“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


Friday, December 12, 2014

The omnibus spending bill is full of cronyism, pork, and corruption

From a guy over at the Huffington Post, here are just a few of the most egregious things we're being made to pay for in the dreadful omnibus spending bill crammed through the republican controlled House yesterday:

1. Lockheed-Martin received a contract to deliver 4 more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters at a price of $479 Million, despite the Pentagon saying they don't want them. In a totally unrelated coincidence, Lockheed-Martin spent $28 Million in donations and lobbying congresscritters in just the last election cycle. 

2. Voters in Colorado, Oregon, Alaska, and Washington D.C. voted recently to legalize recreational marijuana use. That's great for the first three, but congress must approve any laws that take place in D.C. so the anti-legalization zealots attached a rider to the ominbus bill negating the 2:1 passage of legalization. Why would they override such a huge majority vote? In a totally unrelated coincidence, the alcohol and pharmaceutical industries lobby congress heavily to fight legalization.....they don't want the citizenry to be addicted to any substances but the ones they provide. 

3. Boehner and his pals quietly inserted on page 1,599 of 1,604, a provision that allows individuals to contribute as much as $300,000 annually to political parties, but without any additional transparency or accountability. Both Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell have the opportunity to hold up the bill, get rid of this provision, and send it back to the House, but neither is going to. In a totally unrelated coincidence, both parties have impressively rich donors with specific agendas that they'd like passed and will certainly take advantage of this new loophole in campaign finance laws. 

[A point of clarification: I am in favor of unlimited campaign donation by anybody, to anybody, but there should be full, immediate, and public disclosure(not in some hard to find government blog....everywhere, TV, internet, newspapers, etc.) of the people making the donations, who they are and what they likely expect for their money. That way the voters can decide who's corrupt and who's not.]

Three peas in a pod of corruption


4 comments:

david said...

I would argue FOUR peas in the pod of corruption. Isn't that Biden on the viewer's right?

Ed said...

Heh heh, yeah. I was going to include him but I'm not sure how much input he had in the current spending bill.

I should probably include him always in any post on corrupt ass-holes, purely on principle.

Isaac A. Nussbaum said...

"That way the voters can decide who's corrupt and who's not."

We already know who is corrupt. They all are - democrats and republicans alike.

Ed said...

Of course you are correct Isaac, I was just playing along with the charade that elections mean anything substantive.