Posts with the tag 'Earmarks'
At what price, saving face?
The Murtha-inspired, media trumped so-called “Haditha Massacre” has had its share of casualties long after the event had transpired. Eight Marines, whose only crime was to follow Rules of Engagement (ROE) and to execute their mission of weeding out terrorist elements in the town of Haditha, have had their reputations and their honor dragged through the mud, not to mention having had the “honor” of treatment that would make Guantanamo detainees look like they’re being put up at the Waldorf Astoria by comparison.
On Tuesday, Military Judge Colonel Steven Folsom, USMC made the right decision when he saw through the undue command influence and dismissed all charges against Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani without prejudice.
Said Richard Thompson, resident and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, who has been defending Chessani,
“This case has turned into the persecution of one of the Marine’s finest combat commanders. LtCol Chessani devoted his life to the Corps and his Nation. He served three tours of duty in Iraq, away from his wife and children in defense of us all. In their attempt ‘to get’ Chessani, prosecutors granted immunity to seventeen Marines, including one they had charged with murder. Still they failed. Sadly, in the process they have destroyed the career of an outstanding officer. Enough is enough.”
WND just had a story published today that Chessani rightfully planned to sue Congressman John Murtha over his slanderous pronouncement of the Haditha Marines guilt of murder in cold blood. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there is more “undue influence” coming from Murtha to pressure prosecutors to make an example out of Chessani. Murtha, after all, is in charge of defense appropriations in the House and is certainly in a position to exert such influence. Given Murtha’s long history of what was, in my opinion, influence peddling in the form of a legion of earmarks and defense contracts, there is in my opinion nothing too low for the King of Pork to resort to save his sorry fat backside from the consequences of his actions.
The military powers that be, along with the politicians that be, know that the Haditha prosecutions will be considered by historians as one of the largest travesties of justice in military history; a time when the interests of politicians and military leaders were put far ahead of the interests of justice itself. Their pitiful attempts to continue to prop up a false set of charges against one of the great military leaders in the Corps as a means of salvaging face serves neither the honor of the military nor the interests of justice.
It is nothing less than reprehensible.
Lots more on the background of this case here, here and here.
Read more on Murtha’s role in this travesty here, here, and here.
Tags: blogs, Earmarks, Haditha Case, Iraq, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, Murtha
June 19th, 2008
So much for change you can believe in:
Sen. Barack Obama requested $8 million for a military defense contractor that has close ties to one of his most prodigious fundraisers.
Obama disclosed the 2006 request on a long list of earmark requests his campaign made public today. The $8 million was for something called a “High Explosive Air Burst Technology Program.” The request led to $1.3 million in funding for the program. According to the campaign’s earmark disclosure, the defense project was overseen by General Dynamics, one of the nation’s largest military contractors. Obama’s Illinois finance chairman, James S. Crown, serves on the company’s board of directors and his family holds a sizable stake in the company.
Crown and his wife, Paula Crown, are members of Obama’s National Finance Committee and have raised more than $200,000 for the Obama campaign, according to a list of fundraisers posted on Obama’s campaign website.
If you can see a difference between Obama and the rest of the corrupt Democratic leadership, then you are much more perceptive than I am. All I can see is an ultra-liberal extremist who makes certain the money men get paid for their support…
Tags: Barack Obama, Earmarks
March 14th, 2008
The Congressional GOP’s spending binge 2001-2006 played a large role in the GOP losing its majority status - and John McCain pledges to return the GOP to its fiscal conservative roots:
Year after year, powerful members of Congress divert taxpayer dollars to special interest pet projects with little or no national value. This practice is especially egregious during wartime, when any federal spending wasted on parochial programs to satisfy special interests represents a failure by the federal government to properly steward tax dollars. John McCain has steadfastly fought to reform this broken system and end the self-serving largesse that defines the current budget process.
As president, John McCain will oppose spending money on projects that siphon away tax dollars collected to fund these important commitments. Setting priorities, and keeping them, is a crucial step toward fiscal restraint and an important priority for a McCain presidency. Every dollar irresponsibly spent by Congress is a dollar diverted from pressing national priorities including lowering the tax burden on working Americans, supporting the men and women fighting the war on terror, making good on the nation’s financial commitments at home, including to senior citizens, and paying down the national debt.
With Obama and Hillary promising to spend whatever it takes to buy the loyalty of the American electorate, McCain’s stance for fiscal discipline is a tonic, and I think it might actually go over very well in fall debates. The Democrats are going to “feel our pain” and prescribe an endless series of spending initiatives to take care of all our ills - and this might have worked at other times, but right now I sense that the American people are going to tune out the promises, and tune in the man who takes a realistic approach to our finances and clearly states to the American people that there is no free lunch, and we have to get our financial house in order, and this means the government won’t be able to wave a magic wand and make everything all better. Democrats are essentially hoping that the American people are willing to fall back asleep and return them to power on the promise to not disturb the people with tricky issues of government - McCain and the GOP are promising the American people that realities will be lived up to, and desires measured against resources.
A lot of worry has been invested over the theory that smooth-talking Obama will glide past grumpy-old-man McCain - and this could end up being the case; but my bet is on the American people turning to the man who tells them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about our finances and what we need to do to clean them up.
Tags: Earmarks, government reform, John McCain
February 25th, 2008
Jack Murtha is seeking donations for his re-election bid:
Heads up, defense contractors. It’s time to dust off those checkbooks. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense Chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.) is holding his annual cattle call to raise campaign funds.
