There’s some interesting reporting at The Daily Dish over some hay that’s being made of late around right wing nut-job Glenn Beck and his racist roadshow. The short version of this is that Beck said some pretty racist things about the President (suggesting that the President is a racist and that he hates white people and white culture – whatever that means). It was a stupid thing to say, which is to say, it’s completely unsurprising for Glenn “Frank Burns” Beck.

So, the obvious consequence of this was that several companies, not wanting to be associated with an idiot like Beck, pulled their advertising from his show. Among these companies are some big ones, Wal Mart and Geiko. Still, no surprises.

But here’s the thing that I find shocking. There’s an organized movement among conservatives to boycott the companies that pulled their advertising from the Beck show. So, there’s actually an organization out there – red state dot org and no I will not do them the service of a link – that’s calling for this boycott. They call the companies that pulled their advertising pawns of the left, and act as though there’s some left wing conspiracy to silence Beck. But what the Daily Dish points out – and rightly – is that this amounts to a defense of Beck’s statements, since it was the statements that led to the advertisers pulling their ads.

And frankly, I’m kind of glad to see things aligning this way. The American Right Wing has a long history of using racism to move its agenda, and conservatism has been associated with racism in America from way back. It’s refreshing to see it out in the open where the chicken hawks can’t hide from their own prejudices.

A friend on Facebook recently asked me this;

“Why are the people enlightened enough to abhor socialized ~education~ and all it has wrought invariably the same people eager to jump on the socialized ~medicine~ bandwagon?!”

At first, I wasn’t sure how to answer. But here’s what I finally said.

“I prefer a socialized education system to a privatized, corporate one, although I see numerous flaws and failings in either system. I feel the same way about health care; I don’t think that socialized medicine will eliminate all (or even most) of my gripes with the health care system, but given the available options, I think it’s the best one. I certainly think that it’s better to remove the profit motive from health care, because in a system where health care is sold for profit there are all sorts of incentives for involved companies to cut corners and cut costs by keeping people from getting needed, lifesaving treatments. This is not to say that I think a socialized system will be without drawbacks, which American conservatives are quick to point out, only that it’s preferable to what we have now (which for many of us is absolutely nothing).

Overall, I generally think that people rely on ’systems’ – be they socialized, privatized, corporate, fascist, or theocratic, far more than is healthy. People should do more for themselves.

In terms of Health, I think we should feel empowered enough to do careful research about what lifestyles, nutrition, exercise, herbal remedies, and other alternative treatments will best suit us. Taking ownership over my own health has been one of the most empowering and enlightening things I have done in my life, and by eating healthy, whole food, I feel healthier than I ever have. This has nothing to do with any kind of health care system, but rather with a sense of personal ownership between me and my body, with no government or company interfering.

In terms of School, I think that people will be smarter, more informed, and in general better prepared to deal with the world to the degree that they take ownership of their own education. Sometimes, this is more possible in public/private partnership schools than it is in public schools. Sometimes, it is best achieved with no school at all. But I don’t think that means we should close all the schools. I think that socialized education is actually a wonderful thing, in principle. Even in the deeply dysfunctional way that it is currently practiced, it is a real benefit to communities to have publicly funded schools available.

So, in short, I separate the question of what a society should provide to its members from the question of what the responsibility of each member is. I would like to see a world where everyone takes responsibility from their own education, and for their own health. But I don’t think that’s likely, and therefore I think it’s a good idea to offer publicly funded education and publicly funded health care as an option for those who are unwilling or unable to take ownership of their own experience. I don’t think that either thing, education or health care, should be compulsory.

A final thought has to do with the inherent differences between education and health care. For the most part, with a little ingenuity and a willingness to ask for expert advice when it’s needed, I am able to educate myself about just about anything without a systematic, institutional program to provide me with the knowledge. By contrast, I would be hard pressed to perform my own open heart surgery, set my own broken leg, or even do my own routine dental work. So while there is a lot that an individual can do to be empowered and take charge of their own health preventatively, often when things go very badly an expert is really needed to intervene.

These are draft thoughts, and so I apologize for rambling a little (my ideas were developing as I typed). But I hope that whatever dissidence seemed to be present in my ideas has been cleared up.”

Any thoughts?

