Free Republic

Lots of people love venerable Tiger Stadium. Few love it more than I do. I attended hundreds of Detroit Tigers games there – from the day in 1975 when I saw Hank Aaron just miss a home run as a Milwaukee Brewer, to the day in 1999 when Todd Jones, the Tigers’ closer then and now, struck out Carlos Beltran to finish off the Kansas City Royals and close the door on Tiger Stadium’s tenure as home of my favorite team. But just because people love it doesn’t mean it’s a priority of the nation to preserve it. Don’t try...

House conservatives are renewing their fight to unilaterally ban earmarks for a year within the Republican Party. House GOP leadership has also renewed their own version of an earmark ban, but it's woefully diluted -- it is contingent on Democrats playing along. Frankly, that's too little, too late. But thanks to Jeb Hensarling, Jeff Flake, and the other RSC members who are pushing for an earmark ban now, I'm confident that we'll see a moratorium before the election. I've been told that they have the votes needed (50) to receive a conference-wide vote. This will force leadership to make a...

Examples of lawmakers who have sponsored earmarks for private companies and received campaign contributions from them and, in some cases, their lobbyists: _Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, a member of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, obtained a $2.4 million earmark last year for the Greentree Group of Beavercreek, Ohio, for a digital information sharing system. Greentree Group executives, their families and consultants have donated $43,350 to Hobson since 2000, reports The Columbus Dispatch. _Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., a member of House defense appropriations subcommittee, sponsored a $2 million earmark to 21st Century Systems last year for a virtual fence demonstration project....

A number of U.S. congressmen and their families — including former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert — have personally profited from congressional earmarks they slipped into federal legislation, a FOX News documentary reveals. The documentary, “Porked: Earmarks for Profit,” hosted by Chris Wallace, premieres Sat., May 31, at 8 p.m. EDT on FOX News Channel. Budget earmarks became a national scandal — and a national joke — after some wasteful schemes made headlines recently: a $223 million “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska, a $500,000 teapot museum in North Carolina, a $10 million extension to Coconut Road in Florida. Many...

Pop quiz question: Who are the victims of the recent housing crisis? A. Borrowers who signed mortgages they couldn't afford B. Owners who have seen the values of their homes plummet C. Local governments who are dealing with neighborhoods of vacant, foreclosed housing and a shrinking tax base If you chose any of the above, you are wrong. According to the latest legislation getting ready to pass the House, the answer is: D. Plaintiffs' trial lawyers.

The congressional Republican establishment's charade, pretending to crack down on spending earmarks while actually preserving their uncontrolled addiction to pork, faces embarrassment this week when the Democratic-designed budget is brought to the Senate floor. The party's presidential nominee-presumptive, Sen. John McCain, is an uncompromising pork buster with no use for the evasions by Republican addicts on Capitol Hill. Sen. Jim DeMint, a first-term reform Republican from South Carolina, will propose a no-loopholes one-year moratorium on earmarks as a budget amendment. McCain has announced his support for the DeMint amendment and will co-sponsor it. DeMint wants to coordinate McCain's visits from...

A Senate Republican task force on earmarks is expected to stop short of temporarily freezing funding for pet projects, breaking with the party’s presidential nominee and House GOP leaders who are trying to make it a wedge issue in the election, according to people involved in the effort. The five-member task force, convened in January by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), meets Friday to move toward a consensus position. The issue has continued to dog congressional Republicans who are under enormous pressure from their base to rein in earmarking. Final recommendations are due by March 15. Even though Republicans say...

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) secured more than $1 million in federal funding last year for a Harlem-based non-profit whose leader gave her presidential campaign a major endorsement last weekend. Clinton -- who is aggressively competing for the black vote with her chief rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) -- touted the endorsement of Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, a prominent black leader and pastor of one of the oldest black churches in America, the Abyssinian Baptist Church of Harlem. The $555-billion FY 2008 omnibus spending bill approved last month by Congress included 11 appropriations bills with...

