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Fingers In The Pie - Republican Earmarking
Topic Started: Jun 25 2006, 01:00 PM (137 Views)
ngc1514
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From today's New York Times:

Editorial
The Speaker's Hard Lesson in Reform

Published: June 25, 2006

Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, promised credible reform back when the stench of illegal quid pro quo dealings between lobbyists and ethically challenged lawmakers seized public attention. But nothing close to true self-policing is emerging from Congress. And now Mr. Hastert is the latest lawmaker in the limelight for the rampant pork-barrel practice of earmarking — the swift, debate-free inclusion in mass appropriations bills of small fortunes in government favors for special pleaders.

In the speaker's case, his $200 million earmark to advance a road project known as Prairie Parkway back home in Illinois became an acute embarrassment after local news media and critics discovered Mr. Hastert netted a fast $2 million profit from dealing in land situated several miles from the proposed roadway.

Mr. Hastert's office insists that he had long supported the road plan in the booming region and that the land parcel was far enough removed. He contends, in short, that there was nothing improper in his purchase being made, in partnership with the local Republican county leader, just a year before he arranged the earmark.

That's for voters to judge. But we can hope Mr. Hastert would see, at least in hindsight, the cloud that this activity has cast over Congress, which slipped 13,012 earmarks to passage this year worth $67 billion. That's a tripling of the pork trough since the Republicans won control of the House in 1994.

Sometimes it seems as if earmarking is all this Congress knows how to do. Members have spent so few calendar days in Washington that they hark back to the "do-nothing" Congress excoriated six decades ago by President Harry Truman.

Doing nothing can be the lesser of two evils, however. That seems to be true of the farce of an ethics reform bill now being fumbled around by the House and Senate. The measure offers no hope for a true earmark crackdown and totally avoids the core Capitol scandal — the lobbying industry's freedom to woo grateful lawmakers with bundles of corporate campaign contributions. Congress's unwillingness to police its behavior was clear months ago when lawmakers rejected creation of an independent office of public integrity that might actually enforce the sorts of promises so easily made by Speaker Hastert.
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cmoehle
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Chris - San Antonio TX
Republicans of 1994 took the House largely with promises laid out in Contract with America to fight and reform Democrat corruption. Seems we've come full circle. Power corrupts. When will we learn. Term limits!
Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
--Barry Goldwater
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ngc1514
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We seem to agree on many things, Chris, but not term limits.

I don't think people should be denied the opportunity to vote for whomever they wish... including the president.

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cmoehle
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Chris - San Antonio TX
Well, I can't argue with that, people should be free to elect whomever they want. Maybe people get lazy though, voting for the familiar face, or the one that brings the most pork home.

Terms limits is attractive because it keeps the professional politician out of government. IT's the professionals who to gain and keep power seem to be corrupted by it.
Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
--Barry Goldwater
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cmoehle
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Chris - San Antonio TX
Some harsh but fitting criticism: Well-paved road to political perdition
Quote:
 
The current ethics rules are nothing more than a license to steal. Yet, if Hastert and his colleagues are taking citizens for a ride, it is on a highway paved by voters who cannot see beyond their party affiliations. They are corrupt because our own expectations have been corrupted.

We have bought into the red-state/blue-state hype by the two parties to snuff out third-party candidates and fend off any voter backlash. We blindly return the same members to a grotesquely corrupt Congress in the name of party loyalty. To put it simply, we have become a nation of chumps and we have the highways to prove it.
Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
--Barry Goldwater
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ngc1514
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cmoehle
Jun 25 2006, 09:51 PM
Well, I can't argue with that, people should be free to elect whomever they want. Maybe people get lazy though, voting for the familiar face, or the one that brings the most pork home.

Terms limits is attractive because it keeps the professional politician out of government. IT's the professionals who to gain and keep power seem to be corrupted by it.

No doubt, but the solution is something to kick the voter out of voter apathy and not term limits. I expect many of the threads here address the same problem under different guises: Dumbing Down of America, Ann Coulter and others.

The first step is doing away with the whole primary system. I think this is worth its own thread and I'll start it.

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