SEIU is asking Americans to call Congress today to ask for healthcare reform that works. They have a tollfree number set up that gives some talking points and automatically connects people to their representatives. The number is 1-800-603-SEIU. Here is the text from the leaflet for today’s action. Feel free to leave a comment to say how the call went.

If It’s Not Affordable,
Healthcare ISN’T Fixed
Congress is making major decisions on
President Obama’s proposal to bring
down the cost of healthcare for
working families.
But some special interests want to block
reforms that will drive down costs—
leaving millions of workers unsure if
they can keep up with exploding
healthcare costs.
Make sure the people who
represent you in Washington,
D.C., know that if healthcare isn’t
affordable for ordinary working
people, the healthcare system
isn’t working.
How to Speak Out
1. Call your Senators and Representative at 1-800-603-SEIU (7348).
2. Do you know a family member or neighbor who has struggled to
get quality, affordable healthcare? Tell their story. Or, talk about
concerns you have about the rising cost of healthcare.
3. Explain that healthcare won’t be fixed until it’s affordable for
every worker in our community.!

Oregon HB 3508 is being voted out of committee today. If passed, it will phase in legislation to implement Measure 57, a law passed by voters mandating minimum sentences for property crimes. This bill will implement the sentences for the most serious crimes immediately, while phasing in the sentences for less serious crimes slowly. The alternative is to implement all the minimum sentences immediately.

If the bill doesn’t pass, the money to incarcerate these non-violent offenders will come from the closure of Oregon Youth Authority facilities. Youth offenders, including sex offenders, will be released early, before their treatment programs are completed. Also, the closure of OYA will result in the loss of 384 jobs.

It doesn’t make sense to release sex offenders in order to implement longer sentencing for non-violent property offenders.

Please make a call to one or more key legislators identified below today or this evening and use the script provided. Your calls will make a big difference!

Sample Script

Hello, my name is __________ and I am I am a concerned citizen] HB 3508 is a bill that will phase-in Measure 57, implementing the most serious crimes immediately, such as elder fraud and drug trafficking, but waiting to implement the sentences for other crimes to save resources. The reasonable phase-in will protect our public safety system by preventing drastic cuts to the Oregon Youth Authority and the Oregon State Police. If it does not pass we will let sex offenders out because we will have to close down our facility in Burns, OR, we will interrupt treatment for hundreds of children who are being served by OYA, and hundreds of families will lose their income. Please support HB 3508.

List is prioritized:
Rep. Kreiger: 503-986-1401, rep.waynekrieger@state.or.us
Rep. Garrard: 503-986-1456, rep.billgarrard@state.or.us
Rep. Berger: 503-986-1420, rep.vickiberger@state.or.us
Rep. Jenson: 503-986-1458, rep.bobjenson@state.or.us
Rep. Bentz: 503-986-1460, rep.cliffbentz@state.or.us
Rep. Bruun: 503-986-1437, rep.scottbruun@state.or.us
Rep. Olson: 503-986-1415, rep.andyolson@state.or.us
Rep. Cameron: 503-986-1419, rep.kevincameron@state.or.us
Rep. Gilliam: 503-986-1418, rep.vicgilliam@state.or.us

For more information about HB 3508, visit SEIU’s website.

This site also includes a link to e-mail all nine targeted representatives with one click.

To find your own state rep, visit the state legislature’s website.

If you do make the call, leave a comment here to say how it went. I’d be curious to know.

I want to show you my bike.

Here she is, parked in the SEIU office. If you look at the rear storage area, you’ll notice a milk crate (obtained through completely legitimate means) mounted on the rack. Inside the milk crate is something I’m quite pleased with that I recently put together. It’s a box, taped together out of corrugated plastic political signs that were kicking around here. It increases the amount of hauling capacity I have by a lot. The next plan is to add square buckets to the sides of the rack area. When all is said and done, I’ll have enough water resistant cargo space to carry around 3 bags of groceries.

I did this because my Bike is my primary mode of transportation. I ride it to and from work, I use it to pick up my son (who rides in a Burley trailer), and I use it for recreation. I also own a car. I drive places where I can’t reasonably bike, like the Country Fair, Portland, the Coast. All are accessible from Eugene by cycle, but all require a greater degree of commitment to the journey than I am willing to give myself over to on a Saturday when I’d rather be dipping my toes in the surf or eating Pad Thai by the Long Tom.

