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Bellweather Votes

Every so often, I run across the most outrageous legislation, and I realize what criminals we have sent to Washington to run our country.

I was reminded of this in reading this article about Senator Coburn who engaged Senator Stevens ("it's a series of tubes!") regarding the "Bridge to Nowhere", which I first heard about on (of course) the Daily Show.

So, reading about Coburn, I wanted to know, what rat bastards voted with Stevens to spend over $200M on a bridge to serve 50 people when that money could have been earmarked to rebuild bridges damaged by Katrina?

Well, the list isn't flattering. Sure you'll see Brownback, Frist, Hatch, Lott, and Santorum voting with Stevens-- and I suppose career politicians like Kennedy, Kerry, and Lieberman aren't too surprising either. But does it stop there? Sadly, no. Biden. Clinton. Dodd. Feinstein. Durbin. Harkin. Obama. All of them (sadly, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell too!) voted against the amendment that Coburn put forth.

Now this wasn't some omnibus bill that "does more good than bad" to feed starving children, that happens to have some pork-barrel rider on it. No, this vote was solely to accept or deny the specific proposition to build a $200+ million bridge to serve a community of 50 people.

Why? So when the time comes for Cantwell or Murray to lobby for some pork-barrel initiative for Boeing or Microsoft, they'll have a community of 82 people they can rest assured will also look out for their interests. You scratch my back, and together we'll mis-appropriate the taxpayers' money.

Given this vote is over a year old, why make an issue of it now?

Well, maybe I'm finally "sick as hell and not going to take it anymore". There are a handful of issues that make me very angry. One of them is the culture of cynical politics, which is to say, that we need substantial campaign finance reform, we need to eliminate the impact the special interests have on our politicians. And the other is the outrageous and irresponsible actions of the US Congress to cede it's oversight powers over the ability of the President to wage war.

If any of those candidates, Democrat or Republican (pshaw, as if) were counting on my vote, sorry, I'll pass.

Yes, I'm a registered Democrat. Yes, I'll vote Democrat before I'll vote Green or Libertarian because I don't want to "throw away my vote". So I'll be participating in the primary process, and given that the union of these two bellweather votes distills it down to only Senators Russ Feingold and Kent Conrad, I'll be looking into other Democratic leaders, such as Gov's Richardson, Vilsack, Representatives Kucinich, Senator Mike Gravel, and General Wesley Clark.

And if they don't end up with the Democratic nomination, then I guess I'll see if the Greens, the Libertarians or (snowballs in hell!) Republicans manage to present a candidate better than the sellouts like Clinton or Edwards.