WASHINGTON — In the closing days before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, three Presidential candidates have issued statements on earmarks. The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) has challenged all candidates to inform taxpayers whether they would issue an executive order telling federal agencies to ignore earmarks that appear in committee reports, as well as other steps they would take to fight pork-barrel spending. "Taxpayers now know where Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. John McCain, and Gov. Mitt Romney stand on earmarks," said CCAGW President Tom Schatz. "The other candidates should issue their own statements, as wasteful spending...

U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky finds himself at the center of the national firestorm over "pork" spending, those pet projects members of Congress fund with earmarks to major bills. The Indiana Democrat has been identified as the sixth-biggest earmarker in the U.S. House, with $116.8 million set aside for special projects in fiscal 2008 budget bills, according to figures compiled by Taxpayers for Common Sense. In a CNBC interview, one Washington watchdog group accused Visclosky of pioneering "green pork," which are earmarks masquerading as seed money for environmental breakthroughs. In his first response to numerous reports in national media, Visclosky on...

Hillary backed lab of donorBy Jim McElhatton October 30, 2007 Lawmakers, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, have taken thousands in campaign cash from an embattled Nobel-prize winning scientist while earmarking federal money for his New York lab. Mrs. Clinton and Sen. Charles E. Schumer, also a New York Democrat, requested a $900,000 earmark in June for the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where James D. Watson served as chancellor before resigning last week after apologizing for comments that suggested that people descending from Africa aren't as intelligent as those from Europe. Federal campaign filings show that Mr. Watson has donated more...

Move over Bridge to Nowhere. Congress is back in town, and clearly back to business even uglier than usual. It takes hard work to come up with an earmark more egregious than that infamous Alaskan bridge, but California's Dianne Feinstein is an industrious gal. Her latest pork--let's call it Rambo's View--deserves to be the poster child for everything wrong with today's greedy earmark process. The senator's $4 billion handout (yes, you read that right) to wealthy West L.A. (yes, you read that right, too) is the ultimate example of how powerful members use earmarks to put their own parochial interests...

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — The largess of Rep. John P. Murtha — hundreds of millions of dollars in pork projects over the years — is on display in and around his district in southwestern Pennsylvania. From the John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport to the stretch of U.S. 219 named Jack P. Murtha Highway, the Pennsylvania Democrat leaves his mark with federal taxpayer dollars. The money helped build the stunted economy in and around Mr. Murtha's hometown of Johnstown, a Rust Belt community about 65 miles east of Pittsburgh, by cultivating a defense-contracting industry, transplanting federal jobs there and subsidizing public-works projects....

Washington, D.C. - The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) today charged Senate and House conferees on ethics and lobbying reform with fleecing American taxpayers by gutting earmark reform. Following the conclusion of secret negotiations intended to bypass the normal legislative process, the compromise bill that was announced today will gut the earmark reform provisions that had already passed as part of S. 1, the Senate ethics and lobbying reform bill, and which already exist in the rules of the House. The conference deal makes a mockery of the promise of “the most ethical Congress in history,” which House...

The Democrats don't want to miss a chance to spend taxpayers money. The Defense Appropriations Bill contains 1,776 Earmark requests. Earmarks is another word for Pork. Typically, Pork or Earmarks are a way for legislators to pay off their campaign debts by funding a specific project that a campaign contributor wants. The Contributor usually donates money to their Congressman's campaign, after the Congressman is elected, he or she uses a earmarks, which direct a specified amount of money to a particular organization or project owned by the Contributor. This differs from the appropriation of money to a particular government agency,...

t would take me roughly twenty eight years to earn a million dollars, however, it only takes Congress a few minutes to give it away. But does Congress really know who is getting the money that they are so freely giving away? Apparently not, Republican Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona questioned Rep. Peter Visclosky (D-Indiana) on the House floor July 17,2007 about whether the Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure actually exists since it is receiving over a Million Dollars. Rep. Flake's staff could find no information on the Center, not even a website. Rep. Peter Visclosky (D-Indiana), whether the Center...

