Obama Addresses Earmark Obsession

I'm glad that President Obama came out yesterday and expressed a sense of weariness over the media's obsession with earmarks while he also outlined his proposal to reduce and reform their use in the future. President Obama said this as he announced that he would sign the $410 billion omnibus spending bill that does include earmarks (they make up less than 2% of the bill) when it arrived his desk.

I want to remind people because the media seems to have forgotten that earmarks were not Obama's issue during the campaign -- they were Republican candidate John McCain's. Seriously people, there are those who are complaining that President Obama did not keep John McCain's campaign promise. President Obama never promised to veto them, just reduce their number and make their sponsors more accountable. Now he did not reduce them in this bill, which was written before he was elected, but he did make them more transparent. We now know who was the author and sponsor of every earmark.

Keith Olbermann pointed this out on Countdown last night. He showed President Obama speaking about this, and then spoke with Newsweek's Richard Wolfe.

Watch it here:

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Here are President Obama's statement:

"Yesterday, Congress sent me the final part of last year's budget; a piece of legislation that rolls nine bills required to keep the government running into one – a piece of legislation that addresses the immediate concerns of the American people by making needed investments in line with our urgent national priorities."

"That is what nearly 99 percent of this legislation does – the nearly 99 percent you probably haven't heard much about."

In fact, President Obama came out and said quite clearly that earmarks have some value:

"Done right, earmarks give legislators the opportunity to direct federal money to worthy projects that benefit people in their district, and that's why I have opposed their outright elimination."

And he took a swipe at some of the bill's critics:

"I also find it ironic that some of those who railed the loudest against this bill because of earmarks actually inserted earmarks of their own – and will tout them in their own states and districts."

President Obama suggested new guidelines for earmarks that he said were consistent with his pledge to restore "responsibility, transparency, and accountability to the actions government takes." He said that earmarks should be announced and justified ahead of time, shouldn't go to private companies without competitive bidding and shouldn't be traded for political favors.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer wrote about the stupidity of the Republican's argument in a USA Today op-ed yesterday:

"Some politicians try to cultivate an image of fiscal discipline by railing against earmarks — and 'pork' also makes a great story for the news media. But as congressional scholar Thomas Mann recently noted, earmarks do not generally increase spending but simply allow members of Congress to direct a small part of a program's funding.

'Abolishing all earmarks would therefore have a trivial effect on the level of spending,' Mann explained, adding that 'hyperbolic attacks on earmarks are a disservice to the public, encouraging people to concentrate way too much attention and energy on a largely symbolic issue and ignore the critical decisions that we face.'"

Countdown's Take on Barack Obama's Press Conference

Keith Olbermann reported on President-elect Barack Obama's press conference, and then on comments made by President Bush on the transition. Olbermann's first guest was Countdown regular Richard Wolfe, and the two spoke about the politics of this situation. We are in very unique times, where the economic crisis has forced Barack Obama to speed up the process of putting together a cabinet and an economic team. Richard Wolfe made the bold statement that we are no longer a nation with only one President. Circumstances had forced the President-elect to act in ways that would normally be seen as out of bounds.

Keith Olbermann then spoke with Robert Reich about the New NEW DEAL, and the economics that might be a part of President-elect's stimulus plan. I am a huge fan of Robert Reich, and I like his idea's about the direction America's economy should take. In this discussion I believe Mr. Reich is correct that this nation really needs a seamless transition between President Bush and President Obama. I believe Professor Reich is correct that Obama's immediate challenge is to fill the leadership vacuum created by President Bush.

Here is Olbermann's discussion with Richard Wolfe:


Here is Olbermann's discussion with Robert Reich:

LibertyAir Blog

Sarah Palin is a Blithering Idiot

Yesterday Sarah Palin delivered her first (and probably last) major policy address in Pittsburgh, PA. This speech was about Children with special needs, which we are told will be an area she works on if this country is unlucky enough to have her as a Vice President. In the speech she promised to care for “children with special needs who have been set apart and excluded” and to “fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.”

During the speech Sarah Palin went off on a weird tangent and mocked fruit fly research, during a general tirade against earmarks. This was a speech about autism and disabilities, so why would Palin mock "fruit fly research" as wasteful pork? Didn't anybody in the campaign do any research? Fruit fly research, pardon the pun, has been very fruitful for scientific research. It is one of the foundations of modern biological research.

In her remarks Palin said:

This is a matter of how we prioritize the money that we spend. We've got a three trillion dollar budget, and Congress spends some 18 billion dollars a year on earmarks for political pet projects. That's more than the shortfall to fully fund the IDEA. And where does a lot of that earmark money end up? It goes to projects having little or nothing to do with the public good -- things like fruit fly research in Paris, France...

Here is what science blog BiochemicalSoul.com had to say:

The fruit fly (Drosophila) has probably been the single most important organism for the study of genetics for over a century now. Almost everything we know about genetics, development, cell biology, neuroscience, and every other field of biology has strong roots in previous and current work on Drosophila. The fruit fly is one of a small handful of “standard model organisms” used by thousands of scientists across the world to learn how our bodies, organs, genes, and proteins work. Most of what we know about how a single fertilized cell becomes the amazingly complex beings we are comes from studies initially done in Drosophila. Vast amounts of our understanding of the brain (and brain disorders, diseases, and defects) also come from initial studies in fruit flies.

In fact, recent research from my own graduate alma mater, the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, on fruit fly brains has had an impact on the understanding of autism and has boosted autism research:

“[S]cientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have shown that a protein called neurexin is required for..nerve cell connections to form and function correctly. The discovery, made in Drosophila fruit flies may lead
to advances in understanding autism spectrum disorders, as recently, human
neurexins have been identified as a genetic risk factor for autism.”

To decry research in [condescending and amazed tone] “the fruit fly” is a testament to the true idiocy of this woman and to the failure of our public education system.
In fact, her own father, Chuck Heath, was a biology teacher – obviously a complete failure of a biology teacher.

Keith Olbermann covered this on his show Friday night in his first segment, and the he interviewed Richard Wolfe of Newsweek. Richard had the best line when he said "This is the most mindless, ignorant, uninformed comment that we have seen from Governor Palin so far, and there's been a lot of competition for that prize."

Watch here:


Why has the Republican Party made the decision to not respect science? It is too pervasive throughout the party, to have not been a conscious decision by the party. It's one more example of the intellectual laziness that pervades the GOP. Why do modern Republicans respect stupidity and ignorance?

Palin’s dismissal of all earmarks in her remarks were also dishonest. A simple search of the Office of Management and Budget website shows that there are at least 19 autism-related projects in the 2009 budget:

- $250K to Parents as Teachers National Center, St. Louis, MO, to develop research-based materials and training for home visiting professionals for families of children with autism
- $200K for Southern Penobscot Regional Program for Children with Exceptionalities, Bangor, ME, for services for families with autistic children
- $100K to Marywood University, Scranton, PA, for campus-based autism education programs

Not every earmark is a waste of money, not every earmark is pork. And history shows that when it comes to priorities, there is little history that backs up Palin's grand statements in her speech.

John McCain and Sarah Palin run around all over the country giving speeches where they try to scare Americans about the dangers of expanding SCHIP and Medicaid for poor and sick children, yet this "evil socialism" would be avoided if the government is able to fund medical research or other special needs initiatives, to reduce disease and cure genetic disorders.

Palin’s rhetoric in the speech also does not square with her record, McCain’s individual market-centric health care plan, and penchant for gutting all forms of government programs.