The audacity of earmarks

      News flash: the Senate is full of righteous indignation for the first time since…um, what day is it?  Let’s say since they were indignant at Wall Street bankers (before which they were angry about peanut butter, then about tax cheaters, then about the stimulus, then about corrupt Illinoisans…basically, it’s been a long two months).

      Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) took to the floor visibly angry, vowing to cut out $7.7 billion worth of earmarks from the $410 billon omnibus spending bill passed by the House.  Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) was shocked, shocked that every member of the Republican leadership in that body had carved out some nice pork for themselves.  Not to mention that former Senators Obama, Biden, Clinton, and Salazar were able to carry over a few earmark requests from last year.

            I can see their point.  The federal appropriations process is a public good, and thus it is subject to more abuse and less scrutiny than a single person balancing his checkbook.  Our debt is large enough and some of the projects—McCain mentioned pig odor research—are not going to benefit the vast majority of Americans.  In the most egregious cases, earmarks are used to repay the favors of large and influential donors and implemented with little oversight or cost-benefit analysis.

            At the same time, thank goodness that politicians can earmark funds.  Their job is to provide federal funding for activities in their states.  Most state and local governments are required to balance their budgets and are not able to run up debts in paying for often beneficial projects such as research, transportation, and community services.  True, a Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska might not be the best use of an earmark, but funding to prevent another bridge disaster like in Minneapolis through repairs is undoubtedly a worthy cause.  Remember, when someone else gets it, it’s called “pork.”  When your state or district gets it, it’s called “infrastructure investment.”

            Besides, in an era of $700 billion stimuli and multi-billion-dollar industry bailouts, $7 billion spread over 50 states is the equivalent of $140 million per state—less than my local school board’s budget.  Many of the projects are only in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Still, I understand the need for lawmakers to be faithful stewards of the public’s money.  I don’t think outlawing earmarks is the answer, but I do think that some social benefit should accrue from federal funding to the projects supported by politicians. 

      I’m not fit to judge the efficacy of pig odor research (by the way, it’s a rare twist of humor that a piece of pork spending should involve actual pork), but if the lawmaker who sponsored it can give a darn good reason as to why that particular earmark would benefit humanity, then I would defer to them.  They are, after all, elected to serve the interests of their respective districts.  (Maybe that district has a large number of bacon factories.)  It’s how they can answer the question, “What have you done for me lately?” during each election cycle.

      In the end, we should trust our representatives to be responsible with the federal budget as with any other public good—rivers, parks, schools—by ensuring an open airing of their financial requests and an open accounting of their expenditures.

Obama picks up crucial endorsement from American racists

Hattiesburg, MS—Gathered outside of the county courthouse under sunny skies, over two dozen of the country’s most prominent racists rallied to support Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in what is seen as a surprise endorsement in the final days of the election.

            “Don’t get me wrong, I still irrationally hate [Obama] because of his skin color,” said Cletus Simpson, president of the Alabama Citizens League, “but damned if I didn’t hate George W. Bush a million times more.”  Simpson was one of twenty-five racists who made the pilgrimage to Hattiesburg to express support for Obama’s message of change.

            “My Daddy, God bless his soul, would disown me for doing this,” said Gerald F. “Junior” Barnes, II, a lifelong racist from Texas. “However, he died during the Clinton administration when the economy was doing well and when we weren’t losing money on Wall Street.  So, I think he’d understand what I’m doing here today.”  Flanked by Confederate flags and Obama banners, the message was mixed.  “I still ain’t sure if he’s a Muslim or not, but if he can get me and my family to afford health insurance for once in our lives, he’s one Muslim that’s got my vote,” Barnes told a cheering crowd.

            Racists have long been a demographic whose support has eluded the Democratic Party.  Experts are amazed that not only has this endorsement fallen on the side of the Democrats, but in favor of the first African American candidate from either major party.  “I wouldn’t call this necessarily a historic moment for race relations,” cautioned Janet Bourbanis, a professor of political science at Emory University.  “Just as women will not automatically vote for Sarah Palin and black people will not automatically vote for Obama, it would be a mischaracterization of racists to think that they will always vote for the white guy.  They care about climate change, the economy, and energy independence, too.”

            The response from the Obama campaign has been lukewarm.  “While we stand firmly against the ideological principles of this group of people, we nevertheless are glad that a substantial portion of American racists from traditionally-Republican areas of the country believe that Barack Obama will provide the change that we need,” said campaign spokesman Michael Luminatti.

