I have two comments about last night's debate, and I think I’ll split them into two different notes, just to take up more room. What the hell, right?
So John McCain has spent his career doing the bidding of bankers and their lobbyists fighting against earmarks, right? He talked about it a lot. He thinks it’s a terrible system. He blames the earmark system for corrupting congressmen; congressmen are, he says, under federal indictment because of (*cough* personal accountability *cough*) earmarks. Earmarks are “a gateway to out-of-control spending and corruption.” He’s made the fight against earmarks the center of his career, he says.
Also, the amount of money allocated via earmarks—“Do you know that it’s tripled in the last five years? Do you know that it’s gone completely out of control?”
Let’s recap. John McCain has been fighting earmarks in the United States Senate, where they have tripled in the last five years, to $18 billion. What will they be like if he fights them for four years from the White House? Fifty billion? A hundred?
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
Earmarks are one of the few good things to come out of DC. I love them, even when they’re spent on bridges to nowhere. Hell, especially when they’re spent on bridges to nowhere, provided the bridges are built to last. Earmarks = jobs and local economic stimulus. Three cheers and more ears! McCain ranting and raving about them is like a waterboarding torture team griping about fluoridation as a health hazard.
$100 billion in earmarks would go a long way to making this great country an even greater country, with lots of greatness slathered all over it. In fact, I’d like to change the flag to one with a great big ear on it, with dollars flying out and grateful people standing around with butterfly nets to catch them. This, surely, would be better than our present national image.