My wife uses the car for a lot of the family’s errand running as well, but between the two of us we hardly buy a tank of gas once a month. 14 Gallon tank, 30 Miles per Gallon, that’s under 500 miles a month of driving for the whole family. Not much, considering that many people I know drive twice that much or more.

Taylor and I have made a lot of choices and commitments to minimize the driving we do. We do this for several reasons. One reason is saving money, and that’s important to us. But more important is our commitment to conservation. We know that there is a limited amount of fossil fuel remaining under the ground, and recognize that it is important to be cautious stewards of the remaining fuel so that future generations can continue to use it for the public good. Also, we are concerned about climate change and about the impact our driving has on greenhouse gas emissions. So we choose not to drive when we can walk, bike, or take the bus. We encourage others in our community to do the same, but for the most part we recognize that we’re making an individual choice and we can’t compel others to join us.

But I have this niggling issue about economics. Supply and demand dictate the price of fuel. As supply dwindles the price of fuel increases until demand drops and the market comes back into equilibrium. So here’s the issue; right now I’m conserving fuel while the price is low because of my concern for the public good while others are using buying fuel with impunity at a low price. Say I use 200 gallons a year, while my neighbor who drives everywhere in his big cargo van uses 1000 gallons a year. At current prices, about $2 a gallon, he’s paying $2000 a year for fuel while I’m paying $400. Now, let’s imagine that the price of fuel increases fourfold to $8 a gallon (before you pooh pooh this thought, remember that in Europe they’re paying around $6.50 a gallon right now). Now he’s paying $8000 while I’m paying $1600. But my neighbor can’t afford the $8000 price tag, so he begins to take simple measures to reduce his fuel consumption (the same measures I’ve already taken). He cuts back on his driving by half and starts paying only $4000. I, on the other hand, have already taken the basic, simple steps toward fuel economy and even taken more drastic ones. I don’t have room in my life to drive less. I’m still paying $1600.

So, even though my neighbor and I pay the same price for gas today and in the future, in a sense I am currently subsidizing his over-consumption. He’s buying a lot of gas at the cheaper price whereas I’m buying a little. When gas goes up and he cuts down on driving, he buys less gas at the higher price while I buy the same amount. On average, I’ve paid $5 per gallon while he’s paid only $4.

This situation is unfair, and I think something needs to be done about it. I would, therefore, propose a graduated fuel tax, asking people who use more fuel to pay a higher percentage in taxes. The revenue from this tax would be directed toward research into alternative fuels in order to, hopefully, mitigate the subsidy that those of us who are conserving fuel today while it is inexpensive provide to those who are consuming more than their fair share.

As an added bonus, maybe such a tax would encourage more people to use bicycles for transportation. It’s such a pleasure to get around on a bike, you never need to search for parking, and you see the world from so much closer up. Not only would society benefit from less fuel consumed, we would be healthier (and probably happier).

Until next time.

I’m going to file my taxes today. It’s the first whole year I’ve worked a full time job after college. The pay is pretty lousy (neighborhood of $30,000 for a family of three) so I’m hoping to still get a quality size return. On the other hand, I’m not really sure what to expect at all.

I’m one of these crazy people who has always said that I relish the idea of paying for my fair share. I believe the government does important work (some of that work I myself actually do) and that it’s had it’s hands tied for too long by insane tax policy.

Like here in Oregon. We have a ‘citizen legislature’ that meets only every two years to set the budget for the coming biennium. They are in session right now and will be writing a budget that starts in July 2009 and goes through June 2011 based on budget projections that will be released next month.

Think about this for a second; we’re in the midst of a global economic crisis for which no one has an adequate explanation, much less a confident prediction of what’s going to happen next. Our legislators have been given the best information available to make a plan for the next two years, and once the plan is made we’re stuck with it. If there’s a shortfall, the Governor can make administrative cuts. If the economy does better than expected, the surpluses goes back to the taxpayers in the form of the Kicker.

What this means is that the legislature is going to make a worst case scenario crisis plan this summer, and if the recovery is better than expected we’re still going to have to live with the deep cuts they made to services like police, schools, roads, caregivers for seniors and people with disabilities, mental health care, and a thousand other essential functions that the state does every day without anyone even knowing that they’re doing it. If it’s worse, the governor will cut even deeper.