            Some at Hattiesburg made it clear that their endorsement did not mark an end to their racist sentiments.  “Well, I’ll tell you what: if this country were doing well…if gas were cheap, if I could put my daughter through college, if I didn’t have to worry about my bank failing, there’s no way in hell I’d vote for him,” said Patricia McInnis of the Tennesse White Alliance.  She added, “but now that George Bush has messed up this country more than any president in history, I really believe that Barack Obama was sent from God to save us.”

            Two weeks ago former Secretary of State Colin Powell caused a stir when he endorsed Barack Obama as the more “intellectually curious” candidate, and condemned his own party’s smears of the Democratic politician as a Muslim and a terrorist.  However, the racists’ endorsement has shocked the Republican establishment in a greater way.  “If Obama can bring even the racists together and say, ‘You know what?  We don’t need another four years of failed leadership,’ I think it’s clear that this country can expect great things from him,” said Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel on Meet the Press.

            The timing of the endorsement may be attributed to the arrest of two southern men who had planned to go on a killing rampage across the South, executing African Americans and assassinating Obama in the name of “white power.” 

            “Look, that [expletive] is crazy.  It’s folks like that who give racists a bad name,” said Larry Fenmore of Appalachia, Virginia.  “Most of us are moderates.  We’ll yell at a Mexican every once in a while, but we don’t even burn crosses in front of black churches anymore.  That’s just tacky showboating.”

            The McCain campaign had no official response, but Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin briefly mentioned at a rally in Columbus, Ohio that Barack Obama “is palling around with supremacists.”

Too Many Virginias

        Starting in 2006 with the election of Democratic Senator Jim Webb, Virginia has been working to correct its conservative tilt—we can now hold up two Democratic governors, a Democratic state senate, a soon-to-be Democratic second senator, and a soon-to-be Democratic president as products of an evolving Virginia electorate.
        Now, even though many Virginia Democrats are more conservative than their counterparts nationwide, this does seem to indicate a noticeable shift in ideology, right?  Unfortunately, you would be completely wrong to think so. Such a scenario is not the provenance of “real Virginia,” as John McCain’s spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer pointed out on MSNBC.

        No, the liberal Democrat insurgents have forded the Potomac River, invaded Northern Virginia, turned it into “communist country,” and are now seeking to destroy iconic, historic, “real” Virginia. It must really grind the gears of “real” Virginia to look up at Fairfax County, the largest jurisdiction in the D.C.-metro area, and see a population where one-third of residents are non-white; where one-third speak a language other than (or in addition to) English; where the median household income is the highest in the nation; where the public schools are consistently ranked as some of the best nationwide; where the Metro subway system is the second-busiest in the country; where 93 percent of adults have high school degrees and 60 percent have college diplomas. How could anyone look at that hellscape and not see the specter of a Soviet Russia looming on the horizon? 

        Here is a glimpse of what these imposter Virginians stand for.  Is your blood boiling?  Does this want to make you go out, buy a gun, hang up an American flag, and spit on a Mexican?  Then you might just be a real Virginian.

Source: The Washington Post

        Pfotenhauer’s comment may have been offensive to Northern Virginians, but I think it was more offensive to those in the rest of Virginia. This woman seems to have a stereotyped image of Virginia right out of the 19th century: a sharecropping, immigrant-hating, big city-fearing, pickup truck-driving, tobacco-chewing, uneducated populace.  One-third of the state’s population resides in Northern Virginia, and for several years the boundaries have crept south into exurban communities whose residents make the arduous commute into the District for their federal jobs.  But those people—the ones working to keep the country running—are just the fringe radicals tainting Virginia’s bucolic image.

        Perhaps she thinks that “real” Virginia is that embodied by Fifth District Congressman Virgil Goode, who led the fight against Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison from being sworn in on the Koran in 2007.  These were his words of foreboding: “I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary.”  Fear of the first Muslim (American-born) to be elected to Congress?  Maybe that sentiment polls well in “real” Virginia, but I cannot imagine either of the two soon-to-be-outgoing Republican congressmen in Northern Virginia to expect to be reelected with that kind of bigotry.

        Or maybe she reasons that the “real” Virginia is that part of the state to which former Senator George Allen welcomed a young Indian-American from Northern Virginia; only it was in the context of calling him “Macaca” (later deemed a racist slur).  I wonder what ever happened to that guy….

