"It's class warfare and my class is winning." Warren Buffett

The value of any commodity, ... to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations Book 1, chapter V.)

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works....(Barack Obama)


Thursday, July 30, 2009

Yet More GOP Earmark Hypocrisy

Yet more GOP earmark hypocrisy and this time it comes with a comedic edge:

Rep. Pete Sessions — the chief of the Republicans' campaign arm in the House — says on his website that earmarks have become "a symbol of a broken Washington to the American people."

Yet in 2008, Sessions himself steered a $1.6 million earmark for dirigible research to an Illinois company whose president acknowledges having no experience in government contracting, let alone in building blimps. (emphasis mine)

But surely Sessions sees some benefit in directing $1.6 million tax dollars to this inexperienced company:

What the company did have: the help of Adrian Plesha, a former Sessions aide with a criminal record who has made more than $446,000 lobbying on its behalf. (emphasis mine)

And then there is the fact Jim Ferguson of the company Jim G. Ferguson & Associates

donated money to Sessions and other Republicans. FEC records show that Ferguson contributed $5,000 to Sessions's leadership PAC in October 2007. Overall, Ferguson and his father have given $18,500 to GOP lawmakers over the past six years.

What is Rep. Sessions defense of this earmark?

Sessions spokeswoman Emily Davis defends the airship project as a worthwhile use of federal funds and says it could eventually lead to thousands of new jobs in Sessions's Dallas-area district.

Except that

the company that received the earmarked funds, Jim G. Ferguson & Associates, is based in the suburbs of Chicago, with another office in San Antonio — nearly 300 miles from Dallas. And while Sessions used a Dallas address for the company when he submitted his earmark request to the House Appropriations Committee last year, one of the two men who control the company says that address is merely the home of one of his close friends. (emphasis mine)

It's hard to pick what is the funniest aspect of this taxpayer theft. The blimps, the fact that the company has no experience making blimps, the ex-aide lobbyist with a criminal record, or the locations of the company? But my selection is the use by Rep Sessions of a good friend's address as the location of the company. The fraud involved in that is so in your face.

Posted by Delaware Watch at Thursday, July 30, 2009