Political Punch

Remind me again how much Sarah Palin earmark money requested to study crab mating habits in Alaska? Study thesis? do they do it under the Bridge To Nowhere like Alskan teenagers do?

My tax dollars are being used for education of children?!?!?! This is an outrage! That money could have been used by another bank CEO for a well needed vacation, or better yet, that could have been one more bomb we could have bought to blow up a terrorist somewhere in Whoknowswhereastand!

You people better get your priorities right when you complain on how our money is spent. You can see by some of the responses on this blog that there has not been enough spent on education in this country.

My tax dollars are being used for education of children?!?!?! This is an outrage! That money could have been used by another bank CEO for a well needed vacation, or better yet, that could have been one more bomb we could have bought to blow up a terrorist somewhere in Whoknowswhereastand!

You people better get your priorities right when you complain on how our money is spent. You can see by some of the responses on this blog that there has not been enough spent on education in this country.

ugot2bfree | Oct 7, 2008 10:57:15 PM,
Just lied to us all. McCain was found innocent in the Keating 5 situation. If you are going to post information get the facts. Oh, I get it, you're a B O supporter. You don't tell whole stories. B O was the 2nd highest recipient of contributions from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Now all of us in the USA are covering B O's big contribution along with many others. You have blinders on when you're evaluating B O. He isn't ready to be president and I'm not ready to be a socialist.
Darth

Trust a pitbull, lipstick-wearing pig and an angry, confused senior citizen would have problems appreciating the research and public service merit of a planetarium.

Just as an aside, I've been to the planetarium and that is the coolest projector ever! It projects huge, extremely sharp digital images on the dome, and is unlike anything I've ever seen at a planetarium.

When you're in Chicago it's worth seeing.

Not surprising coming from the McSame camp, when his running mate believes that there are witches in Anchorage, and the earth is only 6,000 years old! And a planetarium? When McSame doesn't know to use a computer -although he invented the Blackberry - what use is a planetarium?

I can understand that the Sky Theatre may need a new projector, but I'm not sure the entire state of Illinois needs to pay for it. This is a question of priorities. We have schools state-wide with inadequate facilities and next-to-zero supplies. We have kids who come to school hungry.

In the grand scheme of things, $3M is not a lot of money compared with the needs that exist in our state. But when you add it to the other things Obama has tossed his support behind, you find a lot to question.

It would be really nice, if people knew the Real Story on this 3 million dollar
THANK YOU GIFT FOR MY FUND RAISER FROM BO...on the back of the taxpayers...

It was originally a 300,000.00 requested for Adler..Barack turn into 10X more money!! (Yes, the chosen one is a magician!)FOR A FUNDRAISER THAT RAISED 200,000.00 FOR BARACK'S PRESIDENTIAL RUN, DONE BY SOMEONE ON THE BOARD AT ADLER..

The problem with McCain is that he worries about a projector to teach children and then approves of billions to bomb heck out of some country. John McCain is a tool of the industrial military complex and always has been. He is for any war that comes along and in fact, agitates for more bombing every chance he gets. His complaint about this one expenditure says it all about his priorities. What a sad situation and McCain even brags about it.

forget the projector value, but was the request met secondly Obabma has requested a total of 323million in earmarks over his senate career that does not mean that all of it has been met and in the unlikely scenario that they have been met that is still far short of the 1billion going around the rovian republican circles

McCain has some really strange advisors for his campaign. They chose to deride an Obama earmark to teach science to kids? Brilliant move.

Remember McCain's convention speech when he talked about the Michigan couple he was working to help with their real-estate INVESTMENTS? Not the roof over their head, some real estate agents who were angry that their get-rich-quick scheme of 'flipping' houses had gone south.

McCain doesn't get it.

Why is it o.k. to be spending billions of dollars a month to fight an unjustified war, which always involves killing innocent people because war does that, but it is not o.k. to spend $3 million on a planetariuum projector? What kind of "commitment to life" is that? Don't help and of the U.S. states educate kids, we need the money to kill kids in Iraq.

And for the record, the Adler Planetarium does more than just charge people money to look at the stars on a big screen. It is also a research facility.

The earmark request for
replacing the 40-year
old frequently
malfunctioning projector
is well justified.

McCain after his 26 years
in Congress should know
the difference between
projects that benefit people
and institutions, and pork
barrel spending such as
appropriations for the Bridge
to Nowhere, or federal funds
lawmakers use on questionable
local improvements to ingratiate
themselves with political
contributors or specfic
constituents to assure their
reelection to office.

Who the heck has a problem with a 3 million dollar learning aid. This is for children, for goodness sakes. It's called investing in our future!

Those $150 billion tacked onto that bill where not earmarks

That stupid subject again: earmarks.

In 2008, earmarks total 18 Billion
The Budget is roughly 2.9 Trillion

Earmarks comprise 0.63% of the entire budget.

That's right: 0.63%

Another thing not widely known is that earmarks is mostly money that has *already been* allocated to certain sectors or states. Earmarking is marking a portion of that already allocated money to a certain project.

McCain's railing against earmarks is like railing against having a cookie with your coffee after dinner to get you out of your monthly budgetdeficit consisting of hundreds of dollars a week.

>>> ZAGGS>>>>

"You would think a reporter would look into such a matter more if it piqued their interest. But then again Jake stopped being a reporter a long time ago."
______________

..along with a lot of others.

"Freedom of the Press" has morphed into "The right to hide what you want hidden, publish what you want read, and opinionate on all the rest."

We are heading backwards.

Is this the kind of change we've been hearing about?

Marylou--

Take a quick trip to the website Citizens Against Taxpayer Waste. There you'll find that in 2008 South Dakota's totals for earmarks were 86 requests for a total of $89,241,281. Not bad for a state with such a small popluation. But I don't mean to be flip. Many of those projects might be worthy, as in California or Illinois.

So I have two suggestions: 1) why don't you go to the website and find out what earmarks your state has received. Maybe there will be some items that are familiar to you and seems worthwhile. And 2) why don't you ask yourself whether you really want a nation of 50 distinct states. My guess is that under such conditions, South Dakota would be in trouble.

I'm not saying that we don't have to restrain spending, but this discussion of earmarks is both small potatoes (how about "star wars" missile defense) and also misses that some of these requests have legitimacy. As Obama argues, we need a scalpel not a hatchet.

To Mary Brown. So why the $700 billion package was enhanced by another $150 billion in earmarks? Did you talk to your own senator or congressmen?