC transport as many or more passengers daily, compared to the 28-mile Baltimore light rail system.

And the Baltimore subway system has similar issues. It is like a private transit system for the Charles Center urban renewal project and for the Johns Hopkins Hospital in East Baltimore. It doesn't go to enough places where people want to go, or where they live, to have much impact.

The result is that the ridership on Baltimore's subway system equals about 2-3 of DC's busiest bus lines. (I am not even going to bother comparing Baltimore's subway ridership to the ridership of the DC-area subway system.)

Similarly, both the Washington Times and Steve Eldridge's Sprawl and Crawl column, "VRE sees recent ridership downturn," in the Examiner discuss the declining ridership of the Virginia Railway Express commuter rail line. It's happening because of service declines, and these declines result from the necessary "satisficing" of using the CSX railroad lines, and CSX is primarily concerned with freight operations and will not make upgrades to the line above and beyond their freight carriage requirements. According to an AP recounting of the issue:

VRE ridership declined about 2 percent, or by about 178 passengers, in the fiscal year that ended June 30 compared to the prior year. That dip is a marked change for VRE, which saw ridership jump an average of 13 percent each year from 2000 to 2005.

So ridership is dropping.

(Due to an indexing problem, the Washington Times article, "Decline in ridership costs commuter rail; VRE cites track work, heat rules" is not retrievable from the online website.)

Both the Baltimore and VRE lessons should be prominent in the minds of people like Congressmen Davis and Wolf when they make pronouncements.

One of the biggest reasons transit doesn't carry as many riders as it could is because bad decisions to reduce costs make it much harder, less comfortable, or less efficient to use, in comparison to other forms of mobility.

But focusing on roads and single-occupancy vehicles as the way to go is an endgame with no real end in sight.

Index Keywords: transit

...read complete post at Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

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Posted at Tapscott’s Copy Desk:


Here's the statement just issued by Sen. Tom Coburn:

(WASHINGTON, D.C.)

- U.S. Senators Tom Coburn, M.D., R-OK, Barack Obama, D-IL, John McCain, R-AZ, and Tom Carper, D-DE, today urged the full Senate to pass S. 2590, the "Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act," a bill that will create a Google-like search engine and database to track approximately $1 trillion in federal grants, contracts, earmarks and loans. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs approved S. 2590 unanimously today. The House has already passed similar legislation that is limited to grant disclosure only.

"Passing this bill will help end the culture of secrecy in Washington and restore some measure of the public's confidence in government. Technology has made it possible, like never before, to fulfill our founders' vision of enabling all citizens to understand our nation's finances, investigate abuses and hold elected officials accountable," Dr. Coburn said, adding that a hearing being held today in the House Government Reform Committee on abuses in homeland security contracting highlights the urgent need to include contracts in the database.

"All Americans deserve to know where their money is being spent. 'Googling' the government will not only help expose and eliminate waste, but dispel misconceptions about the scope of our commitments. Many Americans, for example, assume we are spending a large percentage of our budget on foreign assistance when we are not. Whether you're on the left or right, there is no worthy argument against transparency," Obama said.

"If we're going to hold the federal government accountable for its performance, then we need to empower the public with basic information about who's receiving federal dollars and what they're doing with them. This bill will shed some much-needed light on the activities of most federal agencies, allowing the public to decide for themselves whether their tax dollars are well spent," Carper said.

During a July 18 hearing on the bill in the Federal Financial Management Subcommittee, McCain called the plan "the tool necessary to put us on track to real accountability and reform."

...read complete post at Tapscott’s Copy Desk

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Josh Marshall

...read complete post at Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall

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Posted at Wonkette, Politics for People with Dirty Minds:

Whatever Patrick Hynes gets for his consulting work (actually, we sort of know), he’s worth every cent. Shortly after we posted a follow-up on his John McCain sorta-scandal, Hynes himself called me up to clear the air about Straight Talk America, his cable TV blog, and whether he’s only mean when people pay him to be mean. This marks the first time in my epic four-day saga as a guest-blogger than a libelled public figure has taken the effort to clear things up. Will it happen again? C’mon, Vern: Leave the dogs alone and give me a holler.

The interview starts up top and continues below the fold.

Previously: Reading Between the Hynes, Straight Talk, Unmarked Bills

— David Weigel

WONKETTE: Why did you consult without disclosing it when you’d attacked Daily Kos for the same thing?
PAT HYNES: About the Markos thing: Let me say in my defense, about a year ago I appeared on Washington Journal with Jerome Armstrong. And right then I acknowledged that Markos had appropriately disclosed his consulting work. So I was wrong before.

WONKETTE: What did you do for McCain and who knew about it?
PAT HYNES: The idea was not and is not “I’m going to be a blogger for John McCain.” The idea is I’ll promote his ideas through the blogosphere. I’ve acknowledged that to Danny Glover and acknowledged it to Jim Geraghty. The reason I didn’t disclose it was, frankly, I didn’t have a contact and I didn’t have a relationship, and to be honest I was talking to other bloggers about McCain.

WONKETTE: But you didn’t disclose that on the blog. You attacked Daily Kos for the same thing.
PAT HYNES: Right. I handled this wrong. But for Straight Talk America I was the go-between for the senator’s Porkbusters guest-post and the Glenn Reynolds interview.

WONKETTE: When Daily Kos was attacked for his role in the Dean campaign, you dug up posts on the site and asked if Dean supported them. Would it be fair if someone grabbed your Ankle Biting Pundits posts and asked McCain to denounce them?
PAT HYNES: I don’t know. I try to be open and honest about who I am at all times. I get the feeling that everyone knows who I am and what I’m about. And people are already saying it: Patrick Hynes is this, that and the other thing. Are other people going to attack John McCain because I work for him? They’re already doing that.

WONKETTE: When you blog about presidential politics from now on, will you include a disclaimer?
PAT HYNES: I’m actually trying to get out of blogging - I’ve got a book coming out and a second kid on the way. But sure. I’ll put it as a disclaimer.

WONKETTE: Do you consult for anyone in the cable and TV industries?
PAT HYNES: No. I’ve had no relationship with any companies since I started bloggin on Channel Changer. The reason I started that was because I moved from Annapolis, MD to Barrington, NH and I was still getting cable bills from Annapolis. It’s the same thing with Vonage. That’s what motivates that blog.

WONKETTE: So you don’t anyone to pay you to get pissed off at things?
PAT HYNES: No. But that’s a good line.

WONKETTE: Let’s make sure we don’t get into another situation where you’re bashing somebody and people can’t tell what you really think about them. I’m going to name the possible GOP presidential candidate and you go on the record with what you think of them.
PAT HYNES: So people can check this three years from now?

WONKETTE: Ideally. Newt Gingrich.
PAT HYNES: He was an effective revolutionary leader but I don’t think in the end he’ll be known for his skill in governing.

WONKETTE: Rudy Giuliani.
PAT HYNES: Strong leadership during 9/11. Not the right fit for a socially conservative party.

WONKETTE: Mike Huckabee.
PAT HYNES: I don’t have anything to comment on, other than I sure would like to drop 100 pounds like he did.

WONKETTE: Condoleeza Rice.
PAT HYNES: I think she’s great. She’s going to have to go through the process of articulating herself on a whole catalogue of issues she’s never had to go through before. That’s difficult to go through.

WONKETTE: Chuck Hagel.
PAT HYNES: He’s the wrong fit for a socially conservative party that strongly wants to continue fighting and winning the war in Iraq.

WONKETTE: Tom Tancredo.
PAT HYNES: One-issue candidate and I disagree with him on the issue.

WONKETTE: George Allen.
PAT HYNES: Good senator. Hopefully he’s as conservative as his rhetoric and I hope he wins his Senate seat.

WONKETTE: Sam Brownback.
PAT HYNES: I really like and respect him. He’s actually a good fit for a socially conservative party. But he’s going to have difficulty running with so many senators running, and most of them with higher profiles.

WONKETTE: Bill Frist.
PAT HYNES: I think he’s going to have a difficult time justifying his leadership of the US Senate to Republican primary voters.

WONKETTE: Anything else?
PAT HYNES: All I ask is if you have a question, email me and I’ll answer you. Here’s the bottom line: There is no concerted effort to play blog payola. There was a screw-up with the McCain thing. I acknowledged that and I want to move on.

Posted by from the blogosphere at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at Tapscott’s Copy Desk:

Members of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee are meeting today to mark-up S. 2590, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act co-sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, and Sen. Barack Obama, D-IL requiring the establishment of a public, searchable database of federal spending.
Among the growing list of co-sponsors of the bill are senators John McCain, R-AZ, Tom Carper, D-DE, Hillary Clinton, D-NY, Rick Santorum, R-PA, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-TN. Committee Chairman Susan Collins, R-ME, also supports the measure and promised backers last week of a quick mark-up session today, followed by a quick reporting to the Senate floor. The goal is to get the Senate version approved on the Unanimous Consent calendar.
The Senate mark-up comes the same dxay as National Review magazine endorsed the proposal and thus joined a solid list of major daily newspapers supporting it. NR's editors lauded the proposal because:

"For the first time, it would shed some light on which companies and organizations are receiving federal money, and how much they are getting. A tool like this is a dream come true for budget hawks. Louis Brandeis famously observed that “sunlight is the best disinfectant” — and nothing needs disinfecting like the festering federal budget.

NRO's editors added that:

"Many taxpayers would be surprised and disturbed to learn how much of their money drifts quietly away to various questionable causes - Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, Alaskan bridges to nowhere, and the like. Making this information readily available to the public — and especially to the diligent denizens of the blogosphere - would encourage reform."
You can read the complete NR editorial here.
It also appears today that a major obstacle to full congressional approval is fading in importance. A House version of Coburn-Obama backed mainly by House Majority Whip Rep. Roy Blunt, R-MO., and House Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Davis, R-VA., includes federal grants but not federal contracts.
After initially sounding dead-set against including contracts - Davis believes they are mostly competitively bid and therefore less needful of public examination - the Virginia congressman, who represents a district populated mainly by federal civil servants and federal contractors, is now talking compromise with the Senate, according to Congressional Quarterly.

