Drew and the Mule Museum
Edit from Eliza: Hi guys! I'm back and so very tired. I need a vacation to recover from my vacation. Think my boss will go for that? Yeah, probably not. I see Arachnae has kept the blog alive. Anyway, reviews will resume with Thursday's show.
Drew Griffin is getting a lot of mileage out of the Earmarks Beat; his current objet du scorn is a 50K earmark for a mule museum in Bishop, California. But you know what? I just can't get too exercised over the whole issue.
Yeah, it's easy to make jokes - the very phrase "Mule Museum" seems to have 'punchline' pre-stamped on it. But fifty thousand dollars? Yeah, they're certainly tax dollars, but come on - we're burning billions in Iraq every month.
The whole Bone of Contention vis a vis earmarks, as I understand it, is that they creep into the budget under the cover of darkness, with no names attached. So why is this 50,000 so noisome? The sponsor makes no attempt to hide his involvement in getting it into the budget. (I can't believe I'm defending a member of the GOP, but come on...) So why is this any worse than, say, handing out huge tax breaks to your corporate campaign donors?
Yeah, yeah - the public's money. The old saying goes: Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves. But you know what? That's not remotely true. You can balance your petty cash drawer to a faretheewell, but if the CEO is offshoring all the profits... Congressional earmarks make up a paltry fragment of the federal budget, and compared to what we're blowing in Iraq, a Mule Museum is the equivalent of change found in the sofa cushions.
But this all is beside the larger issue, which is: where were the watchdogs of the press when we were being lied into a war that is ultimately going to cost us two trillion (with a T) dollars? You remember, the war that would 'pay for itself' out of oil revenues from the oil we apparently were planning to rip off?
Sorry, but I can't take Drew seriously as a Truth-Speaker to Power until he shows me how he challenged the overwhelming stampede to war in '03.
Memo to Soledad O'Brien - It's pronounced a-RACK-nee. Isn't that simple?
Drew Griffin is getting a lot of mileage out of the Earmarks Beat; his current objet du scorn is a 50K earmark for a mule museum in Bishop, California. But you know what? I just can't get too exercised over the whole issue.
Yeah, it's easy to make jokes - the very phrase "Mule Museum" seems to have 'punchline' pre-stamped on it. But fifty thousand dollars? Yeah, they're certainly tax dollars, but come on - we're burning billions in Iraq every month.
The whole Bone of Contention vis a vis earmarks, as I understand it, is that they creep into the budget under the cover of darkness, with no names attached. So why is this 50,000 so noisome? The sponsor makes no attempt to hide his involvement in getting it into the budget. (I can't believe I'm defending a member of the GOP, but come on...) So why is this any worse than, say, handing out huge tax breaks to your corporate campaign donors?
Yeah, yeah - the public's money. The old saying goes: Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves. But you know what? That's not remotely true. You can balance your petty cash drawer to a faretheewell, but if the CEO is offshoring all the profits... Congressional earmarks make up a paltry fragment of the federal budget, and compared to what we're blowing in Iraq, a Mule Museum is the equivalent of change found in the sofa cushions.
But this all is beside the larger issue, which is: where were the watchdogs of the press when we were being lied into a war that is ultimately going to cost us two trillion (with a T) dollars? You remember, the war that would 'pay for itself' out of oil revenues from the oil we apparently were planning to rip off?
Sorry, but I can't take Drew seriously as a Truth-Speaker to Power until he shows me how he challenged the overwhelming stampede to war in '03.
Memo to Soledad O'Brien - It's pronounced a-RACK-nee. Isn't that simple?
posted by Arachnae at 8:57 PM
4 Comments:
Hi
I am a big fan of AC360, and I can't start my day without watching the program and AC n particular, but where is AC, after the California fire reports he disappeared, maybe you know when he will come back.
Thank you
Hey, WS - he apparently spent the week (or at least part of the week) in the Congo, doing a piece about the plight of the mountain gorillas for Sixty Minutes. See link
thank you a lot arachnae
i hope he will come back soon
wr,,,if you think a Mule museum is a waste,,,check out the money earmarked for one outside of Cody Wyo.,,,called Heart Mountain...lots of
big names and $$$$$$$$ behind this one....check it out!!!!!!
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