Only Democratic Congressman Jim Matheson is willing to publicly release his earmark requests
By Curmudgeon
Since politics seems to be in the air of late, thought I'd point out this interesting story in Sunday's Salt Lake Tribune. The paper asked all of Utah's Congressmen and Senators to release to the paper and the public all the earmarks they requested in the recent appropriations bills. Only one agreed: Congressman Matheson, Utah's only congressional Democrat. Hatch, Bennett, Cannon and Bishop all came up with whining reasons why they wouldn't make their earmark requests public.
Republican Senator Bennett said he didn't want to deal with angry calls from people whose requests he did not put into the budget as earmarks. That was Republican Congressman Cannon's excuse too. Republican Senator Hatch said he didn't want to see his earmark requests "appear in a newspaper." Republican Congressman Bishop said he wouldn't tell because the appropriations process was flawed.
But when the Trib asked Democratic Congressman Matheson to reveal his earmark requests to the paper and the public, his reply was "Sure."
The entire article is worth a read. And worth remembering next time Hatch, Bennett, Cannon and Bishop start whining about spendthrift Democrats and fiscal responsibility and open government. Well worth remembering.
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8 comments:
Very interesting Curm. It does seem that the only Democrat in the States' Washington D.C group is willing to provide information.
My question is, what are the others trying to hide?
Don't know and don't care...the point is they are less than desirable representatives of the growing majority of non LDS residents.
It is time we elected Democrats instead of the Utah brand of GOP thieves. And it is time for non LDS to become candidates for these positions and for voters to recognize that GOP Mo Mos are corrupt individuals without basic moral values or morays.
And, come to think of it, the SE's lead editorial in Sunday's paper ain't half bad either. They headlined it Lipstick On A Pig.
What about Jim Hansen's piece in today's paper. He's a republican trying to keep Democrats in N.Y. from controlling Utah land.
He is trying to say no one should be trying to tell those in another State what to do or how to do it without including them in the decisions or proposals.
It is not a partisan thing...and I mostly agree with Hansen for once.
What About:
Well, several problems with Mr. Hansen's all-too-typical anti-environmentalist rant. I feel a little sorry for Mr. Hansen and his ilk. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, their constant cry "the Commies are coming, the Commies are coming!" has lost its resonance, so now they retreat to the pale substitute, "the Environmentalists are coming, the Environmentalists are coming!" Utah should be so lucky.
If Rep. Hansen wants to have a public debate over sound environmental policy for Utah, I'm all for it. But it has to be, if it's to be worthwhile, an honest debate. And sadly, honesty is a quality sadly lacking in Mr. Hansen's SE screed. Look at his closing, for example, in which he claims environmentalists cost Utah $200 million dollars by suing over legacy highway, and he accuses them of lacking integrity or honor because they're not spending the rest of their lives paying the state back.
Debates about environmental policy that are grounded, as Hensen's is, on right-wing anti-environmentalist fantasies, won't do the state much good. Hansen is a well-informed man. He knows that when the legislature rammed through the first Legacy Highway bill, it was warned by environmental groups that it was not doing what the law required, and that if it went ahead anyway, they intended to sue to force the legislature to obey the law. He knows that the legislature, in its arrogance, went ahead anyway before the legal questions were settled, and then arranged for construction contracts to be so written that if a lawsuit halted construction, the state would have to continue to pay the construction companies involved. The SL Trib dug out why this was done: the idea was to make halting the project so expensive that no federal court would issue a restraining order even if it concluded the legislature had not done what the law required.
The environmental groups promptly sued, as they said they would, to compel the legislature to obey the law. A federal judge heard both sides, and issued a restraining order, halting construction. A three judge panel then heard both sides, and upheld the restraining order, agreeing that the legislature had not obeyed the law in the Legacy Highway matter. When the Utah AG's office complained that it would cost a fortune to stop construction, the court agreed, but noted that the pain was "self inflected." The decisions were reviewed by the full panel of the Federal district court, and the environmental plaintiffs were upheld yet again.
The great cost to the state, then, was the result of the legislature arrogantly ignoring what the law required [I recall all the macho "these environmentalists can't tell US what to do!" talk], refusing to postpone construction until the legal questions were settled in court, and then trying to stack the deck for the court by writing contracts that made it extraordinarily expensive to halt construction. Mr. Hansen knows all this. But somehow, it all disappeared in his SE rant. Must be an election coming. Time to scare the good people of Utah with "eastern environmentalists" again, I guess.
What has Mr. Hansen upset is not that environmentalists sued the state, but that they won. What has him upset is that they were right and that the legislature had not obeyed the law. To which I would ask him simply this: how else can Americans force state governments to obey the laws, except by going to court when they violate them? There are other ways. In Iraq and Bosnia, they settle questions about what governments can and cannot do with AK-47s. I like our way better.
Or is Rep. Hansen seriously arguing that state legislatures should be able to pick and choose which Federal laws they will obey and which they will not? Is that what he's arguing? If he's not, then it seems to me simple honesty should require him to have ended his essay demanding that if the Republican majorities of the Utah House and Senate that ignored the law in their first Legacy Highway bill were stand-up guys, they'd spend the rest of their lives working to pay the state back for the $200 million they squandered.
I have this vision of a Grondhal cartoon, showing a timorous and frightened Rep. Hansen, with a flashlight in his hand, checking under his bed at night before he goes to sleep to make sure there are not Big Bad Environmentalists under there, just wait for him to let down his guard in slumber so they can POUNCE and clean up the air we breathe or something equally frightening to the Right Wing crowd in these parts.
Nice update, I would like to see this printed in the SE as a rebuttal. Neo-cons seems to find another group to try and make us afraid, very afraid of. These rants usually make those concerned about the environment pull out their checkbook and make another donation. At least some out of state persons who are more concerned about preserving Utah's wild and open land for future generations, rather than the attitude to use it all up now and to hell with anyone else. Remember Rep. Bishop has no problem importing Nuclear Waste to our state as long as his friends can make a few dollars. Maybe he wants a highway named after him like Hansen has Hwy 89 named after him.
Nice reprise on the Legacy fiasco Curmudgeon.
It is interesting how the heart of the matter is still being ignored, that being the state legislature shot itself in the foot and they are still blaming the Sierra Club.
There is a lot of turmoil going on in Central Davis County these days about the eventual placement of the Legacy North feeder road. UDOT wants to run it up the old DRG rail road right of way that would essentially cut the town of Farmington in half and require the destruction of a whole lot of houses and the degradation of a lot more. There is a much better route that basically hugs the Great Salt Lake shoreline and would not cause the havoc that the preferred alignment would. UDOT and other state naybobs are refusing to even look at this option seriously because - yep you guessed it, the big bad Sierra Club would sue and cause the tax payers of Utah another $200 million dollar loss! As far as I can tell they haven't even run it by the Sierra Club or other environmental groups to see what objections they might have to such a plan. Nope, its just the bad environmentalists have society by the neck and won't agree to anything reasonable!
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