Earmarkmeisters Robert C Byrd and John Murtha are the worst offenders in the process of bringing home the bacon for their home districts (who return the favor by re-electing them) at the expense of all the rest of US taxpayers (outside their districts). These guys, among others, just attach their pork to any appropriations bill without any oversight, debate or other psuedo-democratic process. They do it solely by virtue of their seniority on whatever appropriations committee they happen to be chairman of. So we end up getting bridges to nowhere, four lane highways that suddenly end in dirt roads, studies of ridiculous subjects that nobody is interested in. And nobody reads the final reports because they're apropos of nothing. And these guys are proud of their work in bringing home the bacon. They brag about it. They're not at all sheepish about bloating the federal budget and transfering tax liabilities to US citizens outside their district.
The following is a good explanation of earmarks:
What is an earmark?
An earmark is a line-item that is inserted into a bill to direct funds to a specific project or recipient without any public hearing or review. Members of Congress—both in the House and the Senate—use earmarks to direct funds to projects of their choice. Typically earmarks fund projects in the district of the House member or the state of the Senator who inserted it; the beneficiary of the funds can be a state or local agency or a private entity; often, the ultimate beneficiary is a political supporter of the legislator. Earmarks are the principal means by which Members of Congress “bring home the bacon.”What’s wrong with earmarks?
It’s not so much any single earmark that is the problem, but rather the entire process. There is no transparency or accountability in the system; members can secure hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for a project without subjecting it to debate by their colleagues in the Congress, or to the scrutiny and oversight of the public. Because earmarks are hard to identify, some members use them to secretly award their biggest campaign contributors or, in the infamous case of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, to exchange them for bribes. The secrecy of the earmarking process invites backroom deals and unethical—or even corrupt—behavior, part of a pay-to-play culture where lobbyists and contractors and well-connected individuals give campaign contributions to legislators in return for federal funding.
As the largest earmark porkmeister, Robert C Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia is not apologetic about his ability to bring home the pork to his constituents who then honor him by naming all their projects the Robert C Byrd this and the Robert C Byrd that. There's the Robert C. Byrd Metals Fabrication Center, the Robert C. Byrd Hilltop Office Complex, including the Robert C. Byrd Institute and the Erma Ora Byrd Conference and Learning Center, 
the Robert C. Byrd Federal Building and Courthouse in Charleston (not to be confused with the Robert C. Byrd Federal Building and Courthouse in Beckley), the Robert C. Byrd Expressway (not to be confused with the Robert C. Byrd Freeway or the Robert C. Byrd Bridge), the Robert C. Byrd National Technology Transfer Center at Wheeling Jesuit University (not to be confused with the Robert C. Byrd Science and Technology Center at Shepherd University or the Robert C. Byrd Technology Center at Alderson-Broaddus College), the Robert C. Byrd Highway, the Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam, the Robert C. Byrd Telescope. CBS found more than 40 projects bearing the Byrd name. You know, this is just reprehensible that this doddering old fool is setting up so many monuments to himself in an unprecedcented show of vanity, egotism and corruption. No humility here. He wants every last vaingloroius vestige of personal adornment he can possibly squeeze out of a corrupt and reprehensible system that mocks white collar crime but is nevertheless perfectly legal because, after all, these are the guys who make the laws and of course they make them to favor themselvess and not to do right towards the American people in general. Since 1991, the "king of pork" has steered $3 billion in earmarks to West Virginia, according to Citizens Against Government Waste.
"Yeah man, you're lookin' at Big Daddy. Big Daddy!"
That's Byrd at the opening of the Robert C. Byrd Biotech Center, to which he generously gave $35.6 million of your tax dollars.
"Our effort to construct this facility and create a stronger foundation for the biotech industry here in West Virginia began where? With a visit to my office. Yeah. Yeah man," Byrd said. "A visit to my office, yeah."
What hubris and egomania!
