http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2941403Oh my.
ThomWV (1000+ posts) Fri Feb-29-08 10:09 AM
Original message
Poll question: Have You Ever Benefited From An Earmark?
There have been thousands of earmarks put in bills for dozens of years.
Here's the question: Have you ever benefited from an earmark?
As an example of what I mean I will tell you that we, my wife and I, have benefited. The road past our house was dirt, now its tared and chipped. Tared and chipped is sort of like paved, but about half. Its a lot better than it was. We have Senator Byrd to thank for it. There are a couple of museums we go to too.
How about you?
Poll result (8 votes)
No, earmarked money's never done anything for me. (4 votes, 50%)
Yes, I can think of one or more instances of ear marked funds enriching my life. (4 votes, 50%)
Is "tared and chipped" a real term, or did the big-pickup-truck-driving primitive mispell something?
Anyway.
Of course the primitives have benefited from earmarks, especially the biggest one in the federal budget, all the giveaway social programs.
Buzz Clik (1000+ posts) Fri Feb-29-08 10:34 AM
Response to Original message
1. I once sat in the Dole building in Kansas. Does that count?
It was built with earmarked funds from Bob Dole (duh).
realpolitik (1000+ posts) Fri Feb-29-08 10:37 AM
Response to Reply #1
2. And you didn't drop by?
Even though I live 4 blocks away?
Next time--
Just go to the highest spot in strawberry hill and look for the funny looking bicycle.
Buzz Clik (1000+ posts) Fri Feb-29-08 10:51 AM
Response to Reply #2
3. I wasn't very specific, and I apologize. Dole's money grabs have built several Dole Buildings.
Mine was in Manhattan. (Is there a strawberry hill in Manhattan? Don't think so...)
ProfessorGAC (1000+ posts) Fri Feb-29-08 10:54 AM
Response to Original message
4. I'm Not Sure
Maybe i've driven on a highway that was widened by a earmark. Not sure.
Maybe i went and walked the dog in a State Park that was an earmark.
We have a National Park (Midewin Tallgrass Prarie) about 2 miles north of town, and that may have been an earmark.
I'm all for transparancy and that, but i'm not sure that earmarks are inherently bad. If the greater good is served, and everyone gets to benefit, they're ok by me.
I think the earmark thing is a bit of a tempest in a teapot.
realpolitik (1000+ posts) Fri Feb-29-08 11:00 AM
Response to Original message
5. Yes, I have and I do not believe in them. Earmarks, as currently defined aren't even pork, they are pure lard.
They work against planned development and often serve the needs of real estate developers rather than citizens. Kansas City is number two in the nation for sprawl, and that is because our city planning became a function of Jessie Clyde Nichols real estate and Howard, Needles, Tammen, Etc engineering. after the rise of City Manager based administration in the fifties. We solved our racial tensions by fleeing out to successive rings of suburbia. The inner rings are rapidly failing economically and have crime rates worse than the inner city in some cases as their only real economic engines have moved down the highway.
Without smart growth in KC, this city is not going to survive the future price of gasoline. If they don't get a grip on fungal development, they are going to expand us into being a city that Detroit can look at and feel better.
But here we are, getting another huge earmark in the Paseo Bridge project. I am a Keynesian and I am not against public goods as economic stimulus, far from it, but you have to have a process that actually prioritizes what needs to be built, rather than just moving right into the EIS phase.
I cannot tell you how much more impressed I would have been with a Kit Bond library the size and location of the new sprint center than a state of the art automobile only bridge whose bike ped facilities are optional, in light of the pedestrian killed trying to get to his house in Harlem, MO (NKC-East) on foot, crossing an interstate highway bridge with no sidewalk or shoulder last month.
I am not against naming something for Kit Bond. But wouldn't it be nice if it was something with more utility than a replacement for an motorist-only bridge that has recently been fixed with a futuristic motorist only bridge that only encourages more bad development?
I might add that I seem to be very much in the minority in my view round here.
I dunno.
The buzzy one, further above, does have a point.
I don't think things should be named after still-living persons, much as we don't put still-living persons on currency and coinage and postage stamps. It seems antithetical to republican principles.
That having been said, one notices the vast majority of things named for still-living persons are still-living persons with a (D) after their name.