All of this is because the people of Oregon have been suckered by the siren song of so called citizen tax activists who are on an ideologically motivated mission to bankrupt the government. They don’t believe that government should be in the business of providing social services to people in need, and they are trying to destroy the government by cutting off it’s funding. These people call themselves patriots, but I say that they’re anti-government radicals who are trying to destroy our system.

Their plot is a brilliantly fiendish one. They never talk about destroying the government, beyond criticizing mythical sounding examples of government excess. Instead, they couch their argument in terms of the people being shouldered with an untenable tax burden. And we respond, because when it comes to the end of the year we are shocked by the price tag of all our payroll deductions from the year added up. Never mind that, in annual figures, taxes are one of our smallest expenses. dollar for dollar, our taxes (at least our state taxes) give us an enormous amount of value. Never mind that providing adequate services costs money.

In rich times, these anti-government radicals fight to cripple the government’s revenue stream so that in poor times like these the impact of crises is magnified. Well, I’m not fooled.

The truth is that paying taxes is patriotic, because taxes are what pays for our civil society. So today, as I set down to fill out forms and e-file, I’ll raise a glass to the government. Is it perfect? Is it completely efficient at all times? Is it without a single flaw to be held up to scorn? Absolutely not! But it’s the best government we’ve got, and it will only get better if we stop choking off it’s revenue flow. So here’s to paying taxes! Three cheers for taxes!

Hip hip! (Hurrah)

Hip hip! (Hurrah)

Hip hip! (Hurrah)

Crisis Precipitates Change

A Pantoum* By Samuel J. Rutledge

Who doesn’t want to get rich?
A million bucks sounds pretty good,
and we have a little something to invest.
What have we got to loose?

A million bucks sounds pretty good
and it’s so easy to ignore the obvious.
What have we got to loose?
Only our home and life savings.

And it’s so easy to ignore the obvious
until it all comes crashing down.
Only, our home and life savings
aren’t ours anymore.

Until it all comes crashing down
wealthy executives make off with life savings that
aren’t ours anymore.
They end up with taxpayer bailouts to boot.

Wealthy executives make off with life savings that
we unwittingly invested in their high flying schemes.
They end up with taxpayer bailouts to boot,
While we have to rent for the first time in 50 years.

We unwittingly invested in their high flying schemes
to take the money and run.
While we have to rent for the first time in 50 years
the house sits empty and growing mold.

To take the money and run;
The only rational answer.
The house sits empty and growing mold
and we’re heading for the hills.

The only rational answer
at times proceeds from desperation.
And we’re heading for the hills
because we don’t know what else to do.

At times, proceeds from desperation
provide the spark we need to learn a new way
because we don’t know what else to do.
We learn from gnarled handed wise ones.

Provide the spark we need to learn a new way!
True wealth only rises from land and labor.
We learn from gnarled handed wise ones,
loamy soil between their fingers.

True wealth only rises from land and labor.
Who doesn’t want to get rich
loamy soil between their fingers?
And we have a little something to invest.

* “The pantoum is a form of poetry similar to a villanelle. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next. This pattern continues for any number of stanzas, except for the final stanza, which differs in the repeating pattern. The first and third lines of the last stanza are the second and fourth of the penultimate; the first line of the poem is the last line of the final stanza, and the third line of the first stanza is the second of the final. Ideally, the meaning of lines shifts when they are repeated although the words remain exactly the same: this can be done by shifting punctuation, punning, or simply recontextualizing.”
- From Wikipedia

There is a whole class of businesses with balance sheets that dwarf the economies of all but the wealthiest nations. These companies are not only individually massive, they are also interconnected – when one goes down, it takes others with it. When these companies get into trouble, therefore, the governments of their host countries are compelled to intervene and prevent them from going under with massive injections of capitol and other sweet little bonuses. In other words, these companies can not fail because their host governments will not let them. They are “too big to fail.” The owners and executives of these companies are well aware of this situation, and are therefore much less risk averse than they would be if there was some legitimate threat of going out of business.

Now I’m no economist, but I have a layman’s understanding of how the theoretical free market works. Generally, we get the best goods and services at the lowest price in a free and open market because the providers of these services thrive while others fail and go out of business.

So, here is my question: in what way does the situation described in the first paragraph fit within the theory described in the second? My answer: in no way. We have built ourselves a system of perverse incentives where mega-companies are able to take enormous risks, reap huge profits, and pass their losses on to the public. And if we don’t play their game, they tell us, our prosperity will evaporate.

