The Club for Growth, a conservative advocacy group on Whore Hill, recently released its “RePORK Card,” which grades members of Congress on their willingness to say no to pork. As directed by city charter, our local politicians, who never were that good at anything, failed miserably.
To come up with the grades, the group counted how many times each member of Congress voted against pork-project amendments – add-ons to unrelated spending bills that earmark money for particular projects, like new bridges, or a new flat screen for the cartoon tree where Dennis Kucinich whips up his famous cookies. Just like on those report cards you used to “accidentally” drop in Dad’s shredder, the higher the grade, the better.
Naturally, the Republicans shined. Sixteen GOPers earned perfect scores. On the Democrats’ side, after Tennessee Rep. Jim Cooper (98 percent), the next closest topped out at 20 percent. In all, 81 Dems scored zeroes.
Here in Ohio, we had two of the highest scores — Republicans Steve Chabot (96 percent) and Jim Jordan (98) — and four of the lowest. Dennis Kucinich, that loveable hairless terrier occasionally seen dodging traffic on Clifton, was among the four Ohio pols who scored zeroes. Our average for the 18-member delegation: 22 percent.
But don’t blame it all on Kucinich. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones pulled a ham-fisted two-fer. She voted for just one of the 50 pork-killing amendments, and even tried to score $2 million for Sherwin-Williams. Always nice to have your hometown politician, whose city is more dangerous than those scary fiery-castle levels in Super Mario Bros., lifting from the till on behalf of a company that’s made millions poisoning kids. To make matters worse, Tubbs-Jones pulled the ultra-cool move of leaving somebody else – Pennsylvania’s John Murtha – to defend it on the floor. He couldn’t.
While disappointing, Kucinich and Tubbs Jones’ RePORK Cards weren’t surprising; they sucked last year, too. “They’ve been pretty consistent porkers,” says Club spokeswoman Nachama Soloveichik. – Jason Nedley
This article appears in Aug 8-14, 2007.
This is all very clever, but Dennis Kucinich would make a great president. It would be fun to see all the self-styled “macho guys” get over the fact that Kucinich is (horrors!) “short,” grow up, and actually listen to what he has to say. Most of them would agree with his message of fairness, diplomacy, peace-making, equality … because these principles will make a better world for everyone. Listen up! He’s great!
As one who is following the news on many of the presidential candidates, I have noticed the following:
In their home towns presidential candidates often have two kinds of opposition — there’s a group like this one that apparently doesn’t think elected officials should try to win projects for their districts, and then there’s another group (or maybe the same people for all I know) who say the candidates aren’t doing enough because they spend too much time campaigning and not enough time scoring projects for their district or state.
Neither of these groups ever seems to have much to say about the actual policy positions of the candidates.
It would be helpful if this web page listed all the votes on which the rating was based. It would make your posting much more credible, especially since you spend a lot of words denigrating a candidate’s physical appearance. That kind of verbal assault only defuses your message, and in this case makes me think your true agenda is something other than fiscal responsibility.
Here is a link to the actual “RePork Card”, with the actual list of legislation at the bottom:
http://www.clubforgrowth.org/2007/08/the_2007_club_for_growth_repor.php
ALL of the legislation listed deals with specific projects, and NONE of it deals with the larger issue of pork barrel spending.
Examples:
House Vote 639 – Bars funding of $1,000,000 for nano-structured fuel cell membrane electrode assembly in California.
House Vote 654 – Bars funding of $34,000,000 for the Alaska Native Education Equity program and other programs.
House Vote 664 – Bars funding of $300,000 for its Bay Area Science Teacher Recruitment, Retention and Improvement Initiative.
House Vote 705 – Bars funding of $150,000 for the Edmonds Center for the Arts in Edmonds, WA.
I’m not surprised that Republicans would be more inclined to withhold funding from these projects.
Here’s an interesting article regarding what is considered pork or not: (click)
I support Dennis Kucinich for President in 2008, for a more peaceful world with single-payer universal health care for all Americans.
This country needs a doctor, not another lawyer.
RON PAUL for President. Haven’t you heard?