John McCain And The Politics Of Pork

Senator A Vocal Critic Of Earmarks; Some Say He Doesn't Differentiate Between Good And Bad

(AP)  Earmarks are only pork when someone else is feasting on them. On your plate, they're veggies.

They are the train that takes you to visit Aunt Betty, or the health clinic down the street, or the waste treatment plant that makes your water safer to drink. They're not all bridges to nowhere. They're also bicycle trails to somewhere.

If John McCain is true to his rhetoric in the Republican presidential campaign, he would take a broad ax to spending that voters, upon closer examination, might wish were cut in a more discerning way. The two dozen states voting in presidential primaries Tuesday are home to thousands of projects financed by earmarks, the pet pork that members of Congress carve out of the federal budget.

The Arizona senator's criticism of pork pleases crowds, for no one likes to see tax dollars thrown at silly things. "No earmarks," he says. "Not 10,000. Not one. Zero."

And he got an unintentional assist from President Bush, a convert to the anti-pork cause after he signed a spending law that legislators had stuffed with 10,000 local projects costing more than $10 billion.

A small taste of the earmarked spending sought in 2007 by lawmakers from Super Tuesday states:

In California, $438,000 to Monterey County for gang prevention and intervention.

In Illinois, $5 million for the Red Cross to buy backup generators, cots, shelter trailers, emergency vehicles and more.

In New Haven, Conn., $487,000 to help families and children exposed to violence and trauma.

In Oneonta, N.Y., $243,000 for hospital equipment and facilities.

In St. James, Mo., $412,000 to expand services to abused and neglected children.

In North Dakota, $390,000 to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe for a methamphetamine prevention program.

Earmarks are the refuge of lawmakers who for whatever reason don't like the normal method of setting government spending priorities. Either their pet projects don't make the grade on their merits or they see them as too urgent to wait their turn. And they insist they know their district's priorities better than Washington could.

In any event, earmarks are an end run around the process that is supposed to make sure money is spent based on well-considered value judgments.

Pork haters like McCain say an agency with its eye on the national interest and an objective way of looking at a region's needs should decide on such spending, not members of Congress currying local - sometimes very local - favor.

But McCain's spending plan does not make such distinctions between waste and worthy. In his accounting, if it's an earmark, it's bad and it's gone. He counts on saving all the money now spent on earmarks to help pay for his tax cuts.

McCain has been celebrated for years by watchdog groups cheering his fight against waste, and there's always plenty in the budget to raise eyebrows if not hackles. A $50-million indoor rain forest for Iowa, anyone?

In a Republican campaign debate, McCain ribbed Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who also wants to be president, for helping to secure $1 million for a museum commemorating the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair, a seminal event in hippiedom and the counterculture.

"I'm sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event," he said dryly. "I was tied up at the time." McCain, who was captive in a Vietnam prison when Woodstock happened, turned that line into a campaign ad. The money has been stripped from a spending bill.

Now he talks at every opportunity about the "bridge to nowhere."

He means an Alaska bridge that would have connected the town of Ketchikan to its airport, which is accessible only by ferry, at a cost of close to $400 million by state estimates.

Critics noted the now-shelved project involved building a structure higher than the Brooklyn Bridge and nearly as long as the Golden Gate to an island where 50 people live. Proponents noted the airport on the island serves 200,000 people a year and air traffic plays a vital role in Alaska, where roads are scarce and often unusable because of the weather and terrain.

Earmarks in a literal sense refer to the marks cut on the ears of livestock for centuries to claim ownership. Now, it's more specifically about pigs.

Congress has taken steps to make earmarks more accountable, so members can't secretly slip a pet project into a bill or associated documents.

Clinton has had much company in seeking earmarks. Presidential rival Barack Obama lists dozens on his Senate Web site, among them $3 million to replace 40-year-old projection equipment at a planetarium, $3 million for a Chicago underpass, $750,000 for two water towers and $5 million for the Illinois Red Cross.

Now Bush vows to veto any spending bill that does not cut the number and cost of pet projects by half.

He's having agencies disregard earmarks that members of Congress insert into documents that accompany legislation. But earmarks can continue to go into legislation itself, and surely will.

Evidence that pork can be filling at times was under McCain's nose recently, although he apparently did not know it.

Campaigning in South Carolina, he visited a factory and praised the armored, mine-resistant military vehicles made there to be used in the war.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a McCain ally, noted to an Associated Press reporter that the plant, on a shuttered U.S. naval base, had received money from an earmark.

[geratric1943]

I will vote for Romney. If McCain ultimately gets the nod then I will vote Democrat for the first time. Basically, there is no difference between McCain and the Dems even to the point that they tried to get McCain to switch sides. The only reason he didn''t was because the Dems were not in power at the time.

[jt_lancer]

Pork - a politicians'' best friend.

Pork - the best vote buying scheme around.

The party in power always loves pork, while the party out of power despises it... until they gain control of the purse strings.

Either way, taxpayers are hosed.

Nice job, voters. YOU are the ones that put these clowns in office.

[bdrlnt4rl]

IT IS NOT TOO LATE. BILL GATES FOR PRESIDENT!