"Davis

said he has softened his opposition to including contracts and does not expect that conference negotiations, should it come to that, would be difficult. 'It’s technically harder to do, but I’m not opposed to it,' Davis said.

"Davis

has taken the brunt of the criticism for excluding federal contracts because his Virginia district receives so many. The 11th District ranked 17th among House districts in federal contracts received in fiscal 2004 and 2005, according to [Gary Bass of OMB Watch]. Blunt’s district ranks relatively low in both contracts and grants."

A Senate-House conference committee is unlikely to meet on the measure until after Congress returns from its August recess. If approved by President Bush with the schedule established by the Senate version, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget would be required to begin work on the database and tracking spending as of Jan. 1, 2008.

Pork Busters

Pork

Coburn

Corruption

Congress

Politics

Barack Obama

John McCain

Hillary Clinton

...read complete post at Tapscott’s Copy Desk

Posted by from the blogosphere at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at State 29:



The Club For Growth has a big post about Congressman Jeff Flake's 19 anti-pork amendments and how they have every House member on record regarding their positions on earmarks (a process through which members of Congress steer federal funding to local projects without going through competitive grant procedures or other objective mechanisms - source).

I figured I'd blog about Jim Ross Nussle, Iowa's Congressman from the 1st District and Republican goobernatorial candidate. Nussle is the House Budget Committee chairman and, according to some groups, supposedly this big fiscal conservative.

When it comes to earmarks, though, Jim Ross Nussle is a fauxscal conservative.

Below is a list of 19 amendments on earmarks that Congressman Flake introduced. A "YES" vote on any of the Flake amendments is a good, anti-pork vote. A "NO" vote is a bad, pro-pork vote. Jim Ross Nussle, fauxscal conservative, voted "NO" in every single instance:

House Vote 190 - Dairy education in Iowa ($229,000)

House Vote 191 - Hydroponic tomato production in Ohio ($180,000)

House Vote 192 - National Grape and Wine Initiative ($100,000)

House Vote 204 - Virginia Science Museum ($250,000)

House Vote 205 - Juniata Locomotive Demonstration ($1,000,000)

House Vote 277 - Swimming pool in Banning, CA ($500,000)

House Vote 278 - “Facilities” in Weirton, West Virginia ($100,000)

House Vote 279 - Multipurpose facility in Yucaipa, California ($500,000)

House Vote 280 - Strand Theater Arts Center in Plattsburgh, New York ($250,000)

House Vote 298 - Mystic Aquarium in New London, Conn. ($1,000,000)

House Vote 299 - The Jason Foundation in Ashburn, VA ($1,000,000)

House Vote 302 - Northwest Manufacturing Initiative ($2,500,000)

House Vote 303 - Lewis Center for Education Research ($4,000,000)

House Vote 304 - Leonard Wood Research Institute ($20,000,000)

House Vote 334 - Arthur Avenue Retail Market ($150,000)

House Vote 335 - Bronx Council for the Arts in Bronx, N.Y. ($300,000)

House Vote 336 - Johnstown Area Regional Industries ($800,000)

House Vote 337 - Fairmont State University ($900,000)

House Vote 338 - Tourism Development Association in Kentucky ($1,000,000)

Posted by from the blogosphere at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at Pekin Prattles:


Andy Roth speaks on the efforts by one Congressman to expose Pork by each of our Congressmen....

"Thanks to Congressman Jeff Flake's 19 anti-pork amendments, we now have every House member on record regarding their positions on earmarks. Before now, House members have been able to avoid scrutiny because their pork was co-mingled with other projects and tucked into the dark corners of big spending bills. Or they were able to withstand the scrutiny because they were attacked as a whole chamber and not directly attacked themselves.But because of Flake's amendments, they were recently forced to cast up-or-down votes on specific projects. They could no longer deflect attention. Below is a summary scorecard of how they voted (below the scorecard are the vote descriptions). If you want an itemized list, you can click on any one of the following PDFs. A "YES" vote on any of the Flake amendments is a good, anti-pork vote. A "NO" vote is a bad, pro-pork vote."

So.....I looked up my Congressman, Jim Davis of Florida......
His rating?
100% NO
.......

He voted AGAINST each initiative to show how our congressmen are spending our money through special earmarks (Pork).....
Wonder what Davis has to hide that he does not want us to know what he submitted for funding? Perhaps he is helping some special friends....Perhaps some funding for things which won't actually help us. Guess I'll send him an email and ask why he does not feel accountable!
Duke


...read complete post at Pekin Prattles

Posted by from the blogosphere at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Glenn Reynolds

...read complete post at Instapundit.com

Posted by at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at The Influence Peddler:


The House Republican leadership is announcing that if a lobbying reform bill is not agreed to and enacted into law (as will probably be the case), then they will reform earmarking independently, through House rules.
This is both good and bad. On the one hand, it makes it tougher to enact meaningful reform in the Senate, and puts more pressure on Tom Coburn, John McCain, and Bill Frist (according to the article) to force action on Senate rules. On the other, it allows the House to avoid any 'least common denominator' approach that the Senate might have pushed on them.
It's likely that the approach adopted in House rules will be the same one included for the House in the ethics and lobbying reform bill. That is, forced disclosure of earmarks, with some hurdles set to the introduction of earmarks at the last minute.
Along with the enhanced rescission bill that the Senate may consider in September, Congressional leadership clearly wants to leave fiscal conservatives with a pleasant taste in their mouths before the election. And in a major victory, there is apparently agreement that any rule change will apply to the transportation committee, limiting the enormous abuse of earmarking that has become standard in transportation authorization legislation.
Don't fool yourself that this will make a big difference in overall spending levels. Any such effect will be negligible, since overall decisions on spending levels are made separate of any considerations of earmarks. Nevertheless, anything that limits the earmarking of federal dollars is probably a good thing.

Back to the top.


...read complete post at The Influence Peddler

Posted by from the blogosphere at 10:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at The Hedgehog Blog:

Called As Seen is a blog I've linked to many times, but somehow failed to add to my blogroll. It's there now, and I recommend you go there often. Today, Harold Hutchison comments on the general problem of conservative absolutism, on which I commented below.[tags] Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame, Christopher Hitchens, Laura Ingraham, illegal immigration, earmakrs, Duke Cunningham, news leaks [/tags]Harold also comments persuasively on the question of prosecuting federal leakers of national security information. He wonders why Duke Cunningham is in prison while other people (including a sitting U.S. Senator) are left unpunished despite having endangered American lives:If Congress cannot be trusted to keep secrets, and if serious transgressions go unpunished, then Congress needs to face the consequences. I'm sorry, but I cannot get outraged over some Congressman's earmarks and bribes when others skate for leaking classified information.Why isn't the Bush administration vigorously prosecuting these people? I suspect the answer is that doing so would be very costly politically. Think about it: Bush would be trying to jail the very people who make Pulitzer Prizes possible for those to whom those people leak information. The MSM, working with the Democrats, would unitedly paint Bush as Big Brother, Stalin, Hitler, and Jabba the Hutt all rolled into one. That doesn't mean Bush shouldn't prosecute the leakers, but I think it explains why he may be reluctant to do it.

Update: Speaking of leakers, today Christopher Hitchens drives what looks like the final nail in the coffin of the Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame story.


...read complete post at The Hedgehog Blog

Posted by from the blogosphere at 09:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at Tapscott’s Copy Desk:


Here's the statement just issued:

Joint Statement by Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), and Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-CA) on Congressional Earmark Reform

WASHINGTON

, D.C.

- The following statement was issued today by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), and Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-CA):

"The House-passed lobbying and ethics reform bill includes a series of significant reforms meant to bring greater transparency and accountability to the congressional earmarking practice. House Republicans are committed to extending these reforms to all committees and implementing them during the current session of Congress, before any spending or tax bill for the upcoming fiscal year goes to the President's desk.

"After Labor Day, the House is likely to consider, among other items, a number of important appropriations conference reports for the upcoming fiscal year. If the House and Senate have not produced a final lobbying and ethics reform conference report by the time we return from our August district work period in September, the House will move to immediately adopt and implement a comprehensive earmark reform rules change independent of the ongoing lobbying and ethics reform discussions to ensure these new rules apply to all spending and tax measures that will go to the President's desk this fall.

"The American people want meaningful change in the way in which Congress spends their money. House Republicans are committed to delivering this change."

...read complete post at Tapscott’s Copy Desk

Posted by from the blogosphere at 03:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at New Hampshire State of Mind:

The Christian Science Monitor reports on congressional pork spending and the practice and numbers are staggering:

“Back in 1987, Congress presented President Reagan with its transportation funding bill - and he vetoed it. Lawmakers, he said, had inserted too many bonus projects for their home districts - 152 of them. Last year's highway bill designated 6,371 such projects, including the now-famous "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska.

Congress overrode that Reagan veto in 1987, and it hasn't looked back since. Almost 20 years later, the practice of targeting spending to specific projects - known inside the Beltway as earmarks - is ingrained in Capitol Hill culture. This year, though, earmarks are embroiled incontroversy surrounding legislators' relationships with lobbyists. Several lawmakers have forsworn earmarks and want their colleagues to do the same.

The hue and cry notwithstanding, the expansion of the pork barrel is startling: Earmarks added to spending bills totaled $3.1 billion in 1991, compared with a record $29.3 billion in fiscal year 2006, according to Citizens Against Government Waste….”

