John vs. the Volcano
So McCain is seething about earmarks again. Lots of the Repubs have been doing it. Remember Bobby Jindal saying volcano monitoring was a waste of money? And here’s Sean Hannity showing some hapless Dem Congressman who’s boss.
But the Jindal thing really made me wonder about this round of earmark indignation, becuase when he faulted government support for volcano monitoring it suddenly occured to me that earmarks might not be bad. How else are those programs going to be funded?
I guess I understand the whole “bridge to nowhere” thing because those 200 people were getting way more Federal money than the rest of the country. So its not fair. But with funding science, apportioning money for studying volcanoes, or mouse DNA, or tide patterns, or whatever, how is that unfair? That research is a public good. Funding that stuff brings all of science along. Everyone benefits.
So I suppose that McCain’s earmark war is really just misplaced anger at government spending. But what’s weird to me is that attitude seems to imply that McCain, and Repubs in general, place a premium on small, cheap government. But look at spending since WWII. Reagan and the Bushies are the biggest culprets! And McCain was in Congress for most, if not all of that!
