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Paul Hodes for Senate
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LITTLETON-The town has proclaimed tomorrow Judd Gregg Day, to formally recognize the contributions U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg has made to the town over the years.
...There will be a ceremony tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. in the newly renovated Littleton Opera House honoring Gregg and featuring local and state dignitaries, including State Rep. Brien Ward, who will be introducing Gregg, and Executive Councilor Ray Burton. There will be a ribbon cutting for the Littleton Opera House and Town Building as well as a Littleton Main Street groundbreaking ceremony. A color guard from the Veterans of Foreign Wars will also be present and the Littleton High School Band will play the National Anthem.
...Among the contributions being recognized are the funds Gregg has helped bring to the town for various town projects. One of the largest projects, according to organizers, was getting funds for the Littleton Industrial Park, which has brought in millions of dollars of tax revenues over the years.
Dear Politicians Public Servants out there of any party:
To those of us who aren't politicians public servants, which would be like 99.9% of us, hearing you go on and on and on about the evils of earmarks one day, and then on the next becoming King of the Village because of your earmarks, is puzzling at best, and nausea-inducing at worst.
Also, anyone who can point me to some Lakoffian words on how these two contradictory political narratives manage to co-exist peacefully, please feel free in the comment thread.
This is over a week old, but I didn't want the HB436 focus to let this worthwhile new bill from Paul Hodes go unmentioned, especially since it received favorable treatment from the NYT:
Grateful politicians deny that their gratitude has any impact on their policy decisions - that would be illegal. Members could do away with all suspicions, and any possible temptations, by signing on now to the cold-turkey proposal of two Democrats, Paul Hodes of New Hampshire and Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. It would bar lawmakers from taking contributions from anyone who benefits from their budget earmarks.
More on the bill from Hodes' release:
"This is a matter of right and wrong. It is wrong that legislators request earmarks for companies or organizations and then turn around and take campaign contributions from them," Congressman Paul Hodes said. "It isn't against the law now, but it should be. We need to hold Congress to a higher standard."
Every so often I've had occasion to wonder about the difference between "pork," which is something Democrats are often accused of pushing through the federal appropriations process, and this year's widespread topic of discussion in Washington, the "earmark."
Aside from the fact that "earmark" seemed to surface most frequently in the context of not having been included at a particular point in the process of funding our national priorities, my interest was probably sparked by a long-held aversion to people turning down the corners of a page to mark their place in a book--a personal quirk which, oddly enough, led me to dismiss something that's clearly not related to books or even reading. (I accept that most legislators don't have time or the interest in actually reading the laws they vote for or against).
(But God forbid NH get its highway money, right? Thanks for a great post, Kathy. - promoted by Mike Caulfield)
Senator* John E. Sununu, protege of Ted Stevens, has been selling himself as a fiscal conservative throughout his political career. But, while Sununu was sitting at the same committee table with his mentor, Sununu didn't say "boo" or even "gulp" or even "hey" while Ted Stevens was shipping billions of dollars in our tax dollars to Alaska:
Taxpayers for Common Sense has released the last four years of earmark data for Alaska to help create an understanding of how powerful Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) has remained as an appropriator. The new research has found that Senator Stevens has secured or played a significant role in securing more than 891 earmarks worth $3.2 billion, which comes to $4,872 per capita over the last four years. This is more than 18 times the national average of $263 per capita for the same four years.
This number is higher than the numbers reported by others because TCS researchers have obtained the locations of many of the defense earmarks which typically are not disclosed.
This week's Bill Moyers' Journal has an excellent expose on earmarks made by congress members to bring home the pork. Earmarks are entered into the budget after it is passed by Congress.
Moyers website at PBS has links to a couple of organisations that track earmarks. I looked up those that come to NH.
Darn! they are for hospitals and youth centers and visiting nurse associations and HUD housing and things like that. Seemingly, not a single military item that the military doesn't want.
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