The "Bridge to Nowhere", an earmark project with a price tag of a mere $320 million, was the symbol of the Republican culture of corruption. In those days when the mainstream media were fixated on it, making it a centerpiece in their campaign against Sarah Palin -- a campaign which continues, by the way. What did she know and when did she know it?
Well, earmarks aren't so bad anymore. The good people, the Democrats, are in charge so earmarks are good now.
'In the course of explaining his way through this contradiction, Mr. Obama dropped a hard truth of modern American politics: "Individual members of Congress understand their districts best, and they should have the ability to respond to the needs of their communities."
This is the Murtha earmark defense. Rep. John Murtha, Democrat from Johnstown, Pa., is the current holder of what we might call the Ted Stevens Trophy, a rotating award for whichever Member of Congress the press is vilifying most for earmark abuse. Mr. Murtha's stock defense of the budget loot he has earmarked and shipped to Johnstown is that if he didn't do it, bureaucrats who know nothing about the real America would decide where to spend the money. That's what President Obama just said. Murtha himself calls the $787 billion stimulus package the Obama earmarks bill.
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For the longest time, we were able to believe that these corruptions were the inevitable but petty price of politics. But I agree with John Murtha. It isn't petty anymore. It isn't just about amusing "pet projects." The whole system has become an earmark. The politicians have been shaping the system so that more and more people have to buy in to the earmark philosophy -- we pay, they decide -- or get left out.
Barack Obama isn't a reformer. He's the president of Earmark Nation. We are about to enact the Obama federal health-insurance entitlement, which on top of all the other entitlements and their limitless liabilities will require pulling trillions of dollars more into the federal budget. Whatever nominal public good this is supposed to achieve, it means that they, these 535 pols, most of them gerrymandered for life, will decide in perpetuity the details of how to dole it out.'
We are losing our country, if we haven't lost it already. Legalized bribery -- earmarks -- on the grandest scale is rampant. This is what the tea parties are all about -- regaining some semblance of citizen control over government.
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