Our Porkbarrel-in-Chief, pronounce-em-guilty before the trial Jack Murtha is up for re-election - and it takes a lot of money to keep a Murtha in politics. It might take a village to raise a child, but it takes a military-industrial complex to keep a corrupt, Pennsylvania pol at the trough…
Tags: Earmarks, Jack Murtha
February 11th, 2008
From the Wall Street Journal:
As every reformed addict knows, the road to recovery is long and hard. So it is for Republicans who became addicted to spending “earmarks” while running Congress, lost their majority in large part because of it, and are now struggling with mixed results to dry out.
Their latest halting effort in what appears to be at least a 12-step recovery plan will come tonight, when President Bush uses his State of the Union address to lay down his toughest anti-earmarking pledge to date. We’re told he will tell Congress that he will veto any fiscal 2009 spending bill that doesn’t cut earmarks in half from 2008 levels. He will also report that he is issuing a Presidential order informing executive departments that from now on they should refuse to fund earmarks that aren’t explicitly mentioned in statutory language.
Excellent - good government, excellent reform…and it jams Democrats up against a wall on this issue they pretended to care about in 2006 and 2007. They either have to go along with President Bush - and anger their narrow special interests - or oppose him, and anger everyone else. This is the sort of thing we’ll have to do all through 2008 - keep forcing Democrats to choose between the high-sounding rhetoric and their disgraceful reality.
Tags: Earmarks, government reform, government spending, State of the Union
January 28th, 2008
Via NRO’s The Corner:
Boehner Says House GOP Must Draw Line On Earmarks Or Prepare For Permanent Minority.
House Minority Leader John Boehner used the first House GOP Conference meeting of 2008 to draw a very hard line on congressional earmarks. Boehner, who is one of the few Members of Congress who does not earmark, told his colleagues that if they cannot break out of that habit, they will not regain the majority. According to a knowledgeable source, Boehner told the Conference this morning, “Washington is broken. We need to show the American people we’re ready to fix it,” adding, “We aren’t going to earn the majority back until we do something serious about earmarks. If we don’t get serious about it, and get serious soon, we’re going nowhere.” The source said Boehner concluded by saying, “I have no interest in being minority leader just to be minority leader. I took this job to lead an effort to earn back our majority — this year. Not next year or the year after that. This year.”
These are the exact right words - now we’ll have to see if they are matched by deeds, and if a majority of the GOP caucus will show the necessary backbone to go along.
There were lots of reasons we lost our Congressional majority in 2006 but not least among these reasons is that we ceased to be the GOP, and started being Democrat-lite. This didn’t so much turn people towards the Democrats, but it did turn GOPers away from the GOP. We GOPers have to give people a reason for returning us to the majority - and that means we have to show that we are in deadly ernest in changing the way DC does business. Earmarks are not the only thing wrong in DC, but they are the perfect symbol of that confluence of money and influence-peddling which turns the stomach of all honest citizens. The Democrats will not - and cannot - clean up DC as their power is based largely upon appropriating government swag for favored groups, but we GOPers are supposed to be better than that. And we’ll have to be better than that, if we ever want to have our majority back.
Tags: Earmarks, House GOP, House Minority Leader Boehner
January 17th, 2008
David Freddoso notes how the House GOP seems to have hit its stride on a return to conservative, Republican principles:
House Republicans have been fighting and winning the few little battles they can, considering they are in the minority in a body where the minority has few rights. But tonight they won big on a motion to recommit the Intelligence Authorization Act to committee, with instructions to remove all earmarks from the bill.
This is one of many such little wins the House GOP has enjoyed, peeling off moderate and marginal-seat Democrats as they do so. The committee is not obligated to follow the instructions, but they can only ignore them if Democratic leaders are willing to ram the earmarks through, over a clear majority vote of the House.
It may just be a symbolic vote, but it demonstrates just how powerful the Democrats think the earmark issue is — 62 Democrats voted with a unanimous Republican caucus, including many of the most vulnerable: Boyda (Kan.), McNerney (Calif.), Lampson (Tex.) and Chris Murphy (Conn.), to name a few.
If Republicans have any chance of winning back the majority next year, the earmark issue holds forth more hope for them than any other issue right now. It resonates with taxpayers when you tell them they will be funding hippie museums and fake jobs programs for corrupt, power-hungry members of Congress.
The Democrats talk of ending earmarks in 2006 - just as their talk of ending corruption - was just that: talk. Earmarks and corruption were endemic to the Democratic majority prior to their 1994 defeat, and they waited in massive impatience for their chance to return to the trough big time as a majority party. Now that they are back in, they simply want to forget 1995-2007 and act as if nothing happened…but, they forgot that the House GOP once upon a time was the party of clean politics and spending restraint…and now that the GOP has received a well-deserved lesson, it is now time to start hammering the Democrats for being, well, Democrats…corrupt and spendthrift.
With Iraq becoming an ever clearer success, with the economy still doing quite well, with corruption now becoming a stain on the Democrats, with immigration/border security as an issue - add to this an old-fashioned GOP campaign against wasteful spending and tax hikes, and the GOP has a winning set of issues for 2008. All that is needed for victory is an effective campaign to bring this before the American people.
Tags: Earmarks, House GOP
December 5th, 2007
