They’re Earmarking Our Tax Money For Their Own Pockets
Hello folks. This is Dan’s Opinion. He usually has one.
On March 29, 1968, now over 40 years, Nancye and Danny were married. Here we are attending the wedding of James Lee Lynch III and Jennifer on May 24, 2008 in Richmond, Virginia.
Yesterday, June 15, 2008, someone asked me if I was voting for a Democrat for president. I’m not much of a party man, but I stand for decency and Christian values. Both sides seem to be a little short on their support of my position. They both seem to support stealing public money as usual and maintaining laws which encourage and support perversion and dishonesty.
Why would someone think that I favored one party over the other? The main point of my recent letter to the editor of the local newspaper was that both parties need to clean up their act. Unfortunately, one paragraph was omitted.
The Danville, Virginia Register & Bee used the part about a republican who used his influence to make a million-dollar profit from a land deal.
The left-out paragraph, of about the same length, was about a democrat who earmarked almost $10 million dollars directly to relatives. Yesterday was Father’s Day. This congressman was the kind of father and uncle that every daughter and nephew dreams about. They pocketed most of the more than $9 million dollars of our hard earned tax money. The government apparently got nothing back.
Here is the entire content of my fair and balanced letter:
I read with interest your June 8, 2008 article on congressmen and their earmarks. Our federal government defines earmarks as “funds provided by the Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents Executive Branch merit-based or competitive allocation processes, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to manage critical aspects of the funds allocation process.” With a single long sentence, the government throws out the balance of power which our founding fathers intended between the Executive and Legislative branches. We should expect all our public representatives to be honest without profiting from their power.
When congressmen “circumvent” and “curtail” the power of the president, we are not talking about nickels and dimes here. One highway bill had 6,371 earmarks and the cost was more that 24 billion dollars (That’s nine zeros). And that’s just one bill, folks. A million here and a billion there; soon you are talking about a lot of money.
The president is charged with creating a budget, but all this earmark spending is outside the budget. Then the congressmen scream about deficit spending and blame the president. One candidate for president claims he will not sign bills with attached earmarks. But sometimes politicians seem to forget what they promise.
Secret earmarks are added to bills anonymously and without the knowledge of those who voted on the bill, but sometimes we discover whose pocket the money goes into. Before our recently retired Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives Dennis Hastert went home to pasture, he gave new meaning to highway robbery. Or did he just stand for minority interest; as in his interest and the interest of 12% of his constituents. It is reported that 88% of the local people opposed the project as destructive and unnecessary. I thought the House was intended to represent the people, not steal from them.
Fox News reported that Speaker Hastert earmarked over 200 million dollars of our tax money to construct a highway which swung out beside an existing highway near a property owned by Little Rock Trust. As it turned out the secret owner of the Arkansas-sounding trust was Hastert’s wife. A separate $55 million earmark was for one of the planned interchanges that would go in near his property. Shortly after the bill was passed, the Hasterts sold the land with more than a million dollars profit. After he was found out, Hastert said the deal “has nothing to do with the Prairie Parkway. I owned land, and I sold it, like millions of people do everyday.” Yeah Dennis, like the average Joe has the power to put a $200 million road by his property.
Then there is Pennsylvania congressman Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski, who demonstrated what nepotism really is. This lawmaker ear-marked almost $10 million in tax money to a company owned by his daughter and several nephews. According to experts in coal processing, the nephews are said to have known nothing about the process. Pennsylvania newspapers reported that the expensive project “never got off the drawing board” and out of the planning stage. After they pocketed the money, the company with few assets, filed bankruptcy and left millions of dollars owing to the congressman’s constituents. This congressman used his power to steal from the public twice.
Well, they took a vote and there was little support for ending earmarks. The powerful congressmen decided to continue ear-marks as usual. I guess the majority believed that they might themselves benefit from the process.
These are the same guys who passed the laws which made knowledge of stock trades punishable by long prison terms. We don’t see any television congressional hearings about congressmen getting rich from their inside knowledge which allows them to get public money in their private pocket. It seems that Congress is reluctant to pass any laws that might keep our representatives honest or to punish those who are not.
Danny Ricketts
Danville, Virginia
Check out our website at: http://www.rdricketts.com/
