Yesterday I was reading in dKos about the kind of reprehensible trading of pork-for-continued-war-support that was going to be in the next budget bill and was physically sick.
But it occurs to me that this is what the current (and decidedly ongoing) role of congresscritters is -- to bring back pork to their districts, never mind the actual cost of it both to the district and to the nation at large. It certainly doesn't have much to do with important stuff like Defending the Constitution or Oversight or the Common Good.
So much for doing the right thing, eh?
And this also brings the question of lobbyist money into it as it is the lobbyists that are generally the beneficiaries of the pork or pork-jects so enumerated.
With that fire smoldering I stumbled upon the following article in the LATimes this morning.
[follow me below]
Clinton rolls a sizable pork barrel By Tom Hamburger and Dan Morain
Since taking office in 2001, Clinton has delivered $500 million worth of earmarks that have specifically benefited 59 corporations. About 64% of those corporations provided funds to her campaigns through donations made by employees, executives, board members or lobbyists, a review by the Los Angeles Times shows.
$500M in Pork to her constituents? A half of a billion dollars. And it isn't just HRC that does this. It seems endemic to the breed. (Although she may have advantages that ambition for higher office and need for campaign capital might bring.)
This strongly reminds me of one of the reasons that the North was so upset at the South -- we'd keep reelecting the same people over-and-over (can you say Jesse Helms?) so they'd get that extra seniority. It had the advantage of "protecting vital interests" to the South like Tobacco or Cotton or back before 1860 that peculiar institution that we shall not get into in this diary.
But the point remains. Selling out your position, your constituents, your responsibility for a quick buck to get either reelected to a position or a higher position is REPREHENSIBLE. Whether we're talking about Charles "Chainsaw Charlie" Taylor whom we finally defeated in WNC last year or Tom DeLay (may he go to and ROT in prison), the gross abuses of Lobbying, Pork, and Incumbency need to be rectified.
And of course there is our "friend" Trent Lott who was somehow "persuaded" against his best judgement to vote for cloture on the nasty Medicare Drug Bill (remember that one? he was "permitted" to vote against it, but they really wanted him to allow cloture.) And now he only has a ONE YEAR COOLING OFF PERIOD because he had the foresight to resign now.
I admit that there are a few congresscritters that actually have some kind of ethics and feel responsibility toward the job they hold, but I don't see how it is possible that most of them can stay that way with the evils of Lobbying, Constant Campaigning, Pork, and the rewards of Incumbency.
[Note: This diary started out as a screed against HRC, but as I got farther into the rant, I find that K-Street, the effects of corporate financing, Pork and Lobbying that adversely affect the nation's tax code, and the likes of Joe Lieberman really p*ss me off and that it is hard to single her out in the face of all of this corruption. Yes, corruption.]