Sopranos Without The Guns

Would it date me if I admitted that when I was growing up, "earmarks" were what the earpieces on your glasses carved into the sidewalls of your skull? Man, mine sure did. It was like walking around with my head in a portable vice.

Earmarks sure have changed since then. If I had even two, like I did a couple of generations ago, I could probably retire. But then, sure, that's what I'd do; I'm not nearly greedy enough to run for Congress.

And, sure, earmarks are a bipartisan commodity. The difference between the parties on this score - and it's worth a crapload more than just a dime - is that Democrats are total hypocrites about them:

The congressional spending season began with a blowup over earmarks in the House [Tues]day, as the first bill to reach a vote prompted a White House veto threat and scores of amendments from Republicans furious with Democrats' handling of pet-project spending in the measures.

Debate on the $36 billion homeland security bill, which would fund the Federal Emergency Management Agency, border security and counterterrorism measures, bogged down last night as Republicans pushed scores of amendments aimed at banning the use of counterterrorism money for designer handbags, puppet shows and other programs included in the legislation. Democrats, intent on passing eleven of the twelve appropriations measures before the July 4 recess, responded by vowing to stay through the weekend if needed to break the deadlock. ...

{*sigh} Did anybody really think that putting the party of Big Government back in charge of Congress would result in reduced federal spending and geniune "pork-busting"? C'mon, seriously. Pissing away taxpayer money on designer handbags and puppet shows and roads to nowhere is in Democrats' political genome, right there in the extra chromosome pair. That so many, yes, I'm gonna say it, idiot voters bought their "culture of corruption" asscrap last year is, to me, beyond infuriating, no matter how fat, dumb, and flabby the Republicans got and no matter that it was over a decade since the Dems had been in charge and voter attention spans are shorter than a penguin's inseam. The majority of "We, The People," simply have no excuse, and deserve every bit of contempt in which people like me hold them.

Which is doubtless one of several reasons why those very same voters are paying studious non-attention, though their contrived obliviousness is getting more difficult by the day.

Think this doggerell from Crazy Nancy will mollify them?

"Why don't we just leave this room today forgetting the word 'earmark'?" suggested Pelosi. "This is a way for . . . members to come together, sometimes in a bipartisan way, to have the Congress of the United States determine some of what is in the appropriations bills instead of just leaving it up to the White House."

Oh, God, help me, please. Much as I weary of the term "earmark," and of how my side of the aisle freaks out over the tiny fraction of the fiscal iceberg that peaks above the legislative water while, well, studiously ignoring the nine-tenths (plus) the lurks beneath the surface, mealy-mouthed double-talk never solved any problem outside of trying to make inconvenient scrutiny go away. That's all the Speakerette is trying to do with this pathetic ducking and dodging. Look how indiscretely frank she is in defending log-rolling. Now all of a sudden what was a "culture of corruption" under GOP rule has become, under their opposites, a heroic separation of powers stance guarding Congressional perogative from a power-mad Executive. You know, that inarticulate oaf at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue who never met a bloated appropriations bill he didn't like.

It is Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey's mission to take Pelosi's indiscretion and transform it into dirty, sneaking, underhanded, conniving skullduggery:

At least Republicans allowed earmark votes on the floor. Under Mr. Obey, earmarks won't be vetted in an Appropriations subcommittee, or at the Rules Committee, or on the floor. They will be kept secret before the House votes on spending bills, to be unveiled only later when it is time to prepare a final House-Senate conference report. Only then will backbenchers be able to raise questions about individual earmarks - in writing, to Mr. Obey's "staff," which will then get to decide whether the earmarks survive or not. Guess what "the staff" decision will be on an earmark requested by, say, Powerhouse Democrat Jack Murtha and a challenge raised by some first-term Republican from Amarillo?

That is akin to closing the barn door after the horse has become dried glue. And, of course, it completely stacks the deck in favor of the majority party. But then, what else would one expect? Particularly when the Democrats are running the show. Or, put another way, "fairness" and "ethics" are two more of their byzantine maze of one-way streets.

Want another case in point? How about Crazy Nancy turning the United States Air Force into her own, personal taxi service? Yeah, Denny Hastert set that precedent, but the Marin County bag lady is turning that winged taxi into a flying cross-town bus:

“It has been longstanding policy that, in the absence of a congressional spouse, the adult child of a member of Congress may accompany the member on official U.S. government travel abroad for protocol reasons and without reimbursing the U.S. Treasury,” Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami said. “Speaker Pelosi believes that a modern policy must reflect the professional responsibilities or health realities that might prevent a spouse from participating, and instead permit an adult child to fulfill the protocol needs of the official trip.”

