heef ([info]heef) wrote,
@ 2009-03-04 10:14:00
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Nothing new under the sun
No we can't!

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[info]scottahill
2009-03-05 09:23 pm UTC (link)
I wasn't aiming for the points, so hardly surprising that I'd miss them. :) (And you accuse ME of not getting YOUR jokes?) It's hardly surprising that a Democratic President and Democratic Congress are going to spend more money than you are comfortable with; that's why y'all are in different parties. Your side calls it "pork"; we call it "how government works". (Tomato, tomahto, let's call the whole thing off.)

There are three ways (broadly speaking) that the federal government spends money (as I understand it): (a) the money is given directly to the states; (b) the executive hands it out through one of its agencies; or (c) Congress specifies funds for some particular purpose. The last is called an "earmark". Some earmarks are bad, particularly when they are snuck into large spending bills anonymously at the last minute. Some support worthy projects which may be overlooked by the executive branch. But regardless, the ability to spend money on specific projects is a recognized power of Congress, and so it is unsurprising that Congress would defend its right to do so, even in the extremely unlikely event that it would decide not to exercise that right.

And I don't think that anyone has accused the Republicans of turning into Democrats; as Meriadoc Brandybuck would say, that would be "a compliment; and so, of course, not true"

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[info]heef
2009-03-06 02:09 am UTC (link)
It's not the amount that's objectionable, it's what it's being spent on. If you can honestly look at some of the crap that made it into that bill and say that (a) it should be spent and (b) it does not make a liar out of Obama, then, well, I think you need to seriously reconsider your views of government's role. Both sides call it pork. Obama calls it pork. It has a derisive name because it is wasteful, inefficient, and abusive of taxpayer dollars.

Your definition of what an earmark is is almost entirely incorrect; I recommend you look it up before taking the time to discuss it. And if you don't think that anyone has accused the Republicans of turning into Democrats, then you simply haven't been paying attention since 1994.

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[info]scottahill
2009-03-06 02:23 am UTC (link)
If you want to convince me, give me examples, along with some proof that it's in fact wasteful and not just funny-sounding (i.e. volcano monitoring, though why anyone would think volcano monitoring was frivolous, I really have no idea).

Earmark: Merriam-Webster lists the verb to earmark as "to designate (as funds) for a specific use or owner". Wikipedia says "In US politics, an earmark is a congressional provision that directs approved funds to be spent on specific projects or that directs specific exemptions from taxes or mandated fees." What reference are you using?

I'll concede the last statement about no one saying Republicans are turning into Democrats, although they certainly are not.

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[info]heef
2009-03-06 02:42 am UTC (link)
You have a strange definition of "certainly" - it apparently means "in your opinion rather than in the opinion of many credible national pundits on both sides of the aisle that have written about it at length for a decade and a half in major news outlets everywhere so that the whole world can see."

If you intend to claim that any project that sounds like it has any worth whatsoever is a viable target for federal spending, then I think we've found the problem. You can spend an infinite amount of money on that. Should my taxpayer dollars be paying for a planetarium in Chicago? Why is Illinois not purchasing that with state money, or Chicago, with municipal bonds? There is a vast list, mere clicks away from the original article (and many others of similar ilk over the past week), of that kind of spending, so don't pretend that I'm lacking in examples here just because you haven't read up on it. The government is not here to spend money on anything that sounds neat. It's here to spend money on things that serve the national interest. Once one decides otherwise, the floodgates are open to spend arbitrarily, which is absurd and unsubstainable (see the current economic crisis for an obvious example.) The burden of proof is on you: what about each and every one of those extra line items serves the national interest, or acts as a substantial economic stimulus, in a meaningful way? (If you reply with "any money spent is stimulative by definition", or any variant, I'm done with this conversation, because that line is tired, and flawed in ways that any student of high school economics should slam their head into the desk in agony upon hearing it.)

Neither of your definitions alluedes to any of the problems with earmarks turning into pork (which, apparently, you are okay with in the first place for some unknown reason.) Further along in the article you mentioned, it says "Congressional earmarks are often defined loosely as anonymously authored guarantees of federal funds to particular recipients in appropriations-related documents." Then, the article goes on to "see also: Pork Barrel", which should be a red flag. Earmarks are derided because they are abused, and there is a long litany of examples dating back ages. It's only been since 2006 that you could even find out who had attached a given earmark to a bill (in part, proposed by then-Senator Obama because he claimed to hate them with such passion.)

In any case, Obama campaigned against them, and now he's about to sign a bill chock full of them instead of vetoing it - a triumph of politics over principle (Yes we can! Change! YAY!). If your definition of "hypocrisy" is similar to your definition of "certainly", then I see why you're okay with it. This is old politics, the kind people hate, the kind he campaigned against, and he is, right now, failing to deliver on the change that anyone but the most ardent lovers of runaway, arbitrary, haphazard spending, and pork barrel projects, can believe in.

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[info]heef
2009-03-06 08:07 am UTC (link)
"alludes".

/bow

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