The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money – Unknown (often attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville)

That, in my mind, pretty much sums up earmarks.  It is a way for Congress to bribe the public with the public’s money.  As Tip O’Neill once said, “all politics is local,” and the way it is made local is that the members of Congress get money from the Treasury, put there by their constituents (the public) to show what a great job the member is doing at bringing home the bacon (bribe).

 It is almost guaranteed that you will see an example of this in any piece of campaign literature from a member’s office.  At election time, we will hear, once again, all about how Senator So-and-So or Congresswoman Smith, got $X thousands or millions for the “folks back home.”  The actual recipients for this largesse will loudly proclaim the praises of the said member easing their re-election fears.

We’ve heard the arguments about bad earmarks (Murtha’s airport, the bridge to nowhere) but they are not bad earmarks to the employees at that airport or the construction workers on that bridge.  To them it is local and to them it is good and they will work their butts off to get the member re-elected.  For years we have heard about how poorly the citizenry regards the job Congress is doing, but when asked how their own Representative or Senator is doing, they like him just fine.  How do you square those two other than to point to the earmarks used to bribe the public for their vote?

While it is true that earmarks don’t add up to a lot of money, they do add up to a lot of influence in keeping ineffective members of Congress in place long after they have forgotten why they went there in the first place.  We have an historical moment before us where the Congress can demonstrate that their first priority is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and if they do that well, get reelected.  If their first priority is to get reelected, then I can only recall the fateful words of Dick Armey.  “Every week we come to town and do things we ought not to do in order to keep the majority so we can do the things we ought to do but never get around to doing.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has thrown his support behind Senator DeMint and Leader Boehner to ban earmarks in the upcoming Congress.  The time to stop the earmarks has come.  Follow the Constitution. Shrink the federal government down to its enumerated powers. Leave everything else to the states or the people.  Do that and our elected representatives will be remembered long after that airport has shuttered and that bridge has collapsed. 

This is great moment in the history of the republic, where those inside the Congress are working hand in hand with the grass roots outside the Congress to bring about change that will put us back on the path to the ideal the Founders envisioned.

Can we please get this guy off the stage before my IRA is completely worthless?  We had a break from him yesterday and the markets rose and then he goes on national television last night re-emphasizing how he was going to tax and spend and in 30 minutes the market is down 130 points.  The market has fallen over 2,000 points since he was elected.

President Obama insists that we need to squeeze more out of the productive people in this country, after all they became rich by creating wealth, jobs, companies, innovations, etc.  Obama’s idea of a “good” tax cut is $8 a week for 95% of Americans.  $8 a week will buy exactly what?  It won’t by the RVs that the people in Elkhart, Indiana make where Obama made one of his pitches for the stimulus package.

Nancy Pelosi looked like a grinning jack-in-the-box last night popping up with every other sentence to applaud the President’s speech.  I don’t know about you, but to me that’s a dead giveaway, we’re in trouble.  After loading up the stimulus bill with pork and ramming it through before anyone could read it (but President Obama didn’t see the urgency to sign it for four more days), you can see she is thrilled to have the opportunity to offer up more spending.  The new spending bill that is about to be released is reported to include 9,000 EARMARKS!!! Haven’t we spent enough?  This is beyond out of control.  Nancy Pelosi cannot control her glee at how easily she is putting this all past the American people.

But the bill will be coming due, and it won’t be Nancy Pelosi who pays it.  It will be you and me, and she will laugh all the way to her retirement with her millions.

The Democratic mayor of Lexington, Kentucky appeared on Fox News to discuss the money he is asking for to stimulate the economy.  Despite being asked three times, he dodged and never answered the question about how many jobs would be created.  Wasn’t that the whole point of the stimulus plan, to create jobs?  His hodgepodge of athletic field construction, and garden walkability enhancement are pork, plain and simple.

Am I alone in thinking that we will be hearing a lot more of these stories?  Also, consider the number of people needed in the government to oversee this kind of massive spending, who do not currently exist.  Anyone want to bet on the amount of fraud and mismanagement of massive proportions we are about to see as your children’s future is squandered?