Where have our leaders gone (rhetorical question folks)? Who has the ‘nads to say no more earmarks, no more pork, until the Iraq War is concluded and our troops have come home. Isn’t it time that sacrifices are made not only by our men and women in combat, but also by our congressional leaders and the constituencies that accept the pork fest? We are spending over $4.5 billion monthly to fund the Iraq war and have lost over 2500 brave Americans in the process. It’s time for all of us to feel a bit of the pain. Why not start with eliminating pork from the congressional diet, at least for a while?


...read complete post at New Hampshire State of Mind

Posted by from the blogosphere at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at Torontoist:

The City is receving about $980 million dollars from Toronto Hydro. There was some fierce debate about how the money will be used but in the end the City will earmark the money for waterfront redevelopment and the York U subway. Sadly fancy ketchups or green dresses were nowhere on council's radar. Pictured here are the very happy Toronto Hydro mascots.

Despite the promise of a billion dollars the city still needs more money. Council wants to explore using alternate sources of funding (ie. the private sector, non-profits, bake sales) to fund public infrastructure such as housing, parks and roads. We're very wary of this considering the bad record of public private partnerships the world over, but hey what do we know.

Torontoist wants a moment of silence for Patsy. The 40-year old elephant was put down yesterday at the Toronto Zoo, she had been suffering from very painful arthritis. Patsy was born in Mozambique but has lived in Toronto for the last 32 years and was regarded as the matriach of the zoo's elephants, many of whom mourned her death yesterday.

Residents in and around the club district are telling their noisy neighbours that you're either with us or against us, sort of. Area residents want to find solutions that will keep noise levels down and allow clubs to avoid the fate of the Docks.

A flying tire causes a bad accident on the DVP. Fortunately no one was seriously injured.

After an eight year court battle, a member of the Tamil Tigers has been deported from Canada. Toronto police considered the man a gang leader and a "trained assassin."

The city is expropriating a burnt-out rooming house in Parkdale and hopefully turning it into affordable housing. The owner wants to rehabilitate the building but it's been burnt out for close to eight years and local councillor Sylvia Watson is growing impatient.

Posted by from the blogosphere at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at The Influence Peddler:


Why do earmarks remain so difficult to curb? Because politicians believe voters still like them. And there's a reason that people like Rep. Charles Taylor stay in office: they know what the voters like.
Taylor is in a very tough race for re-election in a swing district in North Carolina that rates as a 'must-have' for Democrats to take over the House. He faces Heath Shuler, who so far has looked more like the Tennessee QB than the Redskins failure on the campaign trail.

The Hill reports this AM that Taylor is 'banking on earmarks' for his re-election bid. Professor Larry Sabato explains why:

“Earmarks have helped many a congressman in a competitive district get reelected under adverse political conditions,” said Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “People are grateful. It creates jobs, generates additional dollars. … All those people who benefit from earmarks are going to realize the payday may stop if Taylor gets defeated.”
In a way, this is simply another manifestation of the age-old phenomenon that voters hate Congress, but love their Congressman. In this case, voters hate pork-barrel spending, but love a Congressman who attends to district needs. I suspect that the best one can hope for is the system that porkbusters and their supporters in Congress are pushing for: full disclosure of who is responsible for an earmark, and as many procedural hurdles as possible to ensure that they're not super-easy to secure.
Polls show that Taylor trails by 4 percentage points in this race.

Back to the top.


...read complete post at The Influence Peddler

Posted by from the blogosphere at 06:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at Tulsa Topics:

Sometimes storms come on quickly and do their damage and all that is left after the storm passes is the cleanup. My parents live close to the fairgrounds and there is still evidence in the form of fallen trees and broken branches in the neighborhood. The microburst that hit the area for mere minutes caused tremendous damage.

The big storm that is brewing in Tulsa's future will be man made. This storm is the South Tulsa Bridge. From today's Tulsa Whirled:

The Bixby City Council on Monday unanimously accepted "beneficiary interest" in the Arkansas River Bridge Authority. Bixby will join Jenks, which also plans to accept interest in the bridge, to form a public trust.Combining forces to take on Tulsa and forming their prospective armies. I think it's time we put up some watch posts on the other three sides of Tulsa just in case Sand Springs, Owasso and Broken Arrow decide they'd like some "beneficiary interest" as well.

Tulsa's suburban children have grown up over the years and it appears they are announcing their "coming out" party with authority. After all the motherly support Tulsa has given them via cheap water, sporting good store deals, subsidies to various employers that benefit the suburbs, etc., now they want more.

Just like the downtown arena that was nixed twice before taken county wide with V2025, our neighbors to the South are learning that if at first you don't succeed, try try again. The lesson here folks would be that nothing is unobtainable when you pump enough money, politicians, lawyers, and our local monopolistic rag into the equation.

Take for instance this passage from today's article:

City of Tulsa legal experts also assert that Bixby and Jenks cannot condemn the Tulsa land that would be needed for the north end of the bridge. But Bixby and Jenks say they can seize the land by eminent domain, if necessary. All three entities cite Supreme Court case law to back their claims.Eminent domain.... now there's a word that will give a homeowner night sweats.

Peering into my cloudy crystal ball. Here's how this will play out:
All sides will begin to "lawyer up."

Campaign contributions from PAC's will abound. This will buy a sympathetic ear or the proverbial seat at the table

Planners and so-called experts will be hired and re-hired to do many costly studies on the impact of surrounding neighborhoods.

More lawyers will be hired because "their" side has more than "our" side.

Court cases will plug the county court dockets.

A bigger county court house will be built to handle the additional traffic.

Lawyers will be hired to replace those that have died of old age.

More planners and experts will have to completely re-do the previous studies since they have been shelved for so long they are outdated.

Since Tulsa is now a ghost town and the population epicenter is now Jenks, the county court house is demolished in Tulsa and a brand spanking shiny new court house is built between Bixby and Jenks with V2050 money.

The paper continues to editorialize... "Bridge Makes Sense" even though today's vehicles run off fuel cells that control a magnetic plasma drive and makes the Hummer the covered wagon of yesteryear.

V2100 earmarks $7.6 billion dollars for lawyer staff and planners for North Jenks bridge.

The Jenks Whirled editorializes.... "Money wasted on North Jenks bridge with destination to no where."

More studies authorized when it's realized that the previous studies got "lost in the move" to the new JNOG (Jenks Nations of Government) facility.

The planets align and ground breaking of the North Jenks bridge finally to begin.

The United Nations stops construction due to an endangered species being found on the South bank of the Arkansas...... the elusive native Tulsan.

Posted by from the blogosphere at 01:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at The Walrus Said:


Homophobia is a word that gets thrown around much, much too often. That's quite a distinction for a five-syllable word; most overused words are, like, totally, well - short.
Its various synonyms are equally overworked: gay-hating, gay-bashing and probably a few others that won't come to me now. I don't deny that homophobia exists - it does. And like any hatred of any class of people, it is repugnant to me. Where I start objecting is when the term "homophobia" enters the conversation as soon as you express any moral objections or concern about homosexuality.
This is unjust. I have real concerns about SUV's, but I don't hate the people who drive them. I'm truly not suvophobic. Hmm, maybe I am. OK, I'm not SUVodriverphobic... Neologisms are obviously not my forte.
My doctor has expressed concern about my weight - she really doesn't think it's good for me. Somehow, I've managed to accept that this is not an indication of deep, fanatical hatred on her part towards overweight people.
But far too often in discussions about homosexuality, any expression at all of the idea that it might not be normal or desirable brands you immediately as homophobic, and you are promptly labelled, boxed, and dismissed. The person you're talking to has concluded that because he knows "A" about you, he automatically knows "B, C, D" and all the way to "Z." And what he knows about you is that you are a hate-filled, intolerant, sign-waving, unthinking fanatic.
Stop and think about it a moment. Doesn't this have all the earmarks of bigotry and prejudice? "Prejudice" means to pre-judge someone. On the basis of a shred of "evidence", the entire case is wrapped up, judged and sentence is served.
Don't try to protest. It won't work. If you try to tell people that you have homosexual acquaintances, colleagues, relatives; that you live and work with them with perfectly amiable relations; that your skin does not crawl when you see them; that you genuinely care for them but are concerned about their lifestyle - well, save your breath. You are too obviously obsessed with hatred to have the right to speak.
You are a victim of bigotry, but there is no tribunal that will accept to hear your case.
Technorati tags: Homosexuality, Bigotry, Prejudice

...read complete post at The Walrus Said

Posted by from the blogosphere at 01:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at WILLY NILLY:


The
Sunlight Foundation
/
Sunlight Labs
have developed a new toy. They want to spread sunshine on all members of Congress. It is neat, you want to know more about sleazy old Ray Lahood, hover of the sun icon and a pop up with links to all things Ray. For instance, this election cycle, the top Contributor to Lahood is the Cassidy Group. No real suprise, Ray gobbling up cash from lobbyists. Followed closely by Caterpillar, who Lahood bragged about getting $75 million in earmarks for. For Caterpillar that is quite a return on the $16,350 out of their PAC.
Maybe you would like to know the lifetime stats on Cassidy and Associates donations to Ray, just click
here
. Just a neat thing that will be useful for a while. Enjoy.


...read complete post at WILLY NILLY

Posted by from the blogosphere at 11:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at MotherJones.com | MoJo Blog - Social Issues and Political Commentary:

In the first of a series of articles on earmarking, the Christian Science Monitor peers into the putrid depths of the congressional pork barrel, 2006 model. Today the paper looks at the infamous "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska, one of 6,371 "bonus projects" inserted in last year's highway bill by lawmakers eager to win points at home, the larger public good be damned.

That's right -- all the bracing talk of reform and self-purification that attended the fall of Jack Abramoff has come to naught: earmarks accounted for a record $29.3 billion in fiscal year 2006.

