Why isn't anybody connectiong the dots between Denny Hastert's corrupt land deal and our national security? As far as I understand this, he put in an earmark to fund a sprawl highway on the outer, outer fringes of Chicago exurbia, and then he made sure that the exits would be near land he owned. Then he sold the land for a tidy profit.
Now, aside from the corruption angle, which is the sort of sleaze that the gneral public can easily understand, there's also the "energy crisis angle:" Building that highway will result in sprawl, and the residents if the newly developed area will be driving around long distances, burning up gasoline and adding to our oil addiction. So not only is Hastert a corrupt sleazeball using taxpayer dollars to personally enrich himself, he's doing it in a way that dmages our country.
But there's more. Below the fold:
As is well known, our basic geopolitical strategy is essentially to secure our supply of petroleum. Our soldiers are deployed all ove the world to secure oil supplies, and the Iraq quagmire is just one example that got out of hand becuase of Bush's other neuroses. Hastert's sprawl development further increases our dependence on oil, and requires us to deploy soldiers to dangerous places, any of which could blow up into another Iraq or something worse. Thus, not only is Hastert a corrupt sleazeball using taxplayer dollars to personally enrich himself, not only is is he dmaging our economy by encouraging oil addicting sprawl, he's endangering our national security by keeping us addicted to oil asnd putting us in a position where having soldiers in dangerous places is a plausible thing to do.
The last thing Hastert's congressional disctrict needs is to become another suburbanized snarl of traffic and pollution. The only people who win are the real estate developers who cash out taking farmland out of production. I hope the voters in Hastert's district are aware of his efforts to tun their area into another Chicago suburb.
Has anybody connected the dots?