A recent Washington Post article did a fabulous job of documenting the unbelievable waste of taxpayer wealth that our politicians in Washington continually commit in the name of earmarks and personal/family enrichment. The article listed out some of the Federal expenditures that specific members of Congress championed, how they personally profited from each abuse of taxpayer wealth, and their defense of the waste. The details of the article can be accessed online at the following site:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/capitol-assets/public-projects-private-interests/#
Without further delay, the following is your political class at work, for themselves, for their business, and for their family members, but not for you:
•Rep. Robert B. Aderholt (R - Ala.) - Since 2008, Aderholt has helped secure about $440,000 for the University of Montevallo while his wife served on the university's board of trustees.
•Rep. Todd Akin (R - Mo.) - Between 2005 and 2009, Akin helped secure $3.3 million to upgrade part of Route 141 in his district west of St. Louis. Less than a half-mile east of Route 141, Akin and his family own nine acres. Akin's family has applied to construct six homes on the land.
•Rep. Robert E. Andrews (D - N.J.) - Andrews has helped secure $3.3 million over the past decade for a scholarship program at Rutgers School of Law in Camden, N.J., where his wife is an associate dean in charge of scholarships and special legal programs.
•Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R - Md.) - Bartlett, since 2005, has helped secure about $4.5 million toward improving Interstate 270 and Buckeystown Pike. From there, Buckeystown Pike leads south and west to Bartlett's home, his farm and rental properties that earn the lawmaker up to $150,000 a year.
•Rep. Rob Bishop (R - Utah) - From 2007 to 2009, Bishop requested earmarks worth more than $1.5 million for Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. His son, Shule, was hired there in 2010 as a state government lobbyist.
•Rep. Sanford D. Bishop Jr. (D - Ga.) - News organizations in Georgia reported that Bishop helped secure nearly $200,000 in 2008 and 2009 for a middle school mentoring program that employed Bishop's stepdaughter and her husband.
•Rep. Corrine Brown (D - Fla.) - Between 2005 and 2010, Brown helped secure $21.9 million for six clients of a lobbying firm where her daughter works.
•Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D - NC) - Butterfield has helped obtain $817,500 over the past few years toward revitalizing buildings in Wilson, N.C. The lawmaker owns 19 properties within three-quarters of a mile of the project.
•Rep. Norm Dicks (D - Wash.) - In 2008, Dicks, as an appropriations chairman, secured a $1.82 million earmark for a Washington state environmental agency where his son worked as executive director.
•Rep. Kay Granger (R - Tex.) - Over the past decade, Granger has helped obtain $51.9 million in earmarks toward a project to makeover downtown Fort Worth and reroute the Trinity River. Until 2010, Granger co-owned a condominium building with her son about a half-mile south of the project. Her son is director of the group in charge of the project.
•Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey (D - N.Y.) - In Saugerties, a village in upstate New York, Hinchey in 2005 earmarked $960,000 to upgrade downtown streets. In 2009, he secured $800,000 to overhaul sewer lines. Hinchey is a partner in a hotel development in the heart of the village and values his interest at $250,000 to $500,000.
•Rep. Rubén Hinojosa (D - Tex.) - In 2009, Hinojosa obtained a $665,000 earmark to help widen a road next to a 3.7-acre commercial property that his family partnership was developing and near the family food processing plant in Mercedes, Tex.
•Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D - Tex.) - Jackson Lee helped secure about $5.3 million to the University of Houston in 2009 and 2010 while her husband was vice president of student affairs and vice chancellor of student affairs for the university system.
•Sen. Tim Johnson (D - S.D.) - In 2008, Johnson, along with seven other Senators, added $4 million to a Pentagon program to fund math and science education called STARBASE. Johnson's wife worked as a contract employee evaluating the program between 2005 and 2011
•Rep. Jack Kingston (R - Ga.) - Kingston co-sponsored a $6.3 million earmark in 2008 to replenish the beach on Tybee Island, where he owns a cottage about 900 feet from the beach. "It's absurd to suggest that this benefits me," he said. No, Congressman, it's absurd to think it doesn't.
•Rep. Robert E. Latta (R - Ohio) - Latta co-sponsored $2.8 million in earmarks in 2009 and 2010 for water and wind research at Bowling Green State University at the time that his wife was a university senior vice president.
•Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D - Ill.) - Lipinski cosponsored $2.5 million in earmarks since taking office in 2005 for rail projects overseen by the Chicago Transit Authority. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that the CTA is a lobbying client of his father, William Lipinski, a former congressman. The CTA has paid William Lipinski $766,330.20 in lobbying fees since 2007.
•Rep. Frank A. LoBiondo (R - N.J.) - Since 2008, LoBiondo has helped secure $4.68 million for beach monitoring and nourishment along the shores of Ventnor City, N.J., where he and his wife own a home about 850 feet from the beach.
•Rep. Candice S. Miller (R - Mich.) - Miller secured a $486,000 earmark in 2006 to help add a 14-foot-wide bike lane to a new bridge over the Clinton River, about 900 feet from her home. "People earmark for all kinds of things," Miller said. "I'm pretty proud of this; I think I did what my people wanted. Should I have told them, 'We can never have this bike path complete because I happen to live by one section of it.' No, Congresswoman, you should have told your "people" to pay for it themselves without Federal money.
•Rep. Gary G. Miller (R - Calif.) - Miller secured $1.28 million in earmarks in 2005 to help repave, re-landscape and install new drains along Grand Avenue in Diamond Bar, Calif. The project, previously reported by The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin of Ontario, upgraded an access road for a residential and retail development that he co-owned with a campaign donor. Miller sold the property months after securing the earmark.
•Rep. Ed Pastor (D - Ariz.) - Between 2005 and 2010, Pastor earmarked about $4 million from an Energy Department agency tasked with securing the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile to a program for at-risk teenagers at Maricopa Community Colleges. His daughter runs the program.
•Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D - Calif.) - Over the past decade, the House minority leader helped secure $50 million in earmarks toward a light-rail project that provides direct access to San Francisco's Union Square and Chinatown for neighborhoods south of Market Street. Pelosi's husband owns a four-story commercial building blocks from Union Square.
•Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (D - W.Va.) - In 2005, Rahall helped secure $20 million toward a parking garage with a bus and taxi facility in downtown Beckley. The project is about a half-mile from his son's home, less than one mile from a commercial property owned by the lawmaker, and a little more than a mile from his residence.
•Sen. Harry M. Reid (D - Nev.) -In 2004 and 2005, the Senate majority leader secured $21.5 million to build a bridge over the Colorado River, linking the gambling resort town of Laughlin, Nev., with Bullhead City, Ariz. Reid owns 160 acres of undeveloped land in Bullhead City.
•Rep. Harold Rogers (R - Ky.) - Rogers has helped earmark $7.1 million since 2002 to a project that made over a half-mile strip of College Street where Rogers has his residence. The project narrowed parts of the street to slow traffic, buried overhead utilities, rebuilt sidewalks, paved streets and installed new driveway aprons, curbs and decorative lamps.
•Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D - Md.) - Ruppersberger helped obtain $187,000 in 2008 toward a beach replenishment survey of the Ocean City shoreline. He and his wife own two condominium units there.
•Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R - Ala.) - Shelby has earmarked more than $100 million toward rebuilding downtown Tuscaloosa, Ala., where he owns an office building. The street in front of the building will be redone as part of phase two of the project.
•Rep. John F. Tierney (D - Mass.) - Since 2005, Tierney has helped secure about $3.5 million toward a 950-space parking garage and commuter rail station in Salem, Mass. The facility will be about a quarter-mile from a commercial building the Congressman co-owns.
•Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R - Fla.) - Over the past decade, Young helped secure $73 million for companies that employed his sons. One worked as a security administrator in the St. Petersburg office of Science Applications International Corp., a defense contractor; the other as an outreach specialist for the National Forensic Science Technology Center. Young's spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. Young told the Times in a 2008 story that the earmarks were based on merit, not because the programs employed his sons.
They continue to make us so not proud with their focus on themselves and the lack of focus on the problems that afflict most Americans. These national issues and problems included a lost war on drugs, a failing public education system, leaky borders, sky high and growing national debt, persistent and high unemployment and under employment, a divided nation, etc.
Between making their family wealthy, their campaign donors fat and content, and their adulterous affairs and other criminal activities, it should come as no surprise that our politicians do not have enough time to eventually getting around to resolving the major issues of our times.
Please visit our Presidential website, "The United States Of Purple," at:
http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/
The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.
The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/
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