The connection between earmarking and public disdain for Congress is well established. Less understood, but no less serious (okay, a bit less serious), is the link between pork-barrel spending and the indiscriminate use of mixed metaphors. "Earmarks are like a virus," says Tom Schatz of Citizens Against Government Waste. "They cause a huge amount of wasteful spending." For Sen. Tom Coburn, they are "a gateway drug on the road to spending addiction." And in the view of the Monitor's headline writer, "the rolling pork barrel is picking up speed." Clearly, action is needed before the barrel -- or the pig? -- runs off the road.

Posted by from the blogosphere at 05:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at The Kool Aid Report:


Those who would be happy to force you pay more for the same Minnesota are off their meds:

Minnesota is so poor, it can't eat pork.

Federal funds for Hwy. 53 cannot be used because the state can't match it (Star Tribune, July 24). The state can't match it because it doesn't have the money. It doesn't have the money because our governor irresponsibly refused to consider tax increases to keep Minnesota's infrastructure at serviceable levels.

Whenever you see an accident due to lack of repairs or you are stuck in congestion, a driver on Hwy. 53 can place the blame squarely on the Taxpayers League of Minnesota and Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

C.D. ROMM, MINNEAPOLIS.
And for good measure, let's throw in an excerpt from another drool puddle on the same page:

I probably have nothing in common with the 200 "wealthy" referenced by William Cooper and Michael Wigley in their July 23 Opinion Exchange column, "Tax cuts are benefiting our economy." But after reading their argument for not raising taxes on Minnesotans earning $450,000 or more, I know I have nothing in common with those two rich guys.

They talked about "waste" -- yet gave no examples. Losing $50 million in federal funding for a road project because the Minnesota Department of Transportation remains underfunded is waste.
No, shitball it's not waste. Let me show you what is.
Here is the lede from the Highway 53 story to which Slapnuts A and Slapnuts B refer (emphasis mine):

Courtesy of U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, Minnesota got $50 million last year to widen a rural road in the far north of the state. The so-called congressional "earmark" for Hwy. 53, included in a national transportation bill loaded with pet projects, was the largest ever received by the state.
The earmark was to w-i-d-e-n the highway, or in other words, to increase the road's capacity.
Here is a map of Minnesota's portion Hwy 53:

As you can see, the route in question begins in Duluth, goes through the Middle of Nowhere, and terminates in Another Part of the Middle of Nowhere (some of you might know the latter by its more common name: "Canada").
I recall a certain Congressman from Alaska getting a ton of shit for bringing home a pile of federal money to pay for a "bridge to nowhere." Remember that?
Oh, but Oberstar is a Democrat, so his glorious waste of money on a Road to Nowhere ("Ozzy Osbourne and The Talking Heads can teach us a lot about...") is OK.
No this is not wasteful. It's called "having priorities". Some others might call it "not spending money on useless shit." I can think of dozens of road projects more worthwhile than this one - a project that'll only help a bunch of hosers get to that toddlin' town of Duluth a little faster.
And the dumbasses who wrote that thought-free garbage excerpted above should note that much of the $50 million of federal cash that's being saved by not pandering to the 15 or so Duluth-bound Cannucks is being funded by the very same people who these jerkoffs expect to take it up the butt to the tune of $50 million more.


...read complete post at The Kool Aid Report

Posted by from the blogosphere at 01:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted at Daily Kos: State of the Nation:

Funny how Republicans have become the party of Big Government Spending, and none more so at this time than Conrad Burns, desperate for help in his gambit to stay in power.

Even as he touts his Capitol clout back home, Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) is having trouble moving the spending bill he oversees as chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior.

Burns, one of the most politically vulnerable Senate incumbents, has been telling voters how much money he has delivered to the state. But the interior spending bill, including about $60 million he earmarked for Montana, looks like a bad bet to see Senate floor action before voters go to the polls in November.

The interior bill and the other domestic spending bills face a whole set of hurdles in the Senate, where conservative Republicans see them as a low priority. But the competing needs of securing money for his home state and avoiding pitfalls on the floor create an unusually tricky election-year paradigm for Burns.

There are pros and cons to bringing it to the floor and to holding it back, and Republican leaders have not foreclosed the possibility of considering it after the August recess.

But GOP leaders want to spare Burns the uncertainty of managing a bill on the floor as Democrats look to score political points before the election, according to appropriations aides.

The floor can be unpredictable, and Burns could be forced into tough votes on a bill he wrote if the measure were to make it there.

In addition to possible Democratic amendments, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has made clear that he intends to continue his war on earmarks during consideration of domestic spending bills, creating a potential nightmare for the manager of any of appropriations measure.

Meanwhile, at least two more debates are scheduled in this race -- September 10 in Hamilton, and October 17 in Billings. This is great news, considering that Tester got a huge credibility boost from his incredible performance at the first debate.

 

Update: EJ Dionne's column, interesting enough, is about Republicans bragging about their pork.

What's interesting is the extent to which Allen and other Republican incumbents around the country are talking up how they brought big government's largess to their constituents.

It doesn't matter that they claim to be against that very same big government. Faced this year with a choice between running on their party's record and delivering pork, they'll take pork.

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Posted at Earmarks in Early Modern Culture:

I don’t know about your summers, but here in The Netherlands we are experiencing a stifling heat wave. July is set to become the hottest month in the history of Dutch metereology. I just took a short break from editing my dissertation after lunch, lingering in the small shaded courtyard of our university building with [...]]]>

...read complete post at Earmarks in Early Modern Culture

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Posted at Three Pound Universe:

Business as usual. It's still the same old story- to the victor goes the spoils. Pork barrel politics is here to stay. Wish it weren't- but we don't live in a perfect world.

On Capitol Hill, the rolling pork barrel is picking up speed

"WASHINGTON - Back in 1987, Congress presented President Reagan with its transportation funding bill - and he vetoed it. Lawmakers, he said, had inserted too many bonus projects for their home districts - 152 of them. Last year's highway bill designated 6,371 such projects, including the now-famous 'bridge to nowhere' in Alaska.
Congress overrode that Reagan veto in 1987, and it hasn't looked back since. Almost 20 years later, the practice of targeting spending to specific projects - known inside the Beltway as earmarks - is ingrained in Capitol Hill culture."


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Posted at Minnesota Politics:


Once again, road projects are being delayed because MnDOT doesn't have any money. This time, it's the expansion of U.S. 53 in northern Minnesota, which is getting $50 million in federal money due to an earmark from Jim Oberstar. That money can't be used, however, until the state comes up with its share, and given how underfunded MnDOT is, that's not going to happen until 2012 at the earliest.
First of all, congressional earmarks, otherwise known as pork, are evil and should be done away with. This is no different than the "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska. Yes, I know that highway 53 needs to be expanded for safety reasons, but lots of highways in Minnesota need to be expanded for those same reasons, and MnDOT is in a far better position to decide what is a priority and what isn't. Pork projects may get votes, but they are not good government.
That said, once again we see clear evidence that MnDOT needs more money. Not credit card spending, not cutting of maintenance to build roads, but more money. Period. The legislature last year passed a bill to increase the gas tax for the first time in almost twenty years, and Governor Pawlenty vetoed it, as we are all well aware. Thank you, governor, for delaying yet another project.


...read complete post at Minnesota Politics

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Posted at This Fucking War:

California Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham traded military contracts for $2.4 million in antiques, cash, and other booty. He is now in jail, but his case exposed a world of bribery, booze, and broads that reaches into the Pentagon, the C.I.A., and Congress. Washington is wondering: Who's next?
By JUDY BACHRACH

The corruption of Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a powerful California Republican, was, as the U.S. Attorney's Office maintains, historically "unparalleled"—an astonishing statement coming in the wake of the Abramoff scandal. A former Vietnam naval pilot who was awarded two Silver Stars and a Purple Heart, Cunningham, now 64, appropriated John Wayne's nickname and first ran for the House with the slogan "A congressman we can be proud of." Indeed, from the moment he arrived in Washington, in 1991, he made it his business to seem larger than life, telling people that his wartime heroics had inspired episodes in the movie Top Gun. His military service and expertise eventually earned him a place on the defense-appropriations subcommittee, with vast sway over the military budget, as well as on the intelligence committee, which oversees the C.I.A. and other spy agencies. Ever ready to defend the integrity of the armed forces, as he saw it, Duke excoriated Democrats who wanted to cut the defense budget, calling them the same people "who would put homos in the military."

But in November, Cunningham's heroic image came crashing down, and his swagger evaporated when he pleaded guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors in exchange for pressuring the Pentagon to buy their products and services. The government believes he was bribed chiefly by two men, identified in court documents as "co-conspirator No. 1" and "co-conspirator No. 2," now known to be Brent Wilkes and his protégé Mitchell Wade. (Wilkes has vigorously denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crimes in this case.) The products they hawked—computer software to scan and convert military maps, drawings, and documents into digital format—lacked glamour, perhaps, but they made the two entrepreneurs and Cunningham wealthy, arrogant, and even reckless, courtesy of a compliant Pentagon. Wilkes's two dozen or so firms, in California and Virginia, raked in $100 million over the last decade, while Wade's Washington-based MZM Inc. has gotten $150 million since 2002.

According to prosecutors, Wilkes and Wade generously remunerated Duke Cunningham for steering government business their way. Wilkes, prosecutors allege, gave Cunningham more than $600,000 in bribes, including two checks totaling $100,000 and $525,000 to pay off a mortgage. (Wilkes, through his attorney, denies these allegations.) In February, Wade pleaded guilty to bribing Cunningham with over $1 million—but he operated with more panache, indulging Cunningham's taste for outsize antiques. The trove he offered included Persian and Indian rugs, sleek Louis-Philippe and Restoration commodes, a $24,000 Victorian china hutch, leaded-glass cabinets, and silver candlesticks worth $5,600. "Duke liked his antiques big and he liked them expensive," explains a Maryland antiques dealer, who despaired of his taste. (Duke got other gifts as well: a secondhand Rolls-Royce and the use of Wade's 42-foot boat, renamed the Duke-Stir.)