This sucks.

The post that you’re about to read was difficult to write. I think about race. I get worked up about civil rights. If I had been alive in the 50s and 60s, I like to think that I would have had the courage to go on freedom rides. Even if I didn’t have the courage, I would have wanted to. I like to think that I have fairly well developed thinking about race. That said, it’s hard to have credibility writing about race and the experience of people from different races from a position of privilege like mine. White guys who grew up in the suburbs need to be extra careful when we talk about race, because we grew up learning a lot of assumptions that we deserve everything we have. (The same is probably true of girls and people who grew up in other than suburbs, but I am talking about my own experience, not anyone else’s). That said, I had a pretty strong emotional reaction to some things I read today and I feel compelled to share. Please know that my hope in writing this post is to contribute my ideas to a much, much larger dialogue. I do not by any means claim to have absolute truth, or even answers. It is not my intention to offend anyone, but I recognize that these are deeply emotional issues and that offense is taken easily.

I recently ran across an online debate about race. What I came away thinking was that, despite recent amazing symbolic gains, we have made very little progress in terms of people’s attitudes surrounding race.

The debate, without going into too much detail, focused on a tee shirt design that’s popular on the East coast. The tee shirt says “I Black People” on it. One camp of people said that the shirt was racist, pointing out that a shirt that said “I White People” would be quick to offend our liberal sensibilities. The other camp seemed to argue that the shirt was not racist, nor would be a shirt that said “I White People”. This position was based on the logic that love is good and loving people is good.

Neither group questioned the assumption that one shirt might contain a racist message while the other did not. All participants in this public debate failed to question the premise of a pre-existing state of equality between black people and white people. This is a mistake.

The reality of the situation is that there are deep inequalities in the social privilege afforded to white people and black people. By any meaningful measure of social success, be it infant mortality, average income, educational attainment, life expectancy, or rates of incarceration, white people are privileged over black people.

I will not go into trying to diagnose this problem here, or speculate as to the cause. There are many good books on the subject. I will, however, mention one measure on which I am convinced that white people and black people are 100% equal; innate potential. There is nothing wrong with black people that causes them to have fewer chances in life than white people; the problem is in society.

When we proceed from the notion that white people are privileged over black people in society, we come to some new conclusions about the two tee shirts mentioned earlier. We initially thought the messages to be equivalent – the only difference being the race of people the wearer professes to love. The actual content of the messages is in fact very different because of some subtextual messages that are universally (or at least near universally) understood. At the risk of running into some profound disagreement about particulars, I will try to give this subtext a voice.

The subtext of “I Black People” goes something like this;

“I recognize the historical oppression and suffering that Black People have experienced at the hands of this society, and am committed to moving toward a world in which people of all races are given equal life chances at birth.”

The subtext of “I White People” could go one of two ways. The first is;

“I refuse to acknowledge any contemporary privilege that White People enjoy, and am making a statement to that effect with the knowledge that it will be taken as racist and in the hopes that someone engages me in conversation about this topic so that I can profess my view of an egalitarian reality to them”

or;

“I acknowledge the privilege that White People enjoy in this society, and believe it to be deserved and the result of an inferiority that is innate in people of other races.”

Both of these messages are pretty deeply problematic. I hope I don’t have to explain why.
My point in writing this is to, hopefully, take a chink out of the armor of a wrong idea that seems to occupy a durable place in our society; that of ‘reverse racism’ or ‘reverse discrimination.’ When I was in grade school, I learned that the problem of race was entirely related to discrimination, prejudice, and racism. There was an implication that these things are always overt, and that a person who is prejudiced is aware of their preferences. No one bothered to mention that these things can be so subtle that the people who carry these attitudes are not even aware of their prejudice.

In reading the wonderful book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, I learned about something called an Implicit Association Test (IAT). This type of test can measure a person’s relative preference for people of different races, genders, sexual orientation, or even political persuasion. The one that interests me in particular is the black/white test. Without going into the particulars of how an IAT works here, I’ll just say that Gladwell reported that most people, regardless of their politics, race, economic background, or other demographic characteristics, seem to have at least a moderate preference for white people over black people. This suggests (at least to me) that society teaches us that white people are better than black people. You can take an IAT yourself by clicking on the link above. I did, and I was saddened but not shocked by the results. This article at the Washington Post has a lot more information about different studies that show how these implicit attitudes can impact life chances without anyone knowing that there is any prejudice going on.