[bdrlnt4rl]

BILL GATES FOR PRESIDENT

[pacific_c]

Let''s look at the current congress for voting records.

Senator Clinton has missed 105 votes (23.5%) during the current Congress.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/c001041/

Senator Obama has missed 168 votes (37.7%) during the current Congress.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/o000167/

Senator McCain has missed 251 votes (56.3%) during the current Congress.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/m000303/

[j-whitman]

Who the hell needs another Faith Based Republican ???

47 Million American families are without Health Care Insurance --- Even the best private coverage will cut off babies when the limit is reached ----- Pro-Live my asss.

[terrorislam6]

hey hip hop hussein!!!

tell your brothers and sisters to stop murdering non-muslims

typical of radical retarded fascist nazi terrorislamic jihadist slavers and murders

barack hussein obama(D-KENYA)

"You are all my brothers and sisters," Mr Obama told crowds of excited residents who craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the senator.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5290844.stm

One of Obama Jr''s great grandfathers (several generations back), "Owiny" was said to be a powerful leader of the Luo tribe, which moved into Kenya some 400 years ago.

Sarah Obama, a devout Muslim, was quoted telling Obama Jr. "What your grandfather respected was strength. Discipline. This is also why he rejected the Christian religion, I think. For a brief time he converted [to Christianity], and even changed his name to Johnson. But he could not understand such ideas as mercy towards your enemies, or that this man Jesus could wash away a man''s sins. To your grandfather, this was a foolish sentiment, something to comfort women. And so he converted to Islam-he thought its practices conformed more closely to his beliefs."
http://www.usvetdsp.com/jan08/obama_lou%20tribe.htm

Kenya, Islam and Obama Hussein
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/01/obama-islam-and.html

[cassandragop]

Vote For Mitt
--------------
The ONLY candidate in either
party to openly support:
Gay Rights,
A Woman''s Right To Choose
& Gun Control

[hamiltongrad]

Romney is the very best for our country. For me, his stand on becoming truly energy independent is key. Hillary and Bill have taken millions of $$$ from ARABS for his "LIBARY" and also talking fees and "consultations". Who believes that she would ever protect our interests first ? vs. her money source making them very wealthy ?
As Mitt, said. We dont need to shuffle people around taking different chairs in W. DC. We need his independed, conservative leadership to get us moving in the right direction.
Just as Welfare reformed worked, we can have energy reforms that will make us better. And more.

[taotxzen]

Six Years of a GOP Congress

America is unprepared for a WMD attack.

After all that money - after all that bluster - after all that hubris - after all that fear factor...we''re still no where near safe. This is what the Republicans have achieved. Nothing.

So don''t listen to how great they are at "national security" during this election year. They''re failures. Miserable , unfathomable failures.


Report: U.S. not ready for WMD attack

Commission on National Guard cites troop, equipment, training shortages

The Associated Press
updated 11:44 a.m. PT, Thurs., Jan. 31, 2008
WASHINGTON - The U.S. military isn''t ready for a catastrophic attack on the country, and National Guard forces don''t have the equipment or training they need for the job, a commission charged by Congress reported Thursday.

(cont)

[taotxzen]

(cont)
Even fewer Army National Guard units are combat-ready today than were nearly a year ago when the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves determined that 88 percent of the units were not prepared for the fight, the panel said in its report.
The independent commission is charged by Congress to recommend changes in law and policy concerning the Guard and Reserves.
The commission''s 400-page report concludes that the nation "does not have sufficient trained, ready forces available" to respond to a chemical, biological or nuclear weapons incident," an appalling gap that places the nation and its citizens at greater risk."
"Right now we don''t have the forces we need, we don''t have them trained, we don''t have the equipment," commission Chairman Arnold Punaro said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Even though there is a lot going on in this area, we need to do a lot more. ... There''s a lot of things in the pipeline, but in the world we live in %u2014 you''re either ready or you''re not."

[jt_lancer]

All of the little piggies in Congress will feed at the pork trough as long as their ''earmarks'' convince the voters to keep them in power.

Face it, politics is a game of legalized corruption, and voters simply encourage the behavior.

[Snerdguy]

Just because an earmark accomplishes something good doesn''t make it right. At one time, lynch mobs were known to quickly rid the world of bad people. But, it circumvented due process and many undeserving people were hung. Earmarks are nothing more than a way to circumvent the due process of public debate in the public forum. If earmarks were outlawed along with other questionable Congressional activities, the Congress would be forced to take care of the country''s business upfront and with forethought.

McCain fails to point out that the DOD wastes and mismanages more taxpayer dollars than any other agency of the government by a great margin. Why doesn''t he address how many soldiers die annually because of the bureaucrats in the Pentagon playing their power games? Is Clinton or Obama any better? I haven''t heard them talk about our government''s routine wasteful spending either. They only say what they think people want to hear. The only reason Bush is jumping on earmarks is that he is desperate to find himself a legacy besides that of killing thousands of soldiers. But, that isn''t going to happen.

It''s clear that politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason.

[merlgrey]

keating five criminal. should be behind bars.