The truth is no one knows if the $2.4 million in bribes Cunningham has admitted taking in his guilty plea is the final total. Duke's been at it for some time. In fact, right up to the end, the Maryland antiques dealer tells me, Cunningham was trying to get her to put one of his valuable 19th-century armoires in storage, "anywhere, he didn't care where," as long as it was far from the government's prying eyes. "Very immature, thinking the rules of the game didn't apply to him," the dealer says. But why should they? For years he had been running the game. (Cunningham's attorney, K. Lee Blalack II, refuses to comment on the substance of the case.)

In March, Cunningham was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison—the harshest sentence ever received by an ex-congressman for corruption. But the investigations are far from over, and allegations continue to surface implicating other legislators and government officials. California Republican congressman Jerry Lewis, head of the House committee on appropriations, is currently being investigated. So is Wilkes's best friend from high-school days, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who was until recently No. 3 at the C.I.A., and who is alleged to have accepted lavish favors from Wilkes—a trip to a Honolulu estate, for instance, renting for $50,000 per week—in exchange for arranging lucrative C.I.A. contracts for his friend. (Wilkes, Lewis, and Foggo have denied any wrongdoing.) Republican congresswoman and senatorial candidate Katherine Harris, of Florida, a source familiar with her activities tells me, is also being scrutinized for her dealings with Wade—in particular, for receiving $32,000 in illegal campaign donations, and for a lavish dinner she enjoyed last year for which he paid more than $3,300. (Harris says that she did not know the donations were illegal and has since given the money to charity.) In addition, Wade, who is cooperating with the authorities, has told the F.B.I. that Wilkes kept hospitality suites in the Watergate Hotel and Westin Grand in order to entertain legislators and government officials with evenings of poker, cigars, and, on occasion, for Cunningham, prostitutes.

Tens of thousands of pages of congressional documents going as far back as 1997 have been demanded by the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego. The C.I.A., Pentagon, I.R.S., and F.B.I. are conducting investigations, and at least three congressional committees are cooperating in hopelessly tardy fashion. "We are scrubbing" is how a staffer on the intelligence committee puts it. Washington is unraveling.

"What these revelations provide is a window into Babylon or the last stages of Rome," explains a source with knowledge of the multiple ongoing investigations. "Many felonies went undetected because in the Defense Department a lot goes on in secret, and these crimes grew in the shadow of both 9/11 and one-party rule—with little scrutiny. So what you're looking at is a world where money, secrecy, sex, and indulgence were all in play. Where everyone is guilty of something."

In June 2004—in the middle of the Caucus Room, a crowded Washington restaurant—Cunningham accepted a fat envelope from Wade. "What's in it?" asked David Heil, Cunningham's chief of staff. Money to repair the Duke-Stir, $6,500 in cash, Cunningham told him. Several months later the aide, who had long been concerned about his boss's misdeeds—so much so that he personally checked Cunningham's real-estate records in California—begged Cunningham to resign. "This is stupid! It's insane!" the aide supposedly said. "I would bet my own house this whole thing will come out." Cunningham listened to this lecture, silent and shamefaced, but he didn't resign. Instead, his chief of staff did.

Heil's prediction came true when Marcus Stern, of the Copley News Service, broke a story last spring in The San Diego Union-Tribune about a very profitable real-estate transaction Duke made in 2003. That year the congressman bought a new, $2.6 million house in Rancho Santa Fe, a bucolic area of estates in the northwestern part of his district, in San Diego County. To do so he sold his old house, in Del Mar, to Wade for $1.675 million. This was $700,000 more than it was worth. In fact, Wade, who never moved into the house, sold it for that much less nine months later.

Subsequent stories about Cunningham in The San Diego Union-Tribune (which shared a 2006 Pulitzer Prize with the Copley News Service for superb reporting on the Cunningham scandal) were followed by intense interest in the congressman by the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego. Last year, this caused him to sink into a depression that included thoughts of suicide. He wasn't wholly to blame for his troubles, Cunningham later told Saul Faerstein, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist. He'd been led astray, his "moral and religious values" perverted by unwholesome friends. "He recognizes now that Wade and others in Washington were part of a culture of corruption," wrote Faerstein, an expert for the defense in the O. J. Simpson trial, who was hired by Cunningham's lawyer in an effort to obtain a lighter sentence for his client. "He is troubled he didn't see the motives of the people he trusted." In fact, Faerstein wrote to the court, he found Cunningham "naïve in some ways, always trying to see the best qualities in people."

Do you know that Cunningham wrote a "bribe menu," detailing how many hundreds of thousands he should be paid for defense contracts, right under the bald eagle on his House of Representatives stationery? I ask the psychiatrist. Did Duke tell you he tried to inveigle innocent people into covering up his moneymaking schemes? "That was certainly quite damning…. But I never heard about that until later," says the psychiatrist. "I asked Cunningham's lawyer, 'Why didn't you provide me with that information?' They told me they gave me what I needed…. I am not very happy I didn't know all the facts." (Blalack says, "We made available to Dr. Faerstein all of the evidence that was in our possession.")

So, even as he was pleading guilty, Duke wasn't straight with you? I ask. "No," says Faerstein. "If I'd known about those things, I would have seen he was not so much influenced by the culture of corruption as part of the culture of corruption."

When he tearfully informed the psychiatrist that he "came to Washington to do good" and that for most of his tenure he "did good and was not involved in illegal or unethical conduct," Cunningham probably believed every syllable. The son of a Union Oil truckdriver, he was born in Los Angeles and grew up in rural Missouri, where, according to Faerstein's psychiatric evaluation, he was "raised with traditional values," doing farm work, such as forking hay and driving tractors. As a young man, Cunningham worked as a teacher and swimming coach. He married twice, the first time in his senior year of college to Susan Albrecht. They adopted a son, Todd, now 37, who in 1997 was arrested for possession with intent to distribute 400 pounds of marijuana. Cunningham and Susan were divorced in 1973. A year later he married his current wife, Nancy. The couple has two daughters, April, 27, and Carrie, 24. Both Cunningham families appear to have suffered from Duke's long absences. In court for Todd's marijuana sentencing, he admitted he had spent only a month a year with his son after he and his wife divorced, and April Cunningham, now a librarian, recently declared in court papers, "My father was often not with my family throughout my childhood."

In 1967, Cunningham joined the navy, where he became a fighter pilot. It was Vietnam, where he flew an F-4 Phantom, that changed his life and ambitions. In May 1972, he shot down five North Vietnamese MiGs to become the war's first "ace." Around this time he took the pilot call sign "Duke." It was a name he kept on his return to civilian life, in 1987. Faerstein believes it symbolizes both his strength and his undoing: "'Duke' became an outsized personification of Randall Cunningham," Faerstein wrote. "It is possible that his extraordinary deeds in the service planted a subconscious sense of entitlement."

That "outsized personification" would mark every step of Cunningham's political career. Two years after his election to Congress he announced that the liberal leadership of the House should be "lined up and shot." During a debate on Bosnia, he engaged in a physical scuffle (broken up by Capitol police) with Representative James Moran, a Virginia Democrat. In 1997, when Cunningham's suspicious enthusiasm for projects going to Brent Wilkes's companies was noted by the press, the congressman stated, "I'm on the side of the angels here." Anyone who questioned his intentions, said Duke, can "go to hell."

Cunningham is believed to have been introduced to Wilkes, now 51, in the early 90s by Congressman Bill Lowery (whose seat Cunningham would fill after Lowery and his wife were discovered to have written 300 bad checks on the House bank). Wilkes's father, like Cunningham a naval pilot, was killed in a 1959 accident while taking off from an aircraft carrier. Wilkes grew up poor, raised by his widowed mother near a San Diego naval base. At San Diego State University, he roomed with his high-school football buddy Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, and both were active in the Young Republicans, as was Lowery. After graduation, Wilkes moved to Washington, D.C., where, I am told, he accompanied groups of congressmen, including Lowery, to fly down to Central America to hang out with Dusty Foggo, by then a C.I.A. agent who was working with the contras to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Every time Wilkes was asked by Tom Casey, a California defense contractor who would eventually work with him, how he got to be so friendly with Lowery and other congressmen, the answer was always the same, Casey tells me: "Honduras." Specifically, Casey adds, Wilkes described sexual encounters between congressmen and women from Honduran villages. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports similar recollections, attributing them to three of Wilkes's former friends. (Through his attorney Nancy Luque, Wilkes denies having ever traveled to Honduras with congressmen. Lowery's lawyer, Lanny Breuer, says that when his client was a congressman he did indeed go "on a couple of trips with Wilkes to Central America." However, he adds, Lowery "absolutely denies being involved with any women with Wilkes." Foggo's attorney says that Foggo never met congressmen in Honduras.)

By the early 1990s, Wilkes had returned to California, where he was "beyond broke," recalls Casey. "He lived in a rented house and carpooled in a Chevy Cavalier." It was at this point that Wilkes began to work with Casey at Audre, Inc., a Rancho Bernardo producer of automated document-conversion systems (with defense applications). Casey, the firm's founder and C.E.O., says he paid him about $90,000 a year to market the product and to lobby Washington officials and legislators. On trips to Washington, Casey recalls, Wilkes was able to usher him into the presence of important members of the armed-services and appropriations committees, including, most notably, Lowery and Lowery's closest friend on the latter, fellow California Republican Jerry Lewis, now 71. The genteel Lewis and the earthy Lowery reportedly loved to dine and even vacation together. "Everyone on the defense committee always works cooperatively," says Casey, who realized pretty quickly that no money came his way without their support. "It was team play, and they emphasized that to me constantly."

