“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas


Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Meet the new congress, same as the old congress

Included in the $1.1-trillion, 1,924-page omnibus crap-sandwich that the lame-duck congress is cramming down our throats are these examples of sheer spending lunacy.....

$277,000 for potato pest management in Wisconsin
$246,000 for bovine tuberculosis in Michigan and Minnesota
$522,000 for cranberry and blueberry disease and breeding in New Jersey
$500,000 for oyster safety in Florida
$349,000 for swine waste management in North Carolina
$413,000 for peanut research in Alabama
$247,000 for virus free wine grapes in Washington
$208,000 beaver management in North Carolina
$94,000 for blackbird management in Louisiana
$165,000 for maple syrup research in Vermont
$235,000 for noxious weed management in Nevada
$100,000 for the Edgar Allen Poe Cottage Visitor’s Center in New York
$300,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii
$400,000 for solar parking canopies and plug-in electric stations in Kansas

Both democrats and craven republicans have hidden earmarks in this bill so that in the new congress they can get on their high-horses and swear about how awful earmarks are. It's just like the indulgence of Mardi Gras leading up to lent....sin as much as you can today, so that next week you can pretend to be saintly.

I will be taking names of every republican who requests funding for a frivolous earmark and adding it to my 2012 purge list, and you should too. If these guys are so dumb that they need two electoral lessons about fiscal responsibility and small government, then we'll be happy to provide it.

8 comments:

David said...

No surprise really.

Heading over to Ace Hardware for lunch to pick-up a few pitchforks. Do you want me to get on for you?

ed said...

Does Ace sell torches too? They're not even in office yet and it's business as usual for a lot of them. Did they learn nothing?

Bill said...

This is an outrage, but your title is misleading. This is not the "new congress" but is in fact "the old congress." Hopefully it can be stopped.

ed said...

The mindset of the lame-duck congress should be the limited-spending mindset of the incoming congress, but even some tea-party fav's like Paul Ryan are saying we may have to buck up and take a big old bit of this shit sandwich. Any republican who doesn't vote no is in the dog house with me. I don't care if the government shuts down. It should be shut down for 9 months out of every year anyway.

ed said...

I'm also starting to moderate my excitement for Paul Ryan as a national-level politician. He voted for TARP, the tax on AIG bonuses, and now this. He sounds more like a pragmatic populist than a true conservative to me.

David said...

i doubt we would miss anything except the spending it if were shut down.

ed said...

I don't know of anything that I'd miss except the status-quo on taxes, but the new congress will take care of that tout suite on
5Jan. I say shut 'er down!

Bill said...

The Republicans certainly got the message and killed this monstrosity, forcing "Dingy" Harry Reid to pull it. A lot of credit goes to McConnell for holding his caucus together, even the retiring RINO's. The obvious ploy of Reid and Inoye seeding the thing with earmark landmines requested by Republicans long ago to either trap or embarrass them was too blatant to work in the end.