I’m officially coining a new phrase… “skidmarking.” Definition will be supplied shortly.

Remember, all this stems from so much money going to DC in the first place.

Like any person, the less money bureaucrats have to waste, the less waste there will be.

Reduce taxes. Keep cuting taxes despite the screams and pleas that we are slaughtering old people and orphans. Keep cutting taxes despite the insistance that the military will fall apart and the highways will become weed-filled lots. Keep cutting, keep cutting, keep cutting.

Always support tax cuts. Always. Any attempt to cajole you into a "reasonable" position is actually an attempt to co-opt you into higher spending and more government.

Like a person's waistline, government is not ever, ever static. At every single moment a person's waistline is either growing or shrinking. And right now government is very, very fat, morbidly obese, in fact, and it will be a long period of shrinking before we have to worry about it being too skinny.

Cut taxes, no matter what they say. Cut taxes.

Damn. I know that Congresscritters exert pressure on federal agencies to spend money in their districts, but I had no idea that it was so widespread or so easily done. I will say that this is the sort of thing that happens when you don't have a proper budgeting process, and that's a bipartisan problem.

Offtopic—

Goodnight, Mr. Dutton.

(Highres video download recommended)

I think this is the internet's first Rock Star Death. (But it's important to note that he essentially died of being a nice old man, not from doing coke in a Vegas hotel off a hooker's bosom.) It hadn't occurred to me that this kind of departure from New Media was even permitted, let alone required. I suppose Hearst died eventually, too.

Save link as, etc. Probably plays in Quicktime. Works OK in VLC

Here's the reason I find the Tea Party so appalling. They smugly declared that their candidates, when elected, were against earmarks and would never vote to spend money we didn't have.

Those who supported Tea Party candidates should be deemed incompetent to vote. Are they really that gullible? Really??? I didn't anyone over the age of five would fall for that.

Nice idea. Really. Send your stalwart champions of fiscal responsibility, and they shall make the government pure again...or more likely, they'll just get sucked up in the same corruption that all the others do, and we're all screwed regardless...or still even more likely, they were corrupt to begin with and played their supporters for fools.

I can't respect an idealism that prompts people to do stupid things (especially when the entire country will end up paying for their naivete), like back someone because you're so Bambi-eyed trusting, you actually think that your politician is going to pioneer a golden age for Congress, when earmarks don't happen and we don't buy things we can't afford.

Earmarks increased under Republican President Bush, and greatly increased after the Democrats gained control of congress in 2007. They couldn't trust Bush to distribute money as they wished; they had to write specifics into the law.

Then, Democrats won the presidency and majorities in the congress and senate. Specific earmarks were no longer needed, and they declared to a grateful public that there were none.

The Democratic majority worked with a free-spending, Democratic President Obama. They didn't have to bother with specifics, because Obama spent these funds according to the backroom wishes of the Democrat controlled congress.

02/13/09 - RiehlWorldView - Phone Pork
- riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2009/02/coburn-phone-pork.html

[edited] Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) cited "Phone Pork" as a new invention in his floor speech. Open ended earmarking might be a better term.

He said that everyone who works in DC knows precisely what will happen after the stimulus bill is passed, because the Democrats simply made the earmarks a type of general aid to the states and federal agencies.

Politicians will promptly get on the phone to those agencies and tell them what projects they are to spend the money on, threatening to give them trouble on their next round of appropriations if they do not.

Legislators must have detailed lists describing the earmarks, federal agencies, amounts, targeted companies, and donors. Such information could not be trusted to memory. Just one of these lists made public would shake congress to its foundations.

More about earmarks in our modern politics.
No Longer a Need For Earmarks

Patrick,

Sometimes, your ignorance is glaring. Kirk is NOT, nor was he, a Tea Party candidate. He beat several for the Republican nomination here in Illinois. He's nothing more than a lifelong politician, who will do whatever he has to do, to remain in office.

Steve, sometimes the willingness to infer things on this board is glaring.

Did I say, at any time, that Kirk WAS a Tea Partier? Why, no, I didn't! I know very little about Kirk, didn't make my post about Kirk...and I'm not asking for information on him either. I'll Google him if I feel the urge.

I made a comment about Tea Party candidates, and their supporters and mentioned no names, but hell, don't let that stop you from inferring I was talking about anyone in particular.

You jackass.

Let's see. The post is about Kirk. Then you make a snide remark about the Tea Party, which isn't mentioned, at all, in the article. So yes, you were inferring that Kirk is a tea partier.

If you are going to go off topic, you might consider stating that what you are posting isn't related to the article. But I don't want you to stain yourself, or anything.

Actually, dumbass, the post was about earmarks. Kirk was merely used as an example. My post was about why I find the Tea Party so appalling: their colossal naivete that tells that their candidates would never in a bajillion years vote for earmarks or spend money that they don't have. I find that magnitude of gullibility offensive, and I heartily wish people that stupid would refrain from voting.

But I get it. You're wrong. You see you're wrong. You're too egotistical to admit it. Got it.