        Northern Virginians at times have mused about the possibility of secession from the rest of Virginia.  It should be noted that in 1861 West Virginia separated from Virginia due to unequal legislative influence, as well as differences in economy and communal attachment to the South.  Today’s Northern Virginia faces the totally unrelated problems of unequal legislative influence, as well as differences in economy and communal attachment to the South.  If John McCain is indicating that he would support admitting the state of North Virginia to the Union so as to keep “real Virginia” in its pristine condition of 1950s-era standards of living, this Northern Virginian thinks that is the change we need.

Gaffe Fest ‘08: VP Debate Redux

      It would be convenient if every aspect of life could be measured in the same binary terms as a sports game.  You could see who was winning, or losing; who was gaining points; who had the better defense or offense; who wasn’t playing fair; and who was trying to pull off a Hail Mary in desperation. 

      But alas, most things are too nuanced for a good-bad analysis, especially the vice-presidential debate.  It’s not that both candidates were equally good (though they were pretty equally bad), it’s just that the fans came to watch a smackdown, only to be greeted by a tame shuffleboard match.  Sarah Palin and Joe Biden’s responses were largely lacking candor and managed to convert each question into an on-message riff about the other guy’s utter incompetence.  It was largely a matter of style and not of substance—you cannot expect to take any fact or statistic presented at face value.  One person would say, “Candidate A voted against a bill containing tax cuts for the middle class,” but the other person responds, “That’s because the bill would have also killed 10,000 kittens.”  So I won’t pretend to crown a champion, but I will present a few thoughts about each player’s performance.

• 1. Sarah Palin 

      After weeks of playing the archetypal “dumb blonde and/or Governor of a sizeable state,” the McCain operatives succeeded in generating expectations of Palin that were so low you were in danger of tripping over them.  This debate undoubtedly was to mitigate the damage done from not being able to answer simple questions in interviews, such as which newspapers she read (“all of ‘em,” in case you were wondering); but she sure showed those assholes in the “liberal media filter.”  Not only could she deliver syntactical sentences, but she actually exuded warmth—winking to the nation and perking up a smile whenever a new thought crossed her mind.  It might have made her likeable—if you didn’t remember that she is utterly unqualified to run a country and will drive a stake into any semblance of a liberal social and economic agenda.

      While trying to win the folksiness-off with Biden by giving a “shout out” to third graders and joyously recounting how she took on the Alaska oil companies (for which her husband works), her rhetoric was cyclical: praise John McCain, attack Barack Obama, attack Joe Biden for at some point attacking Barack Obama; rinse, lather, repeat.  She later complained (or was that whining?) to Fox New’s Carl Cameron that she would have loved to talk directly to Americans without the elite media filter in her much-maligned interviews about Barack Obama’s plans to raise taxes and his reckless statements about Iraq and Afghanistan.  Well, she got 90 minutes to do just that and spent half of that time throwing out buzzwords and boasting about her exclusion from the “Washington elite.”  Talk about “more of the same.”  I saw nothing that resembled a candid conversation with Americans; remember, even Paris Hilton can memorize a political speech.  Any trace of sincerity would have been well-received.

• 2. Joe Biden

      If Palin’s strategy was to repeat “maverick” ad nauseum—as if it were a “Beetlejuice” method of getting the Democratic senator to disappear—Biden’s job was to prove how woefully wrong John McCain had been in Congress.  Not voting for renewable energy.  Not supporting the middle class.  Not wanting timetables for the troops.  Being too much like George Bush.  As Biden’s mother would say, “God love him, but he’s been dead wrong.”

      While the pundits might think that Biden rambles and repeats himself on simple concepts, I can’t help but wonder if that’s an excellent strategy to get average, attention-deficit, politically-unsavvy Americans (or the “Joe Sixpacks,” as one Republican vice-presidential candidate—Theodore Roosevelt, I believe—called them) to clue in to issues that are beyond their interest.  Either way, I am glad that the most endearing moment of the debate went to Biden; when over 70 million viewers saw him nearly cry while telling of his experience growing up poor, then becoming a single parent whose two sons fought for their lives after a car accident.  If there were any doubt to Hillary Clinton’s sincerity in New Hampshire, there is no question of Joe Biden’s here.

      Now unfortunately, neither ticket it seems to support giving homosexuals the ability to enter into civil unions/marriage.  I would be surprised if the Supreme Court during the next administration did not offer a ruling on this issue, but suffice it to say gay marriage is the now-most pressing civil rights conflict.  And while it was to be expected that Palin did not support this, she did offer this potentially-perplexing thought: she would be “tolerant of adults in America choosing their partners, choosing relationships that they deem best for themselves.”  This is tiptoeing very near to saying that by choosing relationships that are in their best interest, they are choosing to be gay.  Also disturbing was Biden’s willingness to have any redefinition “to be left to faiths and people who practice their faiths.”  Marriage has always been primarily a state affair (after all, the prohibition of marriage licensure is what prevents gay couples from marrying), and any spiritual element is auxiliary to the ceremony, not in the permit to marry.

