Saturday, August 29, 2009

435 Fiefdoms

In watching the classic Monty Python classic on TV the other day, "Monty Python And The Holy Grail", it occurred to me that we are currently living many aspects of that King Arthur movie in America today. Consider just a short list of examples of recent wasteful government spending/earmarks/pork programs:
  • Pennsylvania Republican Congressman John Peterson got $500,000 of Federal taxpayer money allocated to his Congressional district to buy 21 train cabooses that were to be converted into a "caboose motel." (source: The Week Magazine, April 25, 2008)
  • South Carolina Democratic Congressman James Clyburn got $3,000,000 of Federal taxpayer money allocated to his Congressional district for an organization called the First Tee whose website says that its mission is to "promote character development and life-enhancing values through the game of golf." (source: The Week Magazine, April 25, 2008)
  • Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman John Murtha has been called the "King Of Pork," most notably for getting at least $150,000,000 of Federal taxpayer money allocated to his home district to build out the local area airport and put his name on it. CNN put the estimate at closer to $200,000,000 and according to numerous sources including www.spectator.org, $8,000,000 was spent on a state-of-the-art radar system several years ago that has NEVER been used. One reason it has never been used is that the airport serves about 20 passengers a day on average and handles very few flights. Murtha also got $800,000 allocated from the latest stimulus package to fix the second runway at the airport (why the need a second runway is beyond me and why it needs to be fixed to handle so few passengers and so few flights is way beyond me.) Oh, one more thing, the only flights in and out of the airport are to Washington DC. According to the www.spectator.org, the American taxpayer has subsidized every passenger's usage of the airport to the tune of $1,200 per person per flight.
  • According to an AP story on August 26, 2009, a sleepy Montana border checkpoint, that sees about three travelers a day, will get $15,000,000 under Obama's stimulus plan even though it was ranked as marginal on a government border priority list. The town where the checkpoint is has a population of 71 and handled only $63,000 worth of freight traffic in the whole year. It also has an unemployment rate of only 4%, hardly in need of a stimulus. Why? Because the two Montana Democratic Senators persuaded the government to make it a priority even though the Lardeo, Texas checkpoint, which serves more than 55,000 people a day and about 4,200 trucks a day, and which was rated among the government's top priorities, will get no stimulus money.

These types of events repeat themselves thousands of times every year, misallocating hard earned taxpayer money inefficiently and and, in many cases, down right stupidly. Thus, the Monty Python analogy. We no longer live in the United States of America. We live in a loose federati0n of 435 Congressional districts/fiefdoms, each operated by a King Author-like figure (your respective member of Congress), whose seemingly sole purpose in life is too plunder the wealth of other fiefdoms' peasants and bring that plunder back to their own fiefdom to keep their peasants happy (and themselves in power).

Not only do these faux knights waste our money, they also waste a lot of time roaming the country side looking for their plunder. This is time that could be better spent fixing some real problems in this country, failing public schools, drug addiction problem, lack of a national energy strategy, Social Security heading for bankruptcy, etc. "Love My Country, Loathe My Government"'s Step 1 and Step 44 would directly reduce these earmarks and hopefully get the political class more focused on issues that really make a difference in Americans' lives. Words of an unknown author come to mind: "There are always too many Democratic Congressmen and too many Republican Congressmen and never enough United States Congressmen."

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