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By Chuck Ring (GadaboutBlogalot ©2009 – 2010)
Quote Freely From The Article – Leave The Pseudonym Alone
How do you explain the absolute silliness of a massive congressional earmark if it is indescribable in ordinary terms? Sublime pomposity? Criminal ignorance and disrespect for the money and resources of others? Perhaps all of the forgoing would be appropriate. A $49 billion earmark seems a bit gigantic to me and I hope to the rest of you taxpaying citizens. Can we just cut to the story of the congressman who has the audacity to defend such an earmark … “Yes we can!” I know we have all heard those last three words, but I do not believe we were prepared to interpret them as our acquiescence to blatant robbery by a congress member. Here’s the story — at least part of it. From The Southeast Missourian and columnist Mike Jensen:
Rep. Cleaver has proposed a $48 billion earmark
When absurdity gives way to hilarity, you must be talking about politics.
In the midst of a colossal global concern for the economic stability of our great nation, Emanuel Cleaver, Missouri’s 5th Congressional District representative, has one small earmark on his wish list that deserves some attention.
Cleaver has listed a new earmark — one of several — and he promises to “fight for every one.” But this is a whopping $48 billion package that must go down as the grandaddy of all earmarks.
Proposed by a gentleman named Lamar Mickens, president of the not-for-profit Quality Day Campus, the $48 billion earmark would funnel money into the inner cities to give money to the poor and thereby produce a much larger consumer class to buy the goods and services produced in this country.
Just call this redistribution on steroids.
Cleaver’s office says this of the proposal:
“The Epicenter is a proposed estimated $48 billion (Phase One) mass scale urban reclamation project for combating, reducing, reversing and/or eliminating poverty within under served communities by utilizing mass scale economic redevelopment to bring about stability and self reliance.”
This thing just gets sillier and borders on stupid. Here is a link to the rest of Jensen’s story. PAY ATTENTION NOW — LOOK BELOW!
The story as Mr. Jensen wrote it seems not true. Here is a follow-up to Jensen’s story, also from The Southeast Missourian, written by another author (Scott Moyer) :
Kansas City, Mo., Congressman Emanuel Cleaver is defending himself today to the national media, saying a Southeast Missouri columnist’s article that claims he was trying to seek $48 billion in federal funding for an inner-city revitalization project is false.”I think it would be hilarious if thousands of people did not believe it,” said Cleaver, who is serving his third term representing the Fifth District of Missouri in the House of Representatives. “It’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever experienced in my years in politics.”
It began on Wednesday, when a column by Michael Jensen of Sikeston ran in the Southeast Missourian, asserting that Cleaver proposed a $48 billion earmark for a project called the Epicenter, an urban reclamation project for revitalizing low-income areas in Kansas City’s inner city.
The project is one of 127 proposals that were submitted to Cleaver via his website earlier this year for fiscal year 2011, which were posted on his website. But he posts every proposal he receives from constituents, he said, and not those that he actually chooses to send to Congressional appropriations committees.
So a sensational story has the kibosh put to it, by all things, an accurate story (we hope.) We can read the rest of the “accurate” story and see that the congressman still loves pork bellies, pig tails and pig earmarks … just not to the extent to which he was accused by Mr. Jensen and others who ran with the original non-story that made a story in itself. Here’s a link the rest of the revelatory piece by Mr. Moyers.
While the above may or may not make a decent story, it should give any writer pause to consider sources and their veracity. Something I have neglected on occasion as my friends and enemies can attest.
Below is a link which might help explain what Congressman Cleaver’s earmarks were, and what they were not. But, with a name like “Cleaver,” surely the congressman can find an ear or two in need of marking for a butcher job:
Congressman Cleaver’s Earmarks
Here’s more and don’t forget the links toward the bottom of the page:
Republican earmarks do exist along with other Democrats, and Independents
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