Re: {OT:} 2009 Adminstration

Would these be your choices also?

Department of Health & Human Services Oprah Winfrey =)

My choice dropped out - John Edwards.

BTW, Huckabee says things I agree with. I wish he would loose the evangelical bent. Evangelicals worry me because they want to meld religion & government. His idea of adding 2 lanes to I-95 from Maine to Florida to generate jobs makes much more sense than spending 150+ billion on a "Stimulous" package. I also liked what he had to say last night.

Ed S.

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I missed that highway idea. He really suggested the 2-lane thing?

What a stupid friggin' idea, but not surprising for a guy who, like Bush, probably doesn't read much.

How do you feel about unnecessary public works programs. I.e., bridges and highways in areas very infrequent, if ever, travelled?

Robert Byrd is the champion of that kind of pork.

His suggestion was to ADD 2 lanes to the existing lanes of I-95. Not a bad idea. I think public works programs are the way to go instead of giving everyone a feel-good check before the election.

Ed S.

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Just one problem: Widening highways often creates even more urban sprawl than we already have. It's a trend some city planners would love to put a stop to.

As long as we include entitlement spending, you've got a deal.

The war is a wreck as it's currently being fought, but the money for it would not be driving our budget into the red IF tax dollars were not being spent incorrectly on pork and entitlements.

Widening highways, building bridges, tunnels would generate jobs, lets hire more illegals to work on these projects.

And to speed up the projects, They should get the guys responsible for the big dig in MA.

All pork-barrel spending and all earmark spending should be in individual bills for each spending request. Stop the omnibus bills and hidden spending. Have public hearings so we can know who is spending money on bridges to nowhere and highways to areas owned by same politicians. I don't know what it will take short of a revolution to get congress's spending under control. It may be time for We The People to organize and force changes. As far apart as most of us here seem to be I bet we can find common ground on how to spend our taxes.

While we are at it let's put the Iraq war spending into the budget.

Ed S. ===================

I'll add something which unfortunately will never happen: Make it legal for the NSA to monitor phone conversations and all financial transactions for one group of people: Politicians. A lot of these pork barrel projects are so nonsensical, there has to be monetary gain involved for the slimeballs who sponsor them. Let's find out.

Related - do you enjoy vomiting? Enjoy this:

Such projects also generate an annuity for construction companies. Not only do they get contracts to build highways, but in many places, they get contracts to maintain them, pretty much forever.

More multi-multi-multi lane highways is just what we DON'T need. It only allows longer and longer commutes. I used to think it was only Southern California that was so afflicted, but it's now nation wide, in and near any and every largish city. People want to live in a nice roomy affordable area, but work "downtown" so they drive 50-60-70 and more miles each way to reach their workplace. It wastes fuel, time and the energy of the workers beyond reason to make these long drives each way, and soon the desirable home people wanted now seems like an unfulfilled dream, since the workers are so tired from their two or three hours' commute each day that they simply fall into bed exhausted. I think about all the millions of gasoline wasted daily in this endeavor, the cars, old beyond their years because the owners are putting 2000 or 3000 miles a month on them, the total waste of time doing this, and making people old before their time. How about taking an example from Europe and Japan, and constructing modern rail systems instead, if indeed we cannot do the social engineering necessary to get these millions of workers closer to their occupations? Our public transportation systems are in most cases are so out of date that calling them merely "obsolete" doesn't half describe them.

Thousands of people commute via train between Manhattan and Westchester or Connecticut, but that works because the rail lines were in place before available land became occupied & scarce. The system works very nicely. To create the same thing in some other cities would involve quite a contentious process. I think it should go ahead anyway, but not many people agree. You've probably seen all the negative remarks made about mass transportation in this newsgroup.

Interesting links here:

Not really, because without those projects, there wouldn't be much in West Virginia.

They all do it. Some of them do stupider things than others. For instance, Arlen Spector got lots of pork financing for a long list of organizations to teach abstinence. Of course, research is revealing that teaching abstinence doesn't work. While Virginia was cutting off public financing for abstinence programs, Spector was seeking more funding for the same thing.

Have fun here. It's disgusting:

Pork is pork, regardless of the justification.

Great idea, hiding the pork in plain sight where the public will ignore it Pay me the bribe, I mean contribution, on your way out.

But not all government spending is pork, not even Robert Byrd's.

If McCain is president there will be an end to the pork and to moveon.org and their ilk. Count on it, but keep your hat on it, (don't tell the dims).

Why not tell the democrats? Are democrats the only legislators who play the earmark game?