Samuel

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.

Bloggingheads.tv

I’ve read the Kausfiles blog at Slate.com on and off for quite a while. I don’t always agree with Mickey Kaus, the writer, but I appreciate his perspective and style. Also, he turns a nice phrase.

Lately, I’ve been enjoying another Mickey Kaus project, blogging heads (the link at the top of this post, and to which the subject line refers). This project, which is a video dialogue blog (or Diavlog, a term which they seem to have invented), includes contributions from a lot of different smart, funny people talking about important and trivial issues of the day. The conversations are interesting and thought provoking, especially those between Kaus and Robert Wright. Both men are fantastically arrogant, which makes their dialogues wonderfully compelling.

I recommend watching.

“I would die for you
I’d do anything for you
But, fisting is weird”
-Mighty Mike McGee

Of the six ballot measures that Bill put on the Oregon Ballot this year (and seven if you count the mandatory minimum’s measure that was pushed by his crony Kevin Mannix) the number he was able to pass; 0. All none of them. I’m hoping that this means that Bill, a convicted racketeer and an acknowledged slime-ball, is finally done in Oregon politics. Finished. Washed up. But it may have just been a bad year, what with the blue wave sweeping the nation and all. What do you think?

It was a thrilling night. Watching John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, and other scions of the civil rights movement openly weeping on television last night was pretty moving, and underscored the degree to which this presidential election, more than any other I have ever seen (and possibly will ever see, depending on how long it takes to get a woman up there) is profoundly historic.

Here’s a wrap on some of the other races in Oregon and around the country that are interesting to me.

All the ballot measures but one went my way. The one that didn’t is measure 64, and that’s a bummer because (unless we can beat it with a court challenge) 64 will make it a lot easier for Sizemore in future years.

The Eugene Mayor’s race is too close to call, within a handful of votes. It’s going to be recounted. At this point, Mayor Piercy (my candidate) is marginally ahead. Other too close to call races; Oregon Senate, North Lane County Commissioner. An out of state race I’ve been watching that’s too close to call is Al Franken versus Norm Coleman in Minnesota.

In what I consider a tragic loss, the State of California voted to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Who the State of California is to define something as personal as marriage is way beyond me.

The measure I’ve been most concerned about, California’s Prop 8, is a few hours from meaningful results. But there are other measures of interest around the country. Here’s where they are at the moment.

Arizona is going to ban Gay marriage and is going to keep their draconian restrictions on employing immigrants in place.

Arkansas is looking to ban Gay people adopting children.

Colorado looks as though it’s going to “end affirmative action”, but seems like it’s not going to consider a fetus as a human from the moment of conception.

Florida is probably going to ban Gay marriage.

Massachusetts is looking like they’re going to keep their state income tax.

Michigan is probably going to allow both stem cell research and medical pot.

Nebraska is going to “end affirmative action”

South Dakota is probably going to defeat a draconian anti-abortion measure (again).

We’ll have to wait a few hours to get results from the west coast. Oregon’s measures, of course, are of intense interest to me. So are California’s. More to come.

Will what looks like a definite Obama victory based on East Coast results depress liberal turnout, hurting things like California’s no on 8 campaign? Or will it depress conservative turnout?

Also, no predictions yet in the Minnesota Senate race. If Franken wins, I’ll go jump for joy.

I think this is it. MSNBC has Ohio in the Obama column. This means that without a major upset, McCain is out of the ballgame. Other networks have yet to call Ohio.

Four days until the election, here’s a special treat; one of my favorite mash-up artists has released a recording of a ‘party for change’ for free download. It’s a little under an hour, and it’s really good. The ‘Yes We Can’ section about 20 minutes in was particularly well cut.

Follow the link for a free download, and groove out.

And thanks to Chris, AKA Nightcap, for hipping me to this mix.