Pentagon officials say the policy is that the Treasury must be reimbursed at commercial rates for children who accompany members on such trips, often called codels.

Pelosi’s office inquired about such travel on June 1, according to a Department of Defense memo obtained by The Hill. In a June 8 memo, the head of legislative affairs for the Pentagon, Robert L. Wilkie, told Defense Secretary Robert Gates that he sees Pelosi’s question as a first step toward challenging the policy.

“We were told that the Speaker would expect that members’ children (of married and unmarried [members of Congress]) would not have to reimburse the Treasury,” Wilkie wrote. “We expect future challenges from the House leadership on this policy.”

This is in addition to her staff, close family, distant relatives, friends, acquaintances, hangers-on, the guy who stayed at the DC Holiday Inn Express last night, plus her fellow California Donk reps and all their posses and groupies and, no doubt, pet lobbyists. Not one thin dime of it reimbursed, all on the nickel of thee and me.

But, hey, you people elected these crooks to "clean up Washington". Looks like it's gonna cost more than you thought it would.

Here's a shining example of the kind of freshly-scrubbed, golly-gee-whiz cretinism of which I speak:

Public Citizen, a watchdog group on government behavior, already has a complaint with the IRS regarding free family travel for politicians. That complaint focuses on lobbyist-provided travel, which PC believes should be taxable income for those with no official capacity on such trips. Craig Holman of PC sees no difference between privately-funded and publicly-funded air travel, and proclaims himself "disappointed" that Pelosi has acted to expand legislative perks rather than restrict them.

"Disappointed". Public-spirited citzen Craig Holman is "disappointed" that Nancy Pelosi is showing herself to be the filthy, lying douchbag people like me always said she was and always said she'd be if the "Republican-punishers" ever again became chowder-headed enough to shitcan the GOP and turn the keys to the kingdom back over to the malevolent Peter Pan Party.
I bet Craig Holman voted Democrat last fall, too. Which should consign him to being super-glued to the tailfin when he flies commercial for the duration of Crazy Nancy's speakeretteship. Moron.

Pelosi, lest you be allowed to forget, isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, either. Her ploy, via Obey-wan, to turn bringing home the bacon into a miasma of CIA-like secret intelligence drops was such a level of pristine public relations idiocy that even the hapless, disarrayed minority party couldn't avoid stumbling over an overripe partisan point-scoring opportunity:

I’m writing to update you on the status of our united Republican effort to compel the Democratic majority to abandon its plan for slush funds for secret earmarks.

A tentative agreement has been reached between Republican and Democratic leaders – an agreement that represents a victory for House Republicans. The terms of the agreement are as follows:

* Democrats will abandon their plans to pass appropriations bills with slush funds for secret earmarks. The plan announced last month by Chairman Obey to keep all earmarks secret until “air-dropping” them into conference reports will be dropped, effective immediately. Two appropriations bills (Homeland Security, Military Quality) that include little or no earmarks will move forward. Following consideration of these two bills, all ten remaining appropriations bills will come to the floor with their earmarks fully disclosed and subject to challenge by any Member. In the unique case of the Energy & Water bill, the earmarks will move to the floor in a package separate from the non-earmark portion of the bill, but (again) the earmarks will be fully disclosed and subject to challenge by any Member. In short: the Democrats’ slush funds for secret earmarks are dead.

* Democrats will restore the 2006 House Republican earmark reforms for appropriations bills. This rules change will go into effect immediately after the House completes action on the Homeland Security and Military Quality appropriations bills, which include little or no earmarks. This aspect of the agreement will restore a key element of the 2006 GOP reforms repealed by the Democratic leadership in 2007....

We’ll let you know more as we know it. In the meantime, please know how proud I am of our House Republican team. We've taken a principled stand together on behalf of the American people. And if we continue to stand together, we will succeed in bringing meaningful change to the way in which Washington spends the taxpayers' money. Thank you for the role you’ve played in making this victory happen.

Whoop-de-doo. The remnants of the leadership team that led the GOP back to the minority now celebrate the restoration of the status quo that sent them there. Wow, I'm ready to catapult myself into brick walls now - aren't you?

Yeah, I guess every comeback has to start somewhere. But, sheesh, what's the next battle? Shaming Crazy Nancy out of plunging necklines?