Wilkes also introduced Casey to Dusty Foggo, who often passed through Washington. Around 1994, during a visit to a Washington strip club, Casey says, Foggo wore a gun in a shoulder holster and flashed his identification at the club doorman. He was promptly seated by the stage. "Foggo sits there the whole night telling me how he likes to fuck girls in the ass," Casey recalls. "He sees a girl there, he jabs you and says, 'She's ready to go—let's double-team her.' The weirdest combination of sex and domination! And Wilkes, he's just laughing the whole time." (Through an attorney, Foggo says that this incident never happened. According to his lawyer, Wilkes denies visiting strip clubs in adulthood.)

Casey says that Wilkes soon felt cocky enough to ask him for $148,000 a month for a Washington office, with complete discretionary control of funds. He also wanted to rent hotel "hospitality suites" for congressmen, the idea being, as Casey recalls, "these are fun-loving guys, they get tired of being in an office all day, and yet they have to be in proximity of the Capitol to vote. So we'll have booze and bedrooms for them to sleep in." Casey and two former Audre executives say that this plan was vetoed, as was, says Casey, the two million Audre share options Wilkes had requested. (Wilkes's attorney responds: "There may have been a discussion about creating [an office]. The funds would have been for technical and program-management people…. Audre offered Wilkes stock as an incentive plan, but he never received any." And "there is no truth" to the hospitality-suite allegation. She adds, "Nothing Casey says can be relied upon.… He apparently harbors ill will towards Wilkes for leaving Audre behind to become successful.")

Wilkes left Audre and in 1995 launched a competing firm, ADCS. Soon he started giving money to Cunningham's campaign and PAC. It didn't take long to get the desired results, especially after Cunningham obtained a seat on the defense-appropriations subcommittee, in 1997. In July 1999, the government says, Wilkes wrote for Cunningham's benefit a memo helpfully entitled "Talking Points," a copy of which is in court documents. Printed in capital letters, the memo is written in a tone edged with all the righteous rage felt by the author. "WE NEED $10 M[ILLION] MORE IMMEDIATELY," Cunningham was to instruct a Pentagon official. "THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT AND IF YOU CANNOT RESOLVE THIS, OTHERS WILL BE CALLING ALSO." (Wilkes's attorney would not comment.) It is unknown if any calls were made, but Cunningham and Lewis held a joint press conference in Washington to announce they were cutting nearly $2 billion from the F-22 Raptor fighter-jet program, which both had initially supported. Shortly thereafter, $5 million more was allocated by the military for Wilkes's company, and in October most of the F-22 money was restored. (Through his spokesman, Lewis says he was unaware of Cunningham's efforts to secure funding for ADCS.)

"The enabler in this story is the Pentagon," explains someone familiar with the investigation. "To get what it wants—the F-22, say, or better intelligence—it goes along and funds the shoddy stuff Cunningham and [Wilkes] want. It's thinking, 'Cunningham will fund the Taj Mahal of intelligence for us as long as we take care of his friends.'"

Within a year of his victorious fight with the Pentagon, Cunningham claims, he received $100,000 from Wilkes. Gone were the days when Wilkes was cash-strapped. In 1999 he and his wife, Regina, bought a $1.4 million gated home with a tennis court and pool in a suburb of San Diego. In 2003 he built an $11 million glass office building in Poway, 20 miles north of San Diego, as his business headquarters. He and Regina donated generously to his alma mater, San Diego State University, so much that until recently it was rumored that its College of Business Administration was going to name itself after him. "Boom shaka-laka!" Wilkes used to shout in his more bouyant moments, at the height of his prosperity, or, alternatively, "Yeah, baby!"

In 2000, Wilkes and ADCS became "too hot to deal with," a source familiar with the situation tells me. A Pentagon official believed they had fraudulently billed $750,000 for unfinished work scanning maps of the Panama Canal Zone. (Wilkes's lawyer declares, "If there was any fraud, Wilkes was unaware of it because he was only a subcontractor and not doing the billing.") At this point, Wilkes hired "co-conspirator No. 2," Mitchell Wade, who would act for him in winning new government contracts. Wade, now 47, was a former Pentagon intelligence official with formidable contacts in the military, lavish tastes, and—most important—a profound understanding of the "black world" of classified intelligence, which Wilkes didn't know much about. A graduate of George Washington University, Wade had been a Middle East desk officer at the Pentagon during Desert Storm and was awarded a Desert Storm medal. In 1993, he had set up the defense contracting firm MZM—a name based on the first names of his children, Matthew, Zachary, and Morgan—and although the company posted no revenue for its first six years, it flourished after that.

At first, Wade studied Wilkes carefully: "Everything he learned, he learned from Wilkes," says a friend, and the two worked together closely. In 2004, Cunningham appropriated nearly $6 million for MZM's data-storage systems, which were worth "substantially less," prosecutors claim. They were actually delivered by Wilkes's ADCS, which ended up with $4.8 million of the total.

However, after a few years as associates, Wade and Wilkes experienced a growing disaffection with each other. "Wade was carrying the subcontracts for Wilkes, and taking the political heat," I am told by a source close to Wade. In time Wade would outstrip his mentor. He threw massive parties at Washington's Four Seasons Hotel, where, one guest estimates, "it cost $200 a person: filet mignon, alcohol, champagne. He was actually smart about the image he projected."

Soon, Wade developed his own relationship with Cunningham. "Mitch, I'm going to make you somebody," Cunningham promised in November 2001, after selecting $12,000 worth of antiques paid for by his new friend, and he was true to his word: Wade did become somebody. He was able to buy a $3 million house in Washington's prized Kalorama area. His company, MZM, operated out of a beautiful four-story Victorian house on Dupont Circle, packed with 19th-century partners desks and ruby-colored Oriental rugs.

Wade paid lofty salaries—$105,000 for an entry-level job, in one case, with a promise to pay off graduate-school debts at $6,000 a year. "I told my wife it was just like John Grisham's novel The Firm," recalls one former employee. "Everything was compartmentalized, and if it wasn't your business, you had no business knowing about it."

"Absolutely, it was very secretive," Cynthia Bruno Wynkoop, who worked at MZM from 2001 until 2004, tells me. In fact, a lot of the work done by the firm was very secretive as well. Wynkoop, a lawyer, was hired out to work in Arlington, Virginia, on the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), with computer systems processing specific data. "Yes, you could call it data mining," she says.

She was troubled by her boss, though. "Of course, I was pressured to give money to certain candidates—everyone was," says Wynkoop. "[North Carolina Republican senator] Elizabeth Dole and [Virginia Republican] representative Virgil Goode—they were highly recommended." (Goode's rural district is the site of an MZM facility.) "Wade would make remarks and let you know." She says she ended up giving $1,000 to the company PAC and $500 to each candidate. Indeed, Wade would eventually inform prosecutors, he not only pressured employees to make political contributions, in violation of federal election laws, but also illegally repaid some—in cash.

Two years ago, Katherine Harris (best known as the Florida secretary of state who presided over the agonizing 2000 presidential recount, and now more obliquely known in court papers as "Rep. B") went to dinner with Wade—whom she had met through Cunningham—and subsequently got a stack of $2,000 checks for her campaign signed by his employees. Many were written on the same day. Harris would later say she had hardly any idea why—maybe they just liked her politics. (In all, Wade gave her $32,000 in illegal contributions.)

But, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Wade told Harris exactly what he wanted over the dinner, for which he paid $2,800 at Citronelle, an elegant Washington restaurant: lots of federal funding to build a $10 million counter-intelligence facility in her Florida district. They also discussed the possibility of his throwing her a fund-raiser. In vain did Ed Rollins, who was then Harris's campaign strategist, warn the congresswoman (who is not allowed to receive gifts exceeding $50) that a $2,800 dinner and a fund-raiser might be interpreted as a shady quid pro quo for snagging millions of dollars for her benefactor. "Mitch, what a special evening! The best dinner I have ever enjoyed in Washington…. Please let me know if I can ever be of assistance," a thrilled Harris wrote by hand in a letter given to me by a former MZM employee. (After insisting she had "reimbursed" the restaurant for the meal, Harris switched positions recently, saying, "I have donated to a local Florida charity $100, which will more than adequately compensate for the cost of my beverage and appetizer.")

In 2005, Harris had a second dinner with Wade, for which, a friend of his tells me, he paid more than $3,300, and a few months later a Harris aide named Mona Tate Yost was hired by MZM. Although a Harris spokeswoman initially said Yost's contacts with her old congressional office were "purely on a social level," this too turned out to be false. An e-mail I have seen, written in 2005, indicates Yost had promised to approach a top Harris staffer "with a meeting." She was working on an MZM draft of a legislative-funding proposal that would, Wade hoped, underwrite his $10 million counter-intelligence facility. (Yost didn't return phone calls for comment.) An MZM employee, Kay Coles James, e-mailed the company's draft to Harris's office, which ultimately submitted it to the appropriations committee, with some of the language intact. (Possibly because Harris applied for the funding late and the request was ill-written, the money never was allocated. "I think Mitch made a mistake in trying to bribe Harris," a Capitol Hill source says, chuckling. "She's so incompetent she can't be bribed.")

It was Duke Cunningham, however, who was foremost in the thoughts of Wade's employees. The firm honored him with fund-raisers, where some found him a bombastic, boastful fellow, according to an ex-employee. "At one point, Mitch made the comment about Cunningham, 'I own him,'" recalls Richard Peze, an MZM vice president until 2003. "Here's the point I tried to make to Wade. I thought we were putting too much faith in Cunningham…. If the company was going to be successful, we had to stop relying on Wade's benefactors in Congress." Another thing bothered Peze. "I know of two instances where I believe hours were billed to the government that weren't being worked," he says, adding that last summer he talked to Pentagon investigators about his concerns.

But Wade was flying high. Indeed, for a man who was usually so secretive, he could be amazingly indiscreet. "Where's your Rolls-Royce?" one employee asked him. "Duke's driving it now—it's parked in the congressional parking lot," Wade answered. Wynkoop recalls Wade telling her he had bought the yacht, the Duke-Stir, which Cunningham was living on. "I was sitting with Mitch in the Capital Grille restaurant when he phones Duke at midnight! Who ever calls a congressman at midnight?" asks Wynkoop. "It was all very bizarre and very surreal."

