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John McCain is channeling his inner William Proxmire these days as he rails--rightly--against the over-9000 earmarks in the budget.
I'm okay with that.
With this caveat. McCain owes us the due diligence of not just shooting off his mouth but engaging his brain trust aka staff to scratch the surface of what each earmark he specifically attacks does.
I take his basic point that there should be no earmarks, that if something truly merits funding it should stand the test of scrutiny for inclusion in the budget. Ho-kay.
But then what about these stats from his own...I was going to say "party" but we can fine tune this to his fellow Republican Arizona Senator. Courtesy ThinkProgress, Senator John Kyl, is one of the top earmarkers in the Senate, to the tune of $118 million in fiscal 2008.
Guess it's easy to be against earmarks when the other guy in the state is pushing through gazillions of 'em....
Hell, McCain could take his own colleague to the men's room stall, er, woodshed, and drum home his earmark philosophy and earn some street cred that legitimizes him. Or not.
But let's just say that ol' Kyl and the Republicans and Democrats who are all hoggin' at the trough of earmarks, all have a pre-Recession Bushie Era mentality that needs changing. And the tide of history and the outrage of most Americans are agin 'em.
We should all shake off our pre-Recession denial and get busy working on rebuilding this country. Because the real "too little" of the stimulus package and bailout work in progress may just be that too little of us are involved and helping instead of hindering.
It starts with 25 cops, and one First Lady working in a soup kitchen, and, yes, one Golden Fleece.
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No this link doesn't really relate to this posting, but Gail Collins is always worth a read....
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crossposted at firedoglake's Oxdown Gazette
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