... If he brings up earmarks again, McCain has to tell us the truth: in aggregate dollars they do not constitute a big percentage of the budget. BUT they represent a sort of lubricant for far greater larcenies. In other words, terrible waste and spending are facilitated in trite ways by lawmakers tacking on earmarks. We saw that with the $700 billion bailout plan. Yes, wooden arrows were a small part of the largess, but the inclusion of these payoffs reduced the principled discussion of our very futures into a matter of petty bribes and payoffs. Earmarks are a question of honesty and the integrity of the entire political system. When a cop takes $20 to drop a ticket, we don’t say “$20 is a small part of the multimillion dollar police budget”, but rather that such crookedness is a dangerous cancer to the public trust.
... the right disagrees and adduces arguments, the left often by spewing invective. I know that when I give a lecture to businessmen suggesting greed is endemic on Wall Street and has discredited much of their own ethos there are serious but professional retorts; at a university the professorial response to criticism of the Left is shrill and occasionally unhinged.