Another bizarre circumstance: For a modest $140,000, I learn from the Federal Procurement Data System, MZM was hired to provide computer programming for the Executive Office of the President—a remarkable coup for Wade. One month later he paid exactly $140,000 for the Duke-Stir, which was moved to Cunningham's boatslip. "I knew then that somebody was going to go to jail for that," says a party to the sale. "Duke looked at the boat, and Wade bought it—all in one day. Then they got on the boat and floated away."

Cunningham was not shy about detailing his desires. Above the word "Duke" on his congressional stationery he scrawled the number 16, then the letters BT for "boat," then 140. This meant, his friend Wade later acknowledged to prosecutors, that in return for the congressman's use of the $140,000 boat Wade would get a $16 million contract. For another $50,000, Wade would get a $17 million contract—and so on.

After the news story about the sale of his Del Mar house broke, Cunningham tried to get others to cover his tracks. He called Elizabeth Todd, a local real-estate agent, and pressured her to fax him a letter claiming that 2004 was a buyers' market, a request with which Todd only reluctantly complied, since she knew it to be inaccurate. Next, he wrote a letter to Wade in which, after professing amazement at the low resale price of his former home, he offered to pay the $700,000 difference—but never did. Later that same month, he sent a $16,500 check to a dealer from whom Wade had purchased a few Oriental rugs for him. Along with the money came a handwritten note explaining that he had tried to send the dealer the check earlier, but had misaddressed the envelope. Nor was that the end of his machinations. Last July Duke phoned the Maryland antiques dealer he and Wade had patronized at least half a dozen times. Anxiously, he pleaded with her to recall that he had quietly slipped $35,000 in cash to Wade as compensation for the lavish purchases. "I never saw it, and believe me, $35,000 in cash I would remember!" the dealer tells me.

When the distraught Cunningham called her yet again—this time right before Thanksgiving, just days before he tearfully pleaded guilty—to get the dealer to put his Victorian armoire in storage, a store employee put Cunningham on speakerphone. "What's going on? Am I being taped?" the congressman demanded to know. "Has anyone 'visited' the antique store recently?"

They had, indeed. Months earlier, two female F.B.I. agents, flashing badges and demanding furniture receipts, had visited the store—because Wade had been talking to authorities since June 2005.

He had plenty to say. In fact, according to The Wall Street Journal, Wade was also talking to investigators about his mentor, Brent Wilkes. Specifically, he claimed that Wilkes used a limousine service to ferry escorts to and from assignations with Cunningham in rented suites at Washington's Watergate Hotel and Westin Grand. Federal agents are investigating to see if any other lawmakers were involved with the escorts. (Luque responds, "Brent Wilkes never arranged prostitutes for anyone.") But a source who knows the details of the scandal suggests this is too simple an equation. "People are missing the completeness of the corruption: It wasn't 'Get me a hooker and I'll get you a defense contract from the appropriations committee,'" he says. "It's 'I will take care of you and meet your every wish, need, and fantasy, and in exchange you are going to take care of me!' Wilkes tried to corrupt completely—it was a real omertà thing. And when Mitch Wade came in later and had his relationship with Cunningham, that too moved into a broader scheme, but it was driven by Duke, asking for more and more. 'Get me the boat, the antiques—then pay the costs to move those antiques to California!'" ("This is an absolutely false picture of Brent Wilkes," who conducted his business properly, says Luque.)

Among those rumored to have attended poker nights at Wilkes's hospitality suites were C.I.A. director Porter Goss (although a spokeswoman strongly denies Goss ever went) and Wilkes's old high-school football buddy and college roommate, Dusty Foggo, by this time No. 3 at the C.I.A. Goss, who became C.I.A. director in 2004, had promoted him to executive director. Agency personnel were stunned. Foggo was "a very obscure guy," explains a former top operative. As it turned out, Foggo's sudden rise was due in part to Brant Bassett, a C.I.A. case officer known as "Nine Fingers" after he lost a digit in a motorcycle accident. It was Bassett who told Goss that Foggo was "a very capable man who's done tremendous things for the agency."

Why Goss would take personnel tips from Bassett is anybody's guess. "From time to time Bassett ran aground on judgment issues," recalls Milt Bearden, a former C.I.A. station chief. In 1989, Bassett was reprimanded for inappropriately carrying a gun to a meeting. That same year he sent a prank letter to a C.I.A. agent stationed in Vienna whom he'd heard the K.G.B. was trying to blackmail. "So Bassett wrote the poor guy in Vienna a letter as if he were his lover, describing their supposedly delightful sex acts," reports a source. What Bassett didn't expect was that Cuban intelligence would get hold of his bawdy letter, at which point they tried to blackmail him.

Foggo, too, had problems with his C.I.A. bosses. He was reportedly accused of insubordination by a female superior, who retired shortly after his 2004 promotion. In Frankfurt, where he had been chief of the C.I.A.'s logistics office, a $2-to-$3-million agency contract to supply bottled water to agency personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan was awarded to Archer Logistics, which had no experience in such matters, but which happened to be owned by Foggo's old high-school friend Wilkes. (A lawyer for Foggo claims his client had no idea the firm belonged to Wilkes.) Like Congress, the C.I.A. is used to doling out huge sums, often with little or no oversight. "Look, the agency guys live in a culture where there's tons of money and a lot of it is cash," explains one intelligence source, "where you say, How much cash are we giving that guy, that asset, and what suitcase was it in? The American Tourister?"

In early May, when Foggo arrived for work at Langley, he was told to relinquish his security pass. On the seventh floor of the C.I.A. all sorts of agents—C.I.A., F.B.I., Defense Department, and I.R.S.—were looking for evidence of possible bribery and corruption. When Goss was nudged from office that same month, General Michael V. Hayden, who replaced him, announced that "amateur hour" was over at the C.I.A. "The prosecutors are really focused on Foggo in every one of his postings," a source who has been interviewed by federal prosecutors tells me.

The investigation of Duke Cunningham has touched any number of his associates. Representative Jerry Lewis is reportedly under investigation for dealings with his friend Lowery, as well as for what the Copley News Service has referred to as "steering earmarks [money for pet projects] to certain entities," but he hasn't been contacted by prosecutors "about anything," says his spokesman.

Unlike the federal authorities, Tom Casey has had an uneasy feeling about Lewis for a long time, he says. In the spring of 1993, Casey says, he received an 11 p.m. phone call from Lewis, who had an urgent message: he wanted Casey to hire Lowery as a lobbyist—with remuneration "worth a fortune." After leaving Congress, Lowery had joined a Washington lobbying firm, which became Copeland Lowery & Jacquez, and ties between him and the stately Lewis remain warm to this day. In the last six years Lowery's firm and its clients gave more than $450,000 to Lewis.

"Tom, let's cut to the chase. I want you to get stock options for Bill Lowery" was how Lewis opened their conversation, Casey recalls. Specifically, Casey adds, Lewis suggested that a very large number of Audre stock options issued in Canada be given to Lowery, but put under other names. Lewis's actual words were "I am going to give you a list of names," says Casey, who declined to go along. That was the last time he and Lewis had a pleasant conversation, Casey says. (Through a spokesman, Lewis acknowledges that he "thinks he remembers meeting Tom Casey," but denies the story. "What's described sounds illegal to me," says the spokesperson. Through his lawyer, Lowery also denies any knowledge of the proposed deal.)

In May, Casey discussed his allegations about Lewis (among others) with federal prosecutors—as the unhappy congressman now knows. Lewis is sick to death of the scandal that started with Cunningham. Gone is the fabled cooperative spirit of the defense-appropriations subcommittee. "I have never been as angry toward anyone in my entire career," Lewis recently said of Duke.

Cunningham is now separated from his wife, Nancy, who used to tell friends the Duke-Stir made her "seasick." In court papers, she refers to him as "Mr. Cunningham." In February she sued the government in an effort to retain her share of the proceeds from the sale of the $2.6 million Rancho Santa Fe house.

The main assets of Wade's firm were sold last year and renamed Athena Innovative Solutions, which is led by James C. King, a retired army lieutenant general. Blogger Justin Rood has claimed that King, along with his wife, Jeneane, gave on one day—March 23, 2004—a total of four checks of $2,000 each to Katherine Harris's campaign.

Polls show that in her Senate campaign Harris is badly trailing the Democratic incumbent, Bill Nelson. In May, Florida governor Jeb Bush announced, "I just don't believe she can win."

In June it was revealed by The New York Times that Lowery's prosperous lobbying firm, which earned $7.4 million last year, was dissolving in the face of the investigations. Two Democrats seceded to form their own firm; three Republicans, including Lowery, will compose another.

Wilkes, I am told by a source who has talked to investigators, is not cooperating. ("He will not plead guilty, because he is not guilty," says Luque. "But he has offered to cooperate.") Incensed and invigorated, prosecutors are poring over his campaign contributions, and the Pentagon's inspector general is scrutinizing his contracts. "Before, they were willing to ignore a lot of things. Now they are concentrating on Wilkes and Foggo," says the source.

Wade's sentencing has been deferred because, federal prosecutors believe, "his cooperation will continue for quite some time." (Wade's lawyer Howard Shapiro refuses to comment on this story.) There were early reports that Cunningham was acting mulish with Pentagon investigators, but his lawyer says, "My client's fate depends on how well he cooperates."

