Say Anything Blog

Our CONgress in action: killing citizens for vanity.

Out Here
Rodney G. Graves

Persia delenda est.
Latin: “Persia (modern day Iran) should be destoyed”

I read that Reagan would not sign any bill with more than 40 earmarks??  and now we have bills with 6 thousand???

To go from Reagan (hated earmarks) to GW Bush (apparently loves earmarks)....and of course a congress that up until recently was controlled by the right…

pray tell me who should get poked in the eye over this pile of crap?

Tax and spend is one issue.  Tax-cut and spend is just stupid.

One possible solution to push (while also pushing transparency and a general reduction or elimination of the practice of earmarks) is to require a block grant type approach.  That way the money gets used in each district the way the majority of the people of the district want it used.

I get some satisfaction, at least, from knowing that large percentages of previous years’ earmark money remains unspent.  Perhaps this illustrates a point.  Congress wins two ways:

1) Each congressman gets to boast of pork for his district or state
2) Large amounts of the earmark money aren’t spent, as noted above, thus ensuring that actual spending is less than budgeted spending, allowing congressmen to claim they’re controlling spending.

block grant...the money gets used in each district the way the majority of the people of the district want it used.

Not sure if we need another Robert C. Byrd Center to Study Unnecessary Earmarks in West Virginia, but it might be better than the present system!

Those who think the party or the country, will be “taught a lesson” by handing the levers of power over to the liberals will learn a lesson, but it will be at the expense of our country and her liberties. And there are no guarantees that the party or the country will come out stronger, more conservative or better positioned to win elections against the incumbent liberals.

What?  Someone suffers under the delusion that politicians are for taking care of problems in /or the country, silly people.

They are in a *business* of getting every dollar they can get out of the job for themselves and their friends.  “Power” comes from how much they can get for whom.

We lost people who cared about the countries welfare when it started being a full time highly paid position.

We are in deep trouble folks :-(.

....and of course a congress that up until recently was controlled by the right…

On planet zesoes Congress was controlled by the right.  I am a poor conservative earthling and the Congress on this planet was controlled by Democrats with the assistance of rinos like Olympia Snow, Lincoln Chaffee, Arlen Specter, Chuck (Imbecile) Hegel; the list is endless.  If you come to our planet, please don’t confuse party (Republican or Democrat) with political philosophy (conservative or whacked-out)

Just down the street from me is one of those structually deficent bridges.  I have to cross it twice a day.  The guard rail is stricly for show, with a section missing where two girls in an suv went over the side more than 3 years ago.  They “Fixed” that area with a Jersey barrier, making the bridge even narrower anf still haven’t touched the rest pf it except to further reduce the weight limit to 2 tons.  Several months ago I checked.  The DPW said it’s number 256 on the list to be repaired and this year they fixed 10 bridges but added 23 to the list.  It’s good to see my gas taxes at work.

1) Each congressman gets to boast of pork for his district or state
2) Large amounts of the earmark money aren’t spent, as noted above, thus ensuring that actual spending is less than budgeted spending, allowing congressmen to claim they’re controlling spending.

I hadn’t considered the “shell game” aspect of earmarking. Maybe it would just be best if the Federal government only spent what was needed where it was needed and stopped playing political games! What was I thinking???

Those who think the party or the country, will be “taught a lesson” by handing the levers of power over to the liberals will learn a lesson, but it will be at the expense of our country and her liberties. And there are no guarantees that the party or the country will come out stronger, more conservative or better positioned to win elections against the incumbent liberals.

They had money for a light rail line from M-SP to the Mall of the Americas, but not to fix the bridges? This is something I’ve seen happen here in CO, where in order to get much-needed highway repair money, we had to promise to waste half of it on junk like toy train sets for the benefit of the city of Denver.
Send money to DC and when it passes through their kidneys on its way back to you, it’s just not quite the same.

This argument would follow if it could be shown that a lack of spending, or interference with local priorities due to earmarked spending, was responsible for the bridge collapse. 

Instead what has become apparent is that the engineers themselves recommended against replacement of the bridge, which, with multiple single-points-of-failure due to a lack of proper design (just a dated bridge design), was really the only ideal solution was replacement of the bridge.  This wasn’t a failure of congress, or earmarked spending, it was a failure of technology. 

What I find distasteful about these types of disaster, is it gives everybody a chance to attack their favorite enemies and to bring up the latest cause célèbres.

This argument would follow if it could be shown that a lack of spending, or interference with local priorities due to earmarked spending, was responsible for the bridge collapse

Carrick: I did have my tongue in my cheek when I wrote that “earmarks kill people” (a play on “guns don’t kill people"). My point was that all those blaming Bush or Iraq for a lack of funding could more precisely blame the bumbling micromanagers of Congress for any lack of funding.

Those who think the party or the country, will be “taught a lesson” by handing the levers of power over to the liberals will learn a lesson, but it will be at the expense of our country and her liberties. And there are no guarantees that the party or the country will come out stronger, more conservative or better positioned to win elections against the incumbent liberals.

I guess this makes as much sense, or more, than any other scapegoat.

But if you look at previous “micromanaging” of congress, like Congressional plus-up earmarked funds for the New Orleans levee that weren’t spent, it isn’t always that obvious that the “micromanaging” was a bad thing, or that the ignoring of the earmarked funds was necessarily always a good thing.

