Out-of-touch Earmarks & Elites

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Those congressmen who defend earmarks as necessary may be grateful that few in the Washington press corps look too carefully at them.

“I realized that there was no merit in this system,” U. S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., said at the weekly meeting of Washington, D. C. area bloggers at the Heritage Foundation. “Jim Oberstar who represents the 8th District in Minnesota got as much money for transportation earmarked for that district as the other seven of us combined.”

“Was that because the 8th district was growing faster and had greater transportation needs? No, in fact the opposite is true . . . Then, I looked a little closer and I noticed that Mr. Oberstar had gotten as much money earmarked for bike trails in and round Duluth, as I did for roads and bridges in one of the fastest growing districts in Minnesota . . .”

“And, it had become abundantly clear to me that the system had to be stopped and fundamentally changed if we are going to have any sort of earmarking system where members of Congress can designate money to various projects . . .”
The congressman has helped inaugurate a new web site to call attention to abuse of earmarks and other legislative stratagems. “This is an effort, StopthePork.com, to reach out to people across America to sign our petition, so that I can take it to the new Congress in January and say, ‘Stop this Pork.’”

Also during the briefing, journalist Ericka Anderson unveiled the new site Culture11.com. “[Culture 11] is a web magazine attempting to democratize the entertainment and cultural space again,” she explained. “So many culture magazines tell readers, ‘This is American culture;’ while, my mom sitting over in Indiana thinks, ‘No, no it’s not’ . . .”

“There is a disconnect between what people are told American culture is and what American culture actually is. We want to be the outlet and forum for people to connect and reflect on how people actually live in America.”

Getting its name from the 11 key topics the site focuses on, Ericka and her colleagues hope Culture11 will “balance the monopoly of liberal media that has taken over the country.”

Lance Nation is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.