Are They Nuts?
Today I am so livid I can barely form the words needed for this blog. I received my copy of the Capitol Confidential today.
How does this strike you for earmarks.
1. Lobster for dogs
2. Museum for Mules
3. 1.9 million for the Charles B Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York.
4. Kansas Regional Prisons Museum
5. Perfect Christmas Tree Project. (what ever the hell that is)
These proposals were all voted on in the House and were not put before the Senate. Some of these votes were prior to January 2009 and therefore some of the people who voted on these earmarks are no longer in office. However I feel it important to show just how our so called conservative Republicans have voted in the past and how we can expect them to vote in the future unless we let them know in no uncertain terms NO MORE WE WON'T STAND FOR ANYMORE WASTE OF THIS TYPE.
1. Lobster for dogs. This is an earmark to the Lobster Institute for Better Dog Food of Maine for $188,000 to do research, production and marketing. Now granted in the grand scheme of things concerning our budget this amount of money isn't even a tear in the ocean. But that is not the point. The point is it is just wrong no matter how you look at it.
Can you afford to eat Lobster? I know I sure can't and it is my all time favorite food and yet our Congress critters think dogs should have lobster biscuits.
Who of our Cogress people from Michigan voted for this?
Everyone of them both Republicans and Democrats. Knollenberg and Walberg both (R) voted out in November 08.
2. National Museum for Mule and Packers in Bishop CA.
$55,000 is a pitance how ever this will benefit only the 30,000 people and 700 Mules drawn to the annual "Mule Days" celebration in Bishop. The only Congressman to vote against this one was Walberg. Conyers didn't vote on this one. The rest of our MI Congressman voted for it.
3. Charles B Rangel Center. Guess who asked for this one. Yup none other than Mr. Charles B Rangel himself. He wants money to basically establish a monument to himself. Anyone surprised since Charlie is his own biggest fan. The figure on this fiasco would be 1.9 million.
Who from Michigan voted against it?
Vern Ehlers (R) Pete Hoekstra (R) Mike Rogers (R) Tim Walberg (R) All the rest voted for it including Republicans Knollenberg (Now gone) Fred Upton, Thad McCotter, Dave Camp, Candice Miller.
4. Kansas Regional Prisons Museum. This was worth 1.18 million of your taxpayer dollars. Michigan Congressman voting against it were Hoekstra
Camp, Upton, and Walberg. All the rest both Republican and Democrat voted for it.
5. Perfect Christmas Tree Project. This one in fact was the only one of the 5 that were killed. But these are the Michigan Congressman who voted to keep it.
Conyers. Hoekstra, KIldee, Knollenberg, Sander Levin and Thad McCotter.
The man who lead the fight against each of these outrageous earmarks was Jeff Flake (R) of Arizona. For his hard work he was removed from the Judiciary Committee for his "bad behavior" for leading this fight against waste of your tax dollars.
These votes were all in the 2007/2008 session, however if you think things have changed in D.C think again. The earmarks above are all very small potatoes but if you add up all of the small potatoes and there are thousands of them every year it adds up to millions and billions of waste and abuse of the power these men and women are given by us the American voter.
You as a voter had better wake up and look at ever vote your Congressman or Senator makes in his/her job in D.C because they are voting all of us into the pour house and it is not for our good. It is so they can maintain the power of their office.
All information in this blog was obtained from the Michigan Capitol Confidential and used for your education.
For more got to www.mackinac.org/pubs/mcc/
Happy reading.
Labels: Congress Earmarks political pork corruption Michigan US Congress taxpayer
posted by Independent Thinker @ 3:01 PM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
I guess after a while it no longer seems like money any more. I liked Tim Walberg and I'm a little surprised by a couple of these votes. Congress must do a better job of transparency. This is the only way to really affect mindless spending practices.
Camp is my Rep and I am just plain pissed off at this point. Don't think he isn't going to hear from me.
On principle, earmarks are a very good thing as we get to see where the money is going. Although these are ridiculous examples of waste, Congress needs to spend more time on transparency and earmarking funds is an excellent way to do that. Damn near everything should be earmarked! That way, politicans can't just send chunks of money to their states and watch it wasted by state legislatures.
However, the real problem is that states like MI are donor states: we send far more money to DC than we get in return. Why must we allow DC to determine how we spend our own money? A better solution is to lower the federal tax rates so that the money stays in MI and DC can't take its cut. Then, there is no excuse for earmarks for Xmas trees and lobster dog treats. We need to support the earmarking process and demand that money be designated for specific purposes, rather than $50 million for this department here, and $100 million for this general fund there. Above all, MI must stand up to DC and complain about our shoddy treatment, where we only get $.94 of every dollar we send while Alaska gets almost $1.50!
Michigan has been a donor state forever which to me says Levin and Stabenow as well as our Congress critters aren't doing their jobs. Either everything should be earmarked or we write clean bills and not allow any spending to be tacked on in the middle of the night to bills that have nothing to do with the earmarks. This is how they are getting away with this kind of fiasco spending .
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