Porkomatic Polemic
The Democrats have already screwed up. Their seats aren’t even warmed yet and they stuff $21 billion of pork barrel spending into the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill for FY2007. So much for integrity. The NY Times provides a PDF partial list of all "the other white meat" that Democratic congresspersons chose as payment for their votes. Porkbusters.org and Council for Citizens Against Public Waste are almost apoplectic. Who can blame them?
I would remind all the new Congressionals that much of the whining that got them their new chairs was about indiscriminate spending by congress. D’OH!
Our government hasn’t come to grip with the Internet yet. They haven’t understood the new era of transparency we’re heading into. Clinging to old-school methodology, our leaders still live in a world where the inner workings of the Hallowed Halls are mystical, where secrets are commonplace. Similarly, the quid pro quo chumminess governments have with major media outlets are circumvented. Instant access to information by the unwashed masses destroys these dynamics. This is, to my way of thinking, A Good Thing.
Tyranny breeds of secrecy, as does oppression, theft, warfare, and corruption. These common diseases of governments can be treated, if not cured, through unhindered sharing information. It is through the formation of a world in which no one can hide that may save humanity from itself.
Yet large beasts such as the American Political Animal are difficult to turn once the stampeding begins, and so in the fervor of power wresting, our Democratic majority has shown their anachronistic thinking, and their old bad habits. Akin to a pot smoker in remission, this vote selling is a tough habit to mask, and the Internet is a glass wall the addict is crouching behind ineffectively.
So clean up your act, servants of the public, your actions are plainly visible, your tracks impossible to cover. Welcome to a new world order of accountability and transparency, a world, I note, that you have paid for. Selling votes for unimportant pet projects in this time of war and astronomical deficits - after a bitter campaign of demanding accountability - is, well, to quote a certain American cultural icon: "it’s DesthPICable!"