In any case, with ear marked funds are brought into legislation via a plus-up by a particular representative of that state at the request of individuals or organizations from that state.  So it really isn’t quite the same as micromanaging. The legitimate bitch about them is in fact the opposition: They are generally brought into law without the “informed consent” of the rest of the legislative body, and are often done with 0% transparency.  This is problematic and should be fixed.

The fact is the alternative, funds that are targeted by Congressional edict (like so many dollars going to, e.g., bridge repair), is de facto micromanaging.  Yet this communist centralized-committe form of management is what everybody seems to be crooning over.  Personally I don’t get it.

BTW, congratulations on the instalaunche!

You notice that Instapundit credited me with the post?  That’s just how good I am.  So good I get credit for other people’s work.

Carrick, I get where you’re coming from, but I reject your argument.  Our politicians are spending billions in earmarks on things like interpretive centers and such while our bridges and roads do without maintenance.

Here in ND we’ve got over a billion dollars in deferred maintenance to our roads and bridges.  Meanwhile, in the last transportation bill, our Senator Kent Conrad secured millions for trails at interpretive centers and bike paths on Indian reservations.

Now those things are nice, but shouldn’t there be priorities?  And wouldn’t those priorities be easier to discern if the entire system were more transparent?

I am not against earmarks per se.  I know full well that without federal money North Dakota couldn’t afford it’s own infrastructure.  Our tax base just isn’t big enough.  But the problem is that far too many of these earmarks are going to the wrong priorities.

The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is… legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay … If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.

Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

You notice that Instapundit credited me with the post?  That’s just how good I am.  So good I get credit for other people’s work.

I think part of the confusion came because you were gracious enough to link to it on the front page.
My sincere hope is that they credit you with all the dumb things I say as well!

Those who think the party or the country, will be “taught a lesson” by handing the levers of power over to the liberals will learn a lesson, but it will be at the expense of our country and her liberties. And there are no guarantees that the party or the country will come out stronger, more conservative or better positioned to win elections against the incumbent liberals.

Rob, that’s a pretty good argument, but do you have the numbers associated with them?  How much maintenance can you do with the money for an interpretive center and the hiking trails for example?

In any case, you have to factor in potential state-revenue from the interpretive center (it creates jobs, potentially attracts more tourist dollars, etc) when you factor all of this together. 

I don’t pretend to understand NDs needs, so I can’t say whether it is well spent or not.  Seems like Conrad isn’t doing his job in getting enough of the right money to the state, if he isn’t getting enough money allocated towards infrastructure maintenance.

In Mississippi’s case, Trent Lott made it a priority to upgrade Mississippi’s road systems, when it became clear that Mississippi had the most dangerous roads in the country. 

So are you saying that Conrad is just an idiot?

So are you saying that Conrad is just an idiot?

Well, yeah.

Here’s my point: People are saying that we need to raise taxes to spend more on infrastructure maintenance.  I’m saying that infrastructure maintenance should be a higher priority than federal money for community centers, interpretive centers, bike paths and improvements made specifically for local companies.

And it’s not just earmarks either, it’s all types of spending.  There is so much government waste out there it’s pathetic, yet the minute it looks like we need to spend more money on infrastructure it’s “raise taxes.”

All I’m saying is that raising taxes isn’t the solution.

The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is… legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay … If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.

Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

Rob:

And it’s not just earmarks either, it’s all types of spending.  There is so much government waste out there it’s pathetic, yet the minute it looks like we need to spend more money on infrastructure it’s “raise taxes.”

Well, that’s my take on it.

Eliminating ear marks won’t fix problems with congress misusing their power.  Making ear marks transparent would leave in place an effective mechanism for targeting economic growth and other state needs.  Done properly (does Congress ever do that?) it is an extension of republicanism.

Frankly, I’m more concerned about legislation that Congress as a whole writes together.  I think we pretty much all agree that the recent Immigration Reform [tm] legislation was one of the worst bill put forward in recent memory.  Adding more people to the decision making doesn’t always fix things, usually it makes it much worse.

But that’s a different thing than saying that Congress as a whole and the American people together have a right to review and criticize poorly thought out spending legislation.  Anyway, the bottom line is you can’t fix stupid by legislation....

Eliminating ear marks won’t fix problems with congress misusing their power.  Making ear marks transparent would leave in place an effective mechanism for targeting economic growth and other state needs.  Done properly (does Congress ever do that?) it is an extension of republicanism.

Agreed.  I’ve never supported eliminating earmarks as a whole, just making the process by which Congress appropriates them as clear as possible.  I think each earmark should have it’s backer’s name clearly attached to it.

I also think it’d be a good idea to get the President more involved in this process by giving him back the power to impound funds (basically the line item veto, but constitutional).  It worked for Thomas Jefferson, I don’t know why it wouldn’t work now.

The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is… legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay … If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.

Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

Related Item:

Two senators want to know why a $1 billion Sept. 11 insurance fund appropriated by Congress to help ailing ground zero workers has not been used to compensate those exposed to harmful substances.

What’d the liberals do with “THAT” one thousand million dollars? ....Spent the same way as the infrastructure bucks?

All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth. —Aristotle ...