Are Democrats earmarking A.T.M. machines: Culture of Corruption II

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, touting a New Direction

“Democracy is a contact sport, and I’m not going to be shy about asking for money for my community, my guess is that next year I’m going to be putting in more earmarks.”—Rep. Nancy Boyda (D) – Kansas, who is being given tax payer money for a prison museum in her district.

You couldn’t have possibly forgotten the Democrats political rally cry, “A Culture of Corruption!” Nor could you have forgotten Democrat’s promises to clean up politics by sweeping Republicans out of office if you would vote for Democrats for Congress.

On those two devises and the anti-war hysteria that the radical left-wing arm of the Democrat Party was able to conjure up. Democrats received enough votes to control both the Senate and the House of the U.S. Congress. Democrats increased their numbers in the House from 201 to 233 giving them a 32 seat swing and a 31 vote advantage. In the Senate Democrats increased their numbers by 7 giving Democrats a 2 vote advantage and majority status in the United States Congress.

So has Democrat control of Congress taken the country in a new direction or is it politics as usual under a new corrupt Democrat Congressional Oligarchy?

Edmund L. Andrews and Robert Pear’s New York Times report, “With New Rules, Congress Boasts of Pet Projects” tells of a Culture of Corruption but only this time Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the leaders of the United States Congress and Democrats are the purveyors of the very corruption that you dear voter removed Republicans from office for.

Last year, Democrats denounced the explosive growth of earmarks as a central part of what they called the “culture of corruption” under the Republican-led Congress. They skewered the infamous $200 million “bridge to nowhere” that Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, had tried to finance.

Last year’s outcry against earmarks was fueled in part by scandals surrounding Jack Abramoff, the disgraced former lobbyist. The concerns were heightened by the conviction of Representative Randy Cunningham on charges of taking millions of dollars in cash and gifts in exchange for inserting earmarks for a military contractor.--Edmund L. Andrews and Robert Pear, NYtimes

But this year according to Andrews and Pear , House lawmakers have put together spending bills that include almost 6,500 earmarks for almost $11 billion in local projects

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has obtained about $63 million worth of projects, most of them in or near her district in San Francisco. But Ms. Pelosi was overshadowed by Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, who obtained $163 million in pet projects — more than anyone else in Congress and more than his own previous record of about $100 million. Not to mention Senator Diane Feinstein’s Iraq war earmark profiteering that makes Halliburton look like a nickel and dime operation.

Among the thousands of earmarks tucked into House or Senate spending bills: $2.6 million for a new grape genetics research center at Cornell University; $738,000 to study cancer-fighting chemicals in raspberries at Ohio State University; a contract for Texas A&M University to study the “root causes” of post-traumatic stress disorder; and $3.6 million to design a Coast Guard Operations Systems Center in Kearneysville, W.Va.

These are tax payers dollars being used to fund private boondoggles which Democrats in control of the White house and Congress will certainly raise your taxes so that they can send your money to some private concern to grow peanuts or build a museum to honor criminals.

As a matter of fact Andrews and Pear reports that it has already been done, When Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, recently ridiculed a provision on the House floor to spend $100,000 on a prison museum near Fort Leavenworth, Kan., Representative Nancy Boyda, Democrat of Kansas jumped to promote her district’s heritage.

Leavenworth County, she boasted, had more prisons than any other county in America. Its inmates, she added, have included Machine Gun Kelly and the Birdman of Alcatraz (before he was sent to Alcatraz).

“The local residents are proud of their heritage, and rightly so,” Ms. Boyda told Mr. Flake during a debate on the House floor. The House voted 317 to 112 to keep her earmark.

According to the Times article, Mr. Flake met similar defeat trying to block [Democrat earmarking] $50,000 for the National Mule and Packers Museum in Bishop, Calif.; $150,000 for the Burpee Museum of natural history in Rockford, Ill.; $250,000 for the Walter Clore Wine and Culinary Center in Prosser, Wash.; and $750,000 for the Alliance for NanoHealth in Houston.


“We’re lying to the American people when we say we’re fixing earmarks when we’re not,” said Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, during debate this week on the Senate floor.

“This is just sour milk,” Senator Dianne Feinstein of California said of Mr. Coburn. “If he could have blocked the whole bill, he would have.”

Interesting that Senator Feinstein would defend a bill that allows Democrats to profit politically at the tax payers expense though it’s nothing new for this one woman culture of corruption. And by the way Senator the expression is Sour Grapes!

The largest percentage of earmarks this year went to the Democrat House leadership, including Speaker Pelosi, according to calculations by The New York Times and based on records assembled by Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Democrats have proven to be as corrupt as what they’ve accused Republicans to be. Not only corrupt but political ATM machines with your money, tax payers money.

And this is a new direction?