If Nancy Pelosi's and Harry Reid's shady land deals weren't enough to signal to Rep. Alan Mollohan (who is already under investigation) not to get involved in earmarks that could increase the value of your own property, then you got all the proof you need that Democrats think they are above the law.

After repeatedly promising the “most honest” and “most open” Congress in history, Democratic leaders have moved to make the earmark process entirely secret. It started in January when the House quickly adopted rules that have prevented lawmakers from challenging an earmark as long as the bill to which it's attached contains a list of earmarks – even if the list is inaccurate and doesn't list the earmark at issue. The rules were supposed to ensure all earmarks receive appropriate scrutiny and opportunity for debate but have instead made it nearly impossible to challenge wasteful spending. In fact, in February...

WASHINGTON - Democrats may have declared a one-year moratorium on pet projects treasured by members of Congress, but the move will hardly stop horse trading in Washington or moves by lawmakers to try to steer taxpayer money back home. Nor will it touch billions of dollars in already budgeted Pentagon earmarks, which go to everything from research into better body armor for overseas troops to finding bone marrow matches to treat leukemia patients. The temporary ban on earmarks — footnotes in spending bills that lawmakers use to deliver federal bacon to their states — has been greeted with applause by...

Our view: House bill to clean up pork practices not nearly enough to stem budgeting abuses The earmark reform bill passed by the House last week is too little, way too late. Hailed by its supporters ---- including local U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Carlsbad ---- the bill will require the House's powerful Appropriations Committee to disclose which earmarks it approves and which congressmen asked for them through the end of this year. Transparency is a worthy goal, and can only help keep our representatives accountable for their earmarks ---- the practice of placing special projects on spending bills unanimously and...

House Republican appropriators remained unwilling yesterday to publicly endorse their leadership’s resolution requiring disclosure of earmark sponsors, setting up a possible rebellion by committee members that could bring down the resolution. Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) huddled with his panel yesterday afternoon but emerged with no firm panel-wide plan to oppose the earmark-reform resolution. Many GOP appropriators believe the resolution singles out their committee’s product while applying a narrow definition of tax and authorizing earmarks. “We are attempting to communicate with leadership that this committee feels very strongly that earmark reform is a priority, but it should apply to everybody,”...

Congress sends financial transparency bill to White House BY Matthew Weigelt Published on Sept. 14, 2006 Congress is sending legislation to President Bush that would require the Office of Management and Budget to build a publicly accessible online database of who receives federal money. The House passed by voice vote the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590) Sept. 13. “Sunshine is the best disinfectant,” said Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, on the House floor. Earlier this year, Davis and Majority Whip Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) introduced a similar bill, which the House...

Murtha brings shame to PA: pet earmark project wastes $2 million Rep. John Murtha's shamelessearmarking* ways have brought shame to his home state – specificallyCommunity College of Allegheny County (CCAC) and Carnegie Mellon University, both located in Pittsburgh. According to an article in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette [LINK], a two-million-dollar earmarked grant was initiated in 2003 through the Defense Department for a program to train people how to "safeguard America's businesses from threats to their computer systems and databases". The program fizzled:Documents obtained from CCAC [Community College of Allegheny County, PA] under the federal Freedom of Information Act show the...

Thirty-five years ago, Richard Nixon justified his big-government economic policies by stating: "We are all Keynesians now." Given the way government spending has exploded in the last six years, a similarly candid member of the current Congress or administration would be forced to observe: "We are all big spenders now." While many on the left would applaud such a day, fiscal conservatives are desperately looking for some reason to think this is not true of their elected officials. Fortunately, the House is about to vote on a bill that would make it easier to trim some of the budgetary fat...

San Bernardino County, Calif., has been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury for records connected to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, and a lobbying firm with strong ties to Lewis, a county official said. The subpoena asked for all records of the county's correspondence with Lewis and his staff and with the lobbying firm, Copeland, Lowery, Jacquez, Denton, & White, which employs former California Republican congressman Bill Lowery, said San Bernardino County's chief deputy counsel, Daniel B. Haueter. Haueter said that the county, which hired Copeland, Lowery in 2002, was complying. Lewis represents portions of the inland Southern...

