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The Obama Timeline

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Harconen
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« Reply #105 on: July 28, 2009, 10:00:54 pm »

            Obama’s third pick for Commerce Secretary (after the withdrawals of Bill Richardson and Judd Gregg) is Gary Faye Locke, former Democrat Governor of Washington and a lawyer for an international firm that specializes in China. Locke, an American with Chinese ancestry, has connections to and has received campaign contributions from John Huang. Huang, who worked in Bill Clinton’s Commerce Department, pleaded guilty in 1999 to felony conspiracy charges for violating campaign finance laws. Locke eventually returned some of Huang’s contributions. The New York Times reports that Locke has a “largely scandal-free resume.” (Apparently, the Times does not feel that Americans deserve completely scandal-free cabinet members.) Locke received almost $14,000 in campaign contributions from monks and nuns at a Redmond, Washington Buddhist temple, many of whom gave $1,000 but could not recall making the donations; some of them were not even sure they were U.S. citizens. (The assumption is that someone illegally gave the cash to the monks and nuns for them to donate to Locke’s campaign.) [1398, 1399, 1417, 1420]

            Heritage Foundation budget expert Brian M. Riedl states that the $410 billion spending bill likely breaks all records for the most wasteful earmarks in any legislation. It includes $1.8 million to research pig odor and manure management, $41.5 million to upgrade the presidential libraries of Democrats Roosevelt, Johnson, and Kennedy, $2.9 million for shrimp-breeding studies, $209,000 to improve blueberry production, and $6.6 million for Formosan subterranean termites. Also included in the bill are $1.7 million for a honeybee laboratory, $1,049,000 for the study of crop-eating crickets, $333,000 for an aviation museum, $199,000 for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, $75,000 for a “Totally Teen Zone” in Albany, New York, $400,000 to combat bullying in schools, and $150,000 for lobster research. [1543]

            Obama will not veto the wasteful spending bill, despite a campaign promise to end earmarks. (In a September 2008 debate with John McCain, Obama said, “Absolutely we need earmark reform, and when I am president we will go line by line to make sure we’re not spending money unwisely.”) Riedl estimates the number of identified earmarks at 9,287, costing the taxpayers $14.3 billion. Obama tries to place the blame on former President Bush, saying the earmarks are carryovers from the prior administration—but they were carried over precisely because President Bush refused to sign a bill that contained them. If signed into law now, Obama cannot rightly disown responsibility for them… but he will try. [1543]

            The spending bill also includes $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Honolulu, $500,000 for fruit fly control in Hawaii, $650,000 for beaver management, $150,000 for a rodeo museum, $95,000 for Hawaii public radio, $118,750 for an aircraft display, and $380,000 for Maine lighthouses—all of which Obama apparently believes are justified expenditures even though the nation is enduring a severe recession. [1554]

            Although Obama railed against Congressional earmarks during the campaign, the $410 billion spending bill includes projects he himself (and others in the new administration) proposed before the inauguration, including $7.7 million for a Tribally Controlled Postsecondary Vocational Institution. (That item was sponsored by then-Senator Obama and co-sponsored by then-Senators Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.) Other earmarks in the bill include projects costing $94.9 million requested by Biden, $5.4 million from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, $31.2 million from Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, $3.9 million from Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, $38.4 million from Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, and $109 million from Hillary Clinton. [1457]

            The stock market, unimpressed by Obama’s big-government, high-cost solutions to problems (real, exaggerated, and imagined), and unsure what Washington will do next, drops 1.1 percent, or 80.05 points. [1401]

            On February 25, the House of Representatives passes the $410 billion spending bill—on top of the $787 billion spending in the recently passed stimulus bill. The vote is 245–178, with 16 Republicans voting for the bill and 20 Democrats voting against it. The bill includes a provision eliminating the $14 million DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. The cancellation of the popular school voucher program comes despite an American Legislative Exchange Council ranking of public schools in the 50 states and Washington, D.C. which places the nation’s capitol dead last—and certainly in need of the improvement a voucher program prompts. Obama and the Democrats claim the bill has no wasteful earmarks; others claim there are about 9,000. While eliminating the popular school program in D.C., the bill includes $9 million for the nation’s largest provider of abortions, Planned Parenthood, and $50 million for the United Nations Population Fund (which is involved in forced sterilization in China). The bill provides for $22 million for an addition to the JFK Library, $200,000 for tattoo removals, $473,000 for the Hispanic lobbying group LaRaza (which advocates amnesty for illegal immigrants), and $5.8 million for an Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate. Other earmarks include $819,000 million for the study of the catfish genome, and $800,000 for oyster rehabilitation. (Washington, D.C. parents may be less than pleased to learn that the education of their children is less important than catfish genetics and “oyster rehabilitation.”) [1397, 1406, 1412, 1421, 1433, 1542, 1582, 1750]

            Washington, D.C. parents are discouraged and angered by the decision to cancel the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. Virginia Walden Ford, executive director of the DC Parents for School Choice, states “We are empowering parents to tell their stories to Congress in order to save the program. We are writing letters to the editor… parents are calling the congressmen’s offices, they’re e-mailing, we are preparing parents to go up and speak with Congress members.” Ford complains that “…Obama chose the school that was in the best interest of his child(ren), and our message to him would be, ‘Give us the same opportunity.’” (Obama will not give them that opportunity, because he receives more in donations from teachers unions than from struggling D.C. parents.) [1479]
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