It has got to stop

[George A. H. Luck]

HOW DUMB CAN ONE SENATOR GET?
I guess, from the perspective of Washington, $5 million isn’t that much money. To the people on my street, however, it’s more than all of us combined will earn in our entire lives.
From the perspective of spending the government money, it’s nothing. From the perspective of being taxed to provide the government money, it’s a staggering sum.
And it’s how much Utah Sen. Bob Bennett wants to throw away. Five million dollars frittered away for crap in order to help a politically connected little business in his home state.
That’s bad enough.
But what’s worse is that Utah Sen. Bob Bennett wants to make his friends rich by taking those $5 million directly away from the money that goes to equip and protect our troops on the battlefield.
Utah Sen. Bob Bennett is raiding the Defense Department’s operations budget. That’s not the money that pays for day-care centers on post, or that underwrites the Army band, or that passes out bumper stickers to all the high-school seniors in the country. That’s the money that buys bullets, flak jackets and armored vehicles.
That’s the money Utah Sen. Bob Bennett is robbing.
And for what?
Video scrapbooks.
That’s right. Mothers of soldiers and Marines are taking up collections to buy their kids any number of things they lack in Afghanistan and Iraq, fund-raisers are being held across the country to meet the needs of our combat troops, and Utah Sen. Bob Bennett took $5 million out of the operations budget so that the federal government could make video scrapbooks.
For National Guard troops.
The $5 million will go to a little no-name company in Salt Lake City that started not that long ago as a scrapbooking operation. You know what that is, right? It’s when people get addicted to their photo albums and turn them into garish obsessions.
Wanting to feed off that, a company started. It especially wanted to get into video scrapbooking. It gathered corporate donations to produce video scrapbooks for a couple of Utah Army National Guard units which were mobilized to fight the war on terror.
Now they want to go national. And instead of having donations pick up the tab, or selling the scrapbooks to GIs, the company got Utah Sen. Bob Bennett to pick the public purse to essentially create its livelihood.
What could possibly persuade an otherwise literate man to squander precious defense dollars on such nonsense?
How about a former Miss America?
No, not Vanessa Williams. The other one.
Sharlene Wells Hawkes.
A possible Bennett cousin – check their Wells genealogy – she is, like him, connected to families traditionally associated with religious leadership in Utah. Beyond that, her pageant popularity in Utah helped her build a career of some prominence – and it put her in good stead to go to Washington and lobby the Utah delegation for money for the video scrapbooks.
Did I mention that she’s the executive vice president of the company that is getting the $5 million?
This money is supposed to buy video scrapbooks for National Guard units mobilized for war. Each member of the unit will get a souvenir scrapbook.
Supporters claim that the scrapbooks are an important preservation of history. Maybe they’ve never heard of the U.S. Army Center of Military History and are unaware of the fact that the military has an army of professional historians who already keep pretty good tabs on things.
And maybe they’re not aware that military scrapbooks and yearbooks have been around forever. They are usually prepared for free by a unit’s public affairs staff or made and sold to individual servicemembers by private companies.
At any rate, using taxpayer money set aside to defend America to give National Guardsman a souvenir of their season in the sand is almost treasonous. Far better to spend that money keeping soldiers alive.
Making this double disgusting is the fact that the $5 million is just the first wound.
Our former Miss America wants her company to quickly get past souvenirs for just mobilized National Guard units, she wants every unit in the military to have a new video scrapbook each year.
I’m no good with math, but that’s going to run to the hundreds of millions of dollars.
And while I note that the yearbook staff does claim to be doing this to help the troops, they are pocketing the check. And they are feathering their nest to expand this earmark boondoggle more than geometrically.
They wrap themselves in the flag and laugh all the way to the bank.
And Utah Sen. Bob Bennett is going along with it.
At a time of war, with massive budget deficits, when our troops are writing home for warm clothes, Utah Sen. Bob Bennett wants his hometown pals to get rich off the defense budget by making video scrapbooks. Which is one more reason why this clueless old bird needs to get the boot.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2009

[klott]

As dumb as the people who keep him in office!

[Michael Larson]

Originally Posted by klott

As dumb as the people who keep him in office!

Welfare Stampede in Detroit

[klott]

I like the way they wait until the last day and then blame the city. My favorite was the homeless guy who lives with his grandmother and just wants a home of his own. All this time, I thought homeless meant living in a box under a bridge, now I understand why there are so many homeless in this nation! Thank you Barack Obama, we love you!

[David A. Andersen]

I was listening to ACORN yesterday where they were playing down their own embezzlement.

Once they got it down below 1 million (970,000+ or -), it didn't seem to matter anymore!

What's $977,650.53 of taxpayer money?

Seeing this is the case, why bother paying my taxes anymore? I'm totally insignificant in extreme of things?

[dbelmont]

We get exactly the government we ask for.

Take the general idea of "Pork" that everyone cries about. All those greedy politicians lining up to grab what they can from the public coffers. Nothing but waste and abuse. Right?

Unless it's your congressman and your district. Then he/she's doing an effective job of representing his/her state/district. All measured by the amount of money they can bring home. So what we really mean is the other guys representative money grab is outrageous, but our representative's grab is laudable and insures reelection .

As a liberal I am no more pleased about government largesse that erodes personal initiative then you folks on the right. But my definition of a pig at the government trough includes all those corporations, defense contractors and wealthy contributors that you folks on the right always want to protect.

I'd help lead the charge to end welfare nonsense. It's embarrassing and degrading. But only when ending that nonsense means ending it for everyone including the corporate, republican pigs who quietly suck up more then any poor person ever could.

[Joseph A. Ferry]

Originally Posted by dbelmont

But only when ending that nonsense means ending it for everyone including the corporate, republican pigs who quietly suck up more then any poor person ever could.

Democrats have controlled the House of Representatives virtually exclusively since 1954, so most of the pigs sucking on the taxpayer teat have been Ds.

But you're right about the backscratching.

[klott]

No Donald, you will never get it until you stop playing the,"Blame the other Party" game.

[Stephen D. Schroetke]

[quote=jferry1;569352]Democrats have controlled the House of Representatives virtually exclusively since 1954, so most of the pigs sucking on the taxpayer teat have been Ds.

What's your source on that?

[Joseph A. Ferry]

Originally Posted by stephendschroetke

What's your source on that?

Open a book. Read a newspaper. You might learn something.

[Jae Williams]

Why do some of you people always ask for sources? Do you not know things, but have long since forgotten the source?

Some things we know simply because we "lived" them--and that's the source!.

[klott]

Jae, I thought Rush or Rupert were the source!

[mivie]

Here is a good example for the use of our tax dollars.

[Michael Larson]

Originally Posted by sschroetke

What's your source on that?

I'm honestly embarassed for you.

http://www.congressol.com/party-strength-house.html

[Brian E. Kelly]

http://uspolitics.about.com/od/usgov...division_2.htm

Since 1980 R's have had most of the power.

But what should really stop is Canadian wing nuts starting threads like this .