Congressman: It was purchased as investment propertyCHARLESTON — U.S. Rep. Alan Mollohan’s beach house is for sale. Asking price: $3.7 million. Mollohan and his wife, Barbara, built the house on Bald Head Island, N.C., in late 2004. Mollohan said that his mother loaned the couple the down payment on the house, which was about $260,000, and he and his wife have a $2 million mortgage on it. The house sleeps 14, according to an advertisement on Bald Head Island Rentals’ Web site. It has six bedrooms, six full baths and five half baths. It has 4,500 square feet of heated...

Rep. Alan B. Mollohan, the West Virginia Democrat whose real-estate holdings and financial disclosures have drawn federal scrutiny, last year bought a 300-acre farm with the head of a small defense contractor that had won a $2.1 million contract from funds that the congressman added to a 2005 spending bill. The joint purchase of the farm, which sits on the Cheat River in West Virginia, is the most direct tie yet disclosed between Rep. Mollohan and a beneficiary of the federal spending he has steered toward his home state. It raises new questions about possible conflicts of interest by Rep....

FALLS CHURCH, Va., April 18 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) conducted a nine-month investigation into Rep. Alan Mollohan's Financial Disclosure Reports and concluded that it contained more than 200 errors or omissions. NLPC issued the following statement responding to Rep. Mollohan's defense of his sharp rise in wealth in recent years: Mollohan's recent statement was characterized as "a detailed response to two major allegations" which described as the alleged unexplained increase in the value of his assets from 2000 to 2004 and the allegation that he grossly underestimated the value of his investments over nine...

Fairmont, WV (HNN) – The Wall Street Journal broke the story on the front page of the Friday, April 7, 2006 edition. The New York Times followed on Saturday, April 8, 2006. By today, everybody will have a story on the federal probe into the financial affairs of U.S. Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-WV, representing the Mountain State’s first congressional district. Caught flat-footed by the Wall Street Journal scoop, The Washington Post on Saturday, April 8, reported with a second-day lede that Republican leaders called on Mollohan, 62, to step down from his ranking position of the House Ethics Committee because...

Despite significant blogosphere attention to the dubious (or, at the very least, excessive) Congressional practice of "earmarking," I'm not seeing a lot of attention on blogs today about this press release from the National Legal and Policy Center: NLPC Complaint Alleges Ranking House Ethics Committee Member Hid Assets and Funded Business Partner's Groups with Millions in Earmarks The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) today disclosed that it filed a 500-page Complaint on February 28 with the office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia detailing hundreds of ethics law violations by Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV). Rep. Mollohan...

Pork as a constitutional imperativeCritics of the lobbying reform bill recently passed by the Senate say it doesn’t adequately address earmarks, those highly specific appropriations legislators slip into spending bills to help special interests. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) spoke for many when he said this kind of spending "has bred lobbyists, which has bred corruption," leading to "all these egregious abuses."But according to Sen. Larry Craig and Rep. Mike Simpson, earmarking is every legislator’s constitutional duty. "The framers of the Constitution clearly stated that Congress, not the President or federal bureaucrats, should allocate funding for the various functions of government,"...

...The seven-point criteria to classify a project as pork-barrel spending were developed in conjunction with the bipartisan Congressional Porkbusters Coalition. They are: * The project was requested by only one member of Congress; * The project was not specifically authorized; * The project was not competitively awarded; * The project was not requested by the President; * The project greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding; * The project was not the subject of a hearing; and, * The project only serves a local or special interest. Any project that meets one or more of these...

WASHINGTON -- Congress is spending millions from NASA's budget on pork-barrel projects while the space agency's core programs are being trimmed to find the money. Fisheries, business jets, museum exhibits and gardening studies are among the items recently funded through the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Lawmakers intent on bringing home the bacon increasingly are squandering NASA's scarce resources on pet projects that are often, at best, only marginally related to space exploration and research.