Defense earmarks are also at the heart of corruption scandals threatening to sink Congress to new lows in public esteem. In November 2005, Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R) of California resigned from Congress and was later convicted of conspiring to take $2.4 million in bribes from two defense contractors for whom he sponsored earmarks. But, alas, poor Randy just didn't know how to play the game. He should have taken the bribe as a campaign contribution, and then that would have been perfectly legal. Instead, he took it as antique furniture, yachts, real estate and sorties with prostitutes. Defense earmarks as well as defense spending in general maintain the US status quo as a militarized national security state, one devoted to war spending rather than one devoted to spending on projects of peace and constructive efforts to provide jobs for people in other than war related pursuits. For instance, if the money went to building infrastructure or providing health care or housing or transporation, or research or to clean energy, this would be a constructive use of Federal money. Instead it goes to war and war related pursuits. The Defense Department should be renamed the War Department, as it formerly was, to suit a nation that is in the advanced stages of unremitting imperial pursuits and ambitions.
Democrat John Murtha is no better than the Byrd when it comes to porkbarrel spending. As chairman of the Defense Appropriations Commmittee, he has sent a steady diet of pork back to his home district. Johnstown, PA might as well be renamed Johnmurthastown for all the money he has singlehandedly injected into the local economy. The way it works with Murtha and others is that former Murtha staffers take over jobs as lobbyists for favorite firms who then benefit from Murtha earmarks and joyously make large contributions to Murtha campaign funds which money is then spent on buying TV ads telling the folks back home how wonderful Murtha is and would they really want to kill the goose who lays the golden eggs in return for some upstart who has no seniority on any appropriations committee? Nosiree, Bob. Thereby, Murtha is continually reelected. After pricking our consciences about the Iraq war, Murtha decided he better not carry the rhetoric too far because after all, he may be against the war but he's not against war spending. A slight inconsistency there, but he has a point. Let's at least spend the money on the right war. Maybe his conscience is bothering him after all.
Most people outside of Western Pennsylvania may known Rep. John Murtha as the guy who first called for the troops to come home. But the Wall Street Journal presents a withering portrait of the congressman today as "old-fashioned political boss" who, as the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, has dubiously funneled billions of taxpayer dollars to his hard-luck hometown.
No one could say the hamlet of Johnstown, population 27,000, couldn’t use the cash. The small town 60 miles east of Pittsburgh was once the world's largest steel producer. But by 1983, its unemployment rate was more than 24 percent. Today, thanks to Murtha's ability to bring home defense contracts through earmarks on appropriations bills, it's around 5 percent.
But the Journal asserts that "Johnstown's good fortune has come at the expense of taxpayers everywhere else." Defense contractors have found that if they open an office there and hire the right lobbyist, they can get lucrative, no-bid contracts. Over the past decade, Concurrent Techologies Corp., a defense-research firm that employs 800 people, got hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to Murtha despite poor reviews by Pentagon auditors. The National Drug Intelligence Center, with 300 workers, got $509 million, though the White House has tried for years to shut it down as wasteful and unnecessary, the paper reports.
Murtha refuses to apologize. At a breakfast fundraiser this summer in Johnstown, he said that bringing federal dollars there "is the whole goddamn reason I went to Washington." And this is about the most G-rated thing that the Congressman -- who "curses like the Parris Island drill sergeant he once was" -- utters in the whole article.
So here's the game. Find out which Senators and Congressmen are on appropriations committees and then open a branch office in their home district. Hire former staffers of said Senator or Congressman as lobbyists. The lobbyists then get the earmarks and the corporartion then gives copiously to the politician's campaign fund which the politician then uses to get himself elected in perpetuity. Actually, this same game has been going on for years but not just with regard to earmarks. Research labs and companies that are private corporations or just governnment entities have been lobbying Congress for years in order to get money into their private corporation or government entity. This is what the military-industrial complex is all about. Civil service department heads want to get money into their departments so they spend most of their time lobbying Congress although it's not called lobbying when it's done by some civil service research lab. The end result is a chaotic assemblage of unrelated projects that serve no purpose as far as the overall strategy of the military is concerned and are soon forgotten as soon as the final report is written. What's wrong with this picture? It's a bottom up demand for funding for assorted unnecessary crap rather than a top down rational assessment of what's needed and then finding the best organization to do it. In short most funding is a wasteful and corrupt boondoggle. That's what the military-industrial complex is all about.
The following link is an aptly named blog on government waste, the Swine Line, http://swineline.org. I love it!
