Tag: Earmarks

Republican Rep. Jeff Flake from Arizona is making a name for himself rooting out earmarks to indict the professionalized "pay-to-play" culture of Congress. His Web site tracks the fruits of his investigation so far, listing earmarks tied to clients of embattled big-time lobbying firm PMA, which doled out campaign contributions to members of Congress across the country, including Colorado's Ed Perlmutter, Mark Udall and Doug Lamborn. This morning Flake had an op-ed in the New York Times on the unspooling scandal.

Maybe the ferocious response to the Blackberry story scared her off. Maybe she was just pressed for time. Or maybe Sarah Palin has decided to stop telling tall tales in her campaign speeches.

John Cole at Balloon Juice.com makes a very important point that every voter should heed. Break out the calculators, kids.

Using unusually strong language against "The Original Mavericks," a new McCain-Palin ad that began airing Monday in Colorado and other battleground states, the Obama campaign said a claim that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin fought against the Bridge to Nowhere is a lie. Barack Obama countered with an ad of his own today.

Oops, she did it again. Accepting the Republican nomination for vice president Wednesday night in St. Paul, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin repeated a false claim about her opposition to the notorious Bridge to Nowhere, an emblematic boondoggle widely derided by foes of Congressional earmarks.

Digging through Wasilla’s municipal records is a lesson in the very essence of tedium. You’ve got pages of proposals to rename streets, assess sewers, build skateboard parks, buy lawnmowers, rent “pop” machines, carve snowmobile trails, congratulate high school football teams — the kind of stuff that makes small towns run, but leaves you glad that someone else is running them. Every once in awhile, though, something pops up and grabs your attention.

I just love it when Republicans have to overcome attacks they used to nail Democrats with. Consider McCain’s VP pick Sarah Palin, who supported the “Bridge to Nowhere” before she opposed it. And who ran up a $20 million debt as mayor of a town smaller than Lamar. And believe it or not, the McCain camp actually plans to run an ad claiming she’s somehow more qualified for the job of President than Barack Obama. Huh?! To strain a metaphor, this pig is drowning in lipstick.

Read more of Jeff's commentaries: • DNC protests fall flat • Congratulations Colorado • Palins supports teaching creationism in schools • Who the heck is Sarah Palin?

Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin won the governorship of Alaska two years ago by campaigning as a reformer against the clique of Republican officeholders beholden to the now-indicted Sen. Ted Stevens. But as Washington Independent's Matthew DeLong reports, Palin built her career as a small town mayor by hiring lobbyists to bring earmarked federal spending to her constituents. In February, she "submitted a request for $200 million in earmarks" to Stevens. Her claim "to being an anti-earmark crusader is a bit off," DeLong notes.

Colorado received $6.7 million from 11 earmarks in the 2008 Interior Department appropriations legislation. About 40 percent of the total, $2.8 million went to...

The New York Times reported on Sunday that Colorado religious groups got $10,090,000 in congressionally earmarked funds between 1997 and 2006, nearly all...