• 3. Gwen Ifill

      Unlike Jim Lehrer, who tried pleading with the presidential candidates to talk directly to each other, she ran a tight ship.  Not only did she ask pointed questions, but she phrased them to maximize the relevance to each side.  While Ifill allowed them to wander back to their talking points, she adapted to their responses in order to directly ask the other candidate to respond to the charge.  No charges of bias could be made here, especially since Republicans cried foul in 2004 after she allowed John Edwards to attack Dick Cheney’s former employer, Halliburton, without extending Cheney’s time to respond.

      If anything, she was a bit too fair here—keeping the focus solely on the issues allowed the candidates to stick solely to their script.  Had she pressed Palin on some of the stupid statements made to other news outlets, Palin might have gotten a chance to redeem herself…or fall on her face again.  At the very least, Ifill should not have let Palin challenge her by saying, “I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or [Biden] want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.”  If Palin wants to really hammer home the point that she is a “maverick,” bucking the moderator and the rules of civilized debate was not quite the way to paint an even-keeled picture of herself.

Word of G-O-D? Or of G-O-P?

      On Sunday, thirty-three pastors across the country arranged to purposefully violate a federal law that prohibits the endorsement of particular political candidates.  An IRS code forbids non-profits or tax exempt-organizations to “participate in, or intervene in…any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office.”

      Yet this did not stop one of them, Ron Johnson, Jr. of Crown Point, Indiana from putting up slides showing Obama’s opposition to the “sanctity of life,” a concept which he defined as simply nominating pro-life Supreme Court judges and opposing marriage as being anything other than a union between a man and woman.  Furthermore, he called these issues the two “that transcend all others.”  According to the Washington Post:

[When] Asked why he felt the need to discuss the candidates by name and to be explicit in rejecting Obama and his pro-choice views, Johnson said he must connect the dots because he is not sure that all members of his congregation can do so on their own.

“I mean, these people are being expected to swallow copious amounts of bullshit each week,” Johnson said.  “If they started thinking on their own, they wouldn’t believe anything I tell them about the Big Guy Upstairs.”  He added, “the President, I mean.”

             Okay, that last part is a trace of my cynicism towards religion showing through, but seriously, how can this man have the chutzpah to assert that abortion and gay marriage are what will define this election?  Of all the improvements that are needed in our society, these are two issues that least affect Americans individually and the country as a whole.  Most people merely want their finances to be secure, their lifestyle to be comfortable, a stimulating job, and a promising future for their children.  That seems to move the credit crunch, creation of affordable (renewable energy), and tuition assistance to the top of the list.  Could allowing gay men to marry destroy everything that America stands for?  Possibly.  But if the wars in the Middle East are not concluded and the economy is not restructured and a solution to our oil addiction is not implemented, we will have more important problems to worry about than a comparatively minor courtroom dilemma.

      Secondly, it seems that this pastor operates under very narrow definition of what constitutes the “sanctity of life:” fetuses get rights, homosexuals do not.  Aside from this cognitive dissonance, what about promoting the “less transcendent” ways to preserve human life, such as making health care more accessible?  Or sending food and medicine to Africa?  Or withdrawing troops from combat in Iraq?  Or improving vehicular emissions standards to reduce pollution?  Or building affordable housing for the homeless?  All of these important programs improve the standard of living either at home or around the world and result in fewer people being lost to disease, poverty, or guns.  Rev. Johnson needs to just roll up his sleeves and do what servants of the community always do so well: provide help to those who need it.  Don’t worry about what Supreme Court judges think about issues of religion; they make the rules according to the words of our Founders, not the words of God.

      Finally, it is entirely inappropriate for the clergy to preach adherence to one particular candidate over another.  Of course, once they step outside the pulpit, they can campaign all they want.  Furthermore, they may even talk freely about how they feel on a particular issue.  But once they used their privileged position to imply that God would support a particular candidate, they are behaving irrationally and it would only be a small leap to begin persecuting those of opposing ideologies in the name of the Lord.  America is polarized enough in the public square—let church be the one place to remove oneself from partisanship and focus on how to improve one’s own soul.  It’s what Jesus would do.