What worries me more than anything in the face of all this is that now that we have a black President the people who were already saying (all evidence to the contrary) that there is already equality between races and that racism is all but over will now point to Barack Obama to prove their point once and for all. I hope that Obama in the White House helps move us forward toward a genuine discussion of race in this country, but I worry that his presence there will actually cement one of the most insidious racial attitudes we have; that we have achieved a colorblind society.

I’m trying to get earmarks straight.

These, in case you’ve been living in a cave, are a legislative tool that lawmakers use to direct funds to particular projects. So, while a bill may grant 1.5 billion dollars in general to crime prevention efforts, an earmark could direct $50,000 of this specifically to gang prevention in Charlotte, NC. Conservatives and liberals alike latched onto earmarks during the campaign as a way to talk about wasteful, pork barrel spending. The phrase Pork Barrel, by the way, is political shorthand for spending projects that Members of Congress sponsor in their home districts in order to curry favor with the voting folks back home.

So lets talk about earmarks, because I really want to understand what the big deal is. I’m not for wasteful government spending, but I think it’s wise for Congress to have some means of directing the funds it appropriates toward specific, worthwhile projects. So how about $50,000 for gang prevention in Charlotte? I use this example because it’s an actual earmark in the current spending bill that has become kind of an issue. I know this because since the spending bill that made its way out of the Senate today was introduced, @SenJohnMcCain has been posting supposedly wasteful earmarks to Twitter and this was one that he posted. So what I want to know is, in what way is this earmark wasteful?

Here is a story about gangs in Charlotte. It seems that they are a real issue there. I truly don’t understand how $50,000 out of a $410 billion dollar spending bill poses a major problem or constitutes any kind of problem at all. After all, what good is the power to appropriate funds if we can’t appropriate them for worthwhile projects.

But that’s one earmark picked out of the many, many that Senator McCain has twittered lately. Let’s pick another. Yesterday’s #1 wasteful earmark was $935,000 for Pasteurization of Shell Eggs. This seems pretty ridiculous, like a huge, insane expenditure of public funds. Who would want to pasteurize egg shells? As it turns out, I didn’t know.

So I did some googling, and here’s what I found;

Why pasteurize a shell egg? Because according to the Center of Disease Control, Salmonella is the #1 cause of food poisoning in the U.S.* (1.4 Million reported cases of illness and hundred of deaths). In fact, as many as 100 Million eggs may be contaminated each year. Salmonella is especially harmful to children, the elderly, and people with weakened immune systems.

Sysco Imperial Pasteurized eggs now virtually eliminate that risk.

Okay, so I’m generally no fan of pasteurization for its own sake, and if I was giving advice on how to get the freshest, healthiest eggs, I would advise you to get your own chickens. But if you ask me, developing and implementing a method to ensure consumer safety from salmonella is a reasonable expenditure of public funds.

Mind you, while I picked these examples out, I picked them from from Senator John McCain’s twitters – they were examples he was giving of wasteful spending.

In Bobby Jindall’s recent (flop of a) response to Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress, he raised a few hundred thousand for research into predicting volcanic erruptions as an example of wasteful government spending. This at a time when there are some volcanoes in Alaska threatening to erupt, and when Mount Saint Helens just a few years ago was menacingly belching smoke and ash and no one was sure whether or not to expect a second major event.

If these are the worst examples of government waste that we can come up with, I’d say the government is doing a pretty good job of not spending money wastefully.

So what I come to in terms of earmarks is that they are a red herring. By no means do I believe that there are no wasteful, shameful earmarks, nor is do I believe that wasteful government spending is anything other than a BIG problem. But what I’m growing more and more certain of as I look into some of these claims of wasteful spending is that we need to be examining government spending project by project to determine whether or not it is efficient, whether it is worthwhile, and whether it produces the desired results.

I vote that we start with defense projects.

In the end, earmarks are a tool. Sometimes they are used for good, and other times for ill. There should be more transparency in the earmarking process, and more ownership. But eliminating the tool entirely will rob the Congress of it’s constitutional authority to direct government spending where it is needed most, and to specific, worthwhile projects.