Eight years ago Cunningham was diagnosed with prostate cancer and two months later underwent a radical prostatectomy, but the cancer has recurred. He will live, doctors at Bethesda Naval Hospital estimate, perhaps seven years. A long jail term "would likely be a death sentence," Cunningham's lawyer informed the court. Currently, he is expected to serve seven years—although his sentence may be further reduced if the government is satisfied with his revelations. He is to be told shortly which federal prison will be his new, and perhaps final, home.
Vanity Fair

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Posted at Forward with Ford :: A Student Blog Supporting Harold Ford, Jr. for U.S. Senate:


Senator Frist said this weekend at a fundraiser in Nashville, that his legacy relies "100 percent" on electing another Republican to his Senate seat. I'm not surprised he would say his legacy relies on this considering that his tenure as Majority Leader has been a disaster. He has no major policy victory or reform to point to; in fact, he has hardly been able to get anything passed despite his party's majority. He has been one of the most ineffective Majority Leaders in history.
But more important than the fact that he has no policy victories to point to, Frist has a number of abysmal failures marring his career. As Majority Leader he allowed spending to spiral out of control helped in no small part by his leadership style of bribing each Senator he needed to pass a bill with millions in earmarks until he had a majority. He will be remembered not for bringing the two sides of the aisle together in America's time of need, but for the "nuclear option," an incredible statement of how partisan and ideological Washington and his party have become even in the country's most trying times. As a doctor he has violated codes of conduct in medicine to achieve his political goals, diagnosing Terry Shiavo from a severely edited videotape and lying about HIV saying it could be transmitted through saliva, tears, and sweat. As the nation grappled with terrorism, he allowed our borders to go unsecured and passed an amnesty for illegal immigrants. He presided over the most unethical Congress in American history and is himself under investigation for insider trading. The failure of his leadership is definitely an important reason why Congress' approval rating is at an all time low and Democrats look poised to retake both houses this fall.
It's no surprise that Frist's legacy rests on electing someone else to his Senate seat, because Frist did nothing positive for this country while he occupied the seat. But I think Frist is in for a surprise this fall. His legacy will be torn to shreds and exposed for what it is by a young man named Harold Ford, Jr. who is committed to leading this state and this country back to the right path.


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Posted at Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism:

In my opinion, the salient cause of ineptitude in promotion and in all hiring practices is that, under centralized conditions, fewer and fewer know what is a good job of work. The appearance of competence may count for more than the reality, and it is a lifework to manufacture appearance or, more usually, to adapt to the common expectation. Just as there is reliance on extrinsic motives, there is heavy reliance on extrinsic earmarks of competence: testing, profiles, publications, hearsay among wives, flashy curricula vitae. Yet there is no alternative method of selection. In decentralized conditions, where a man knows what goes on and engages in the whole enterprise, an applicant can present a masterpiece for examination and he has functional peers who can decide whether they want him in the guild.
....What swells the costs in enterprises carried on in the interlocking centralized systems of society, whether commercial, official, or non-profit institutional, are all the factors of organization, procedure, and motivation that are not directly determined to the function and to the desire to perform it.... [Paul Goodman, People or Personnel]

...the social needs exist in the school as "goals of the administration" and this adds many complications: the scholars must be motivated, disciplined, evaluated. But when students who want to be lawyers or doctors find themselves a faculty, or masters with something important to profess attract disciples, the case is simpler: the goals are implicit and there is no problem of motivation. [Paul Goodman, The Community of Scholars]

Atro had once explained to him how this was managed, how the sergeants could give the privates orders, how the lieutenants could give the privates and the sergeants orders, how the captains... and so on and so on up to the generals, who could give everyone else orders and need take them from none, except the commander in chief. Shevek had listened with incredulous disgust. "You call that organization?" he had inquired. "You even call it discipline? But it is neither. It is a coercive mechanism of extraordinary inefficiency--a kind of seventh-millennium steam engine! With such a rigid and fragile structure what could be done that was worth doing?" This had given Atro a chance to argue the worth of warfare as the breeder of courage and manliness and weeder-out of the unfit, but the very line of his argument had forced him to concede the effectiveness of guerrillas, organized from below, self-disciplined. "But that only works when the people think they're fighting for something of their own--you know, their homes, or some notion or other," the old man had said. Shevek had dropped the argument. He now continued it, in the darkening basement among the stacked crates of unlabeled chemicals. He explained to Atro that he now understood why the Army was organized as it was. It was indeed quite necessary. No rational form of organization would serve the purpose. He simply had not understood that the purpose was to enable men with machine guns to kill unarmed men and women easily and in great quantities when told to do so. [Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed]

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Glenn Reynolds

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Posted at Tapscott’s Copy Desk:


Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters points out a fundamental truth - secrecy in government is sometimes necessary but it is always an opportunity for somebody to do something illegal behind closed doors. Disgraced former congressman Randy Cunningham provides vivid demonstration of this truth.
Ed develops this critically important point with his latest post at Heritage's Policy Blog, where he has recently been added to the writing stable. The observation sprang from a CNN report Sunday that Cunningham used the intelligence budget's secrecy to conceal the favors he was giving and getting by having aides insert amendments in bills that would never be made public.
Cunningham resigned from Congress and is now serving a prison term after being convicted of soliciting and accepting bribes from defense contractors.
But a similar effect of secrecy frequently operates on other legislation in Congress:

"Let’s not kid ourselves that only the intelligence budget is vulnerable, however, and for the same reasons. Other appropriations bills and committee reports have the potential for billions of dollars of pork, and usually deliver on their potential.

"That the appropriations bills for Education, Agriculture, Transportation, and so on do not get classified makes their line items no less opaque to the voters. In many instances, earmarks get added without any identification as to the Representative or Senator sponsoring the spending."

And when nobody is looking over their shoulders, Members of Congress will insert thousands of earmarks into spending bills and thereby buy votes, reward friends and financial supporters and otherwise abuse the legislative process. Such corruption is encouraged by secrecy and can only be rooted out with sunshine.
But even when earmark authors are exposed, as is happenning steadily more frequently as more bloggers focus on Congress, the sheer volume of earmarks that remain makes it essential that sunshine be shining light on as much federal spending as possible, not just selected appropriations bills:

"In cases where identification occurs, the sheer volume of such earmarks makes public accountability a joke. That’s why Senator Tom Coburn’s efforts to build transparency into the federal budget should interest anyone who worries about the corrosive effect earmarks have on politics and ethics in Washington."

This fact is why Coburn's proposal has attracted such widespread support in and out of Congress, with co-sponsors in senators Barack Obama, D-IL, Tom Carper, D-DE, John McCain, R-AZ, Hillary Clinton, D-NY, Gregg, R-NH, Allen, R-VA and others. There are also nearly 100 civic and advocacy groups representing the broad expanse of the political spectrum from Left to Right lining up behind the Coburn measure.
You can read Ed's complete post on the issue on the Heritage Policy Blog here. Ed will be posting there frequently, so be sure and blogroll the site.

Pork Busters

Earmarks

Pork

Congress

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Posted at Nunc Pro Lunch:

Every now and then, it's nice to hear somebody come right out and say what's what, in this case the Jerusalem Post:'
Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah exposed his unabashed racism last Thursday when offering his "apologies" to the family of the two Nazareth boys killed by one of his Katyushas a day earlier.
In an interview on Al-Jazeera TV, Nasrallah said he hadn't meant for his rockets to slay Arabs - only Jews. The two small brothers "were inadvertent victims," who, he pronounced, "have joined the ranks of martyrs for the Palestinian cause."
Too little attention was paid to this, both at home and abroad. Nasrallah evinced no compunction in distinguishing between the blood of Arab children and Jewish ones. The murder of seven-year-old Omer Pesachov and his grandmother Yehudit Itzkowitz at Moshav Meron on July 14, for instance, was obviously no cause for apology. Young Omer was fair game and legal prey because he was Jewish.
The fact that Nasrallah regrets killing two Arab children while striving to kill Jewish youngsters should surprise no one.
However, what should take us aback is the fact that such distinctions are even made on our side of the border, and this despite the fact that, as reported on the weekend in The Jerusalem Post, Jewish and Arab children share the very same bomb shelters in mixed cities like Haifa. One would assume that this would enhance the sense of shared destiny in the face of the same menace.
Israel's Arabs and Jews are too intertwined geographically for the rockets to home in exclusively on those their dispatchers earmark for destruction. The danger is nonselective and the shells indiscriminate.
Nevertheless, some Israeli Arabs have been reported watching from Galilee rooftops for incoming Katyushas and cheering when they slam into Jewish villages nearby. This is all too reminiscent of Arabs dancing on the roofs each time one of Saddam's Scuds flew overhead and struck Tel Aviv during the first Gulf War.
Incomprehensibly, even the tragedy in Nazareth couldn't change minds. The immediate knee-jerk reaction of enraged neighbors after the bombing was to blame Israel - not Hizbullah. A slew of spurious charges was unleashed - from claiming that no instructions on safety procedures were issued in Arabic (patently untrue, as anyone who tunes to channel 33 knows) and that the government builds no shelters in Arab homes.
The government, however, is not in the construction business in Jewish homes either. Regulations mandate the addition of security rooms to houses put up since 1992 and this has been in effect in Arab as well as Jewish areas.
The fact is, as Nazareth Deputy Mayor Ali Salem candidly admitted: "Our people didn't expect to be hit. The rockets are only intended for Jews. We told them to stay indoors, we told them to take precautions, but they refused even after the boys were killed, even after the funeral. They disregard all instructions, as if this war isn't their concern."
But that's the least of it. Druse Deputy Knesset Speaker Majallie Whbee (Kadima) noted that "leaders of Arab parties are busy these days inciting Israel's Arabs against the IDF action in Lebanon."
Balad has been disseminating leaflets calling on Israeli Arabs to "demonstrate against the slaughter by Israel of Gazans and Lebanese." Hizbullah terrorists are dubbed "popular resistance fighters."
The Balad circulars predict "Israel won't achieve its aims." Local Arabs are urged to "stand by our nation in Gaza and Lebanon against Israel's beastly aggression."
Whbee added that he "cannot find a single Arab-list MK who'll express any empathy for Israelis currently under fire."

The whole piece lives here.

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