[kaelinda]

I usually vote Republican (but not always) and this election year, the chances are pretty good I won''t. The ONLY reason I would vote Republican - for ANY Republican - is that Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Nominee. I might end up staying home if she is, or wasting my vote on a third party candidate, if there is one.

When Hill-Billy Clinton is elected again, we''ll really have some problems, because Billy is behaving badly on the campaign trail, and the Hill part of the team just isn''t leadership material.

One thing we have to remember, though. George W Bush has been the most active President in history - not in what he has done for the people, but in the number of executive orders he''s established, the number of personal privacies he has invaded, the way he decided prisoners of war (pardon me... enemy combatants) should be treated, the way he decided right up front: first, to invade a country that wasn''t doing us (or Israel) any harm, second, not to send enough troops to Iraq to begin with, so that deaths on both sides were assured, and third, to hire Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense (which, unfortunately, Congress confirmed - another black mark on Congress'' record). Bush wanted to avenge Saddam''s attempted assassination of his father. It wasn''t about oil. It was a personal vendetta and didn''t become about oil until after Saddam was dead and the Iraqi government proved to be ineffectual.

[smirk5]

* McCain was against presidential candidates campaigning at Bob Jones University before he was for it.

* McCain was anti-ethanol. Now he%u2019s pro-ethanol.

* McCain was both for and against state promotion of the Confederate flag.

* McCain decided in 2000 that he didn%u2019t want anything to do with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, believing he %u201Cwould taint the image of the %u2018Straight Talk Express.%u2019%u201D Kissinger is now the Honorary Co-Chair for his presidential campaign in New York.
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13746.html

Obviously, "straight-talk" is just spin that the non-liberal corporate media lets McCain get away with.

[smirk5]

* McCain went from saying gay marriage should be allowed, to saying gay marriage shouldn%u2019t be allowed.

* McCain criticized TV preacher Jerry Falwell as %u201Can agent of intolerance%u201D in 2002, but then decided to cozy up to the man who said Americans %u201Cdeserved%u201D the 9/11 attacks.

* McCain used to oppose Bush%u2019s tax cuts for the very wealthy, but he reversed course in February.

* In 2000, McCain accused Texas businessmen Sam and Charles Wyly of being corrupt, spending %u201Cdirty money%u201D to help finance Bush%u2019s presidential campaign. McCain not only filed a complaint against the Wylys for allegedly violating campaign finance law, he also lashed out at them publicly. In April, McCain reached out to the Wylys for support.

* McCain supported a major campaign-finance reform measure that bore his name. In June, he abandoned his own legislation.

* McCain used to think that Grover Norquist was a crook and a corrupt shill for dictators. Then McCain got serious about running for president and began to reconcile with Norquist.

* McCain took a firm line in opposition to torture, and then caved to White House demands.

* McCain opposed a holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr., before he supported it.
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13746.html

[smirk5]

* McCain used to champion the Law of the Sea convention, even volunteering to testify on the treaty%u2019s behalf before a Senate committee. Now he opposes it.
* McCain was a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to illegal immigrants%u2019 kids who graduate from high school. Now he%u2019s against it.

* In 2006, McCain sponsored legislation to require grassroots lobbying coalitions to reveal their financial donors. In 2007, after receiving %u201Cfeedback%u201D on the proposal, McCain told far-right activist groups that he now opposes the measure.

* McCain has been both open and closed to a redeploy-to-perimeter strategy in Iraq.

* McCain said before the war in Iraq, %u201CWe will win this conflict. We will win it easily.%u201D Four years later, McCain said he knew all along that the war in Iraq war was %u201Cprobably going to be long and hard and tough.%u201D

* McCain said he was the %u201Cgreatest critic%u201D of Rumsfeld%u2019s failed Iraq policy. In December 2003, McCain praised the same strategy as %u201Ca mission accomplished.%u201D In March 2004, he said, %u201CI%u2019m confident we%u2019re on the right course.%u201D In December 2005, he said, %u201COverall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course.%u201D

* McCain went from saying he would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade to saying the exact opposite.

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13746.html

[smirk5]

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has long supported a 50-year troop presence in Iraq %u2014 or the %u201CSouth Korea model%u201D %u2014 set forth by President Bush and Gen. Petraeus. %u201CWe have had troops in South Korea for 60 years and nobody minds,%u201D he said in June. On the Charlie Rose Show in August, McCain said the Korea model was %u201Cexactly%u201D the right idea.

Yesterday on Charlie Rose, McCain changed his position, arguing that the Korea-like presence is not an %u201Canalogy%u201D he would use for Iraq. Recognizing the %u201Cnature of the society in Iraq,%u201D McCain suggested that Iraqi opposition to a permanent U.S. occupation may make the South Korea model implausible.

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13746.html

[abbe91]

"Japan attacked the US first. Even if they hadn''''t, there were legitimate reasons to show them to stop. War is not a game.
Posted by hypnotoad72 at 11:05 AM : Feb 02, 2008"

Indeed, true for Japan, hardly true for Iraq. They never attacked us or even threatened us, but they have oil.