Posted on 11/18/2005 6:34:47 PM PST by Doctor Raoul
DEFENDING AMERICA
PORK IS POISONING OUR TROOPS
"The American armed forces are the best in the world." Vice President Al Gore recently told audience in Milwaukee. I agree, but they may not stay that way for long. Their combat readiness is falling faster than a paratrooper whose chute won't open.
If this free fall continues, we'll soon have a hollow Army like we had before World War II and Korea, a force that paid the price in blood in the early days of those conflicts.
There's an enemy out there attacking readiness, a foe based not in Iran, Iraq or North Korea, but in our own capital. The conspirators are those key congressmen who are forcing the Pentagon to spend money in ways that are good for the legislators' hometowns, districts and states, but bad for our defenders.
What is happening is that these congressmen are attaching non-defense-related, pork-barrel spending measures to defense appropriation legislation.
Since the Cold War ended, defense dollars have been harder to get than a ride aboard the space shuttle. Now these shrinking dollars are being siphoned off at an unprecedented rate, not on the basis of military necessity, but for congressional pork ranging from museums to sports jamborees.
In 1993. such nonmilitary perks used up nearly 2 percent of the defense budget.. This is plain old all-American pork that has as much to do with combat, readiness as ballet lessons do to basic training These seams slopped $4.6 billion that should have been spent for defense into congressional troughs to feed the voters who keep the porkers in office, according to a General Accounting Office report.
Meanwhile, out in our life-and- death combat units, war-fighting equipment is being grounded because there's insufficient money to buy spare parts to keep the hardware running; to buy ammo for our warriors to practice their shooting skills; or to buy fuel to maneuver ships, tanks and aircraft on training exercises.
Every dollar for defense must be spent to improve combat efficiency. Our soldiers are again being placed at high risk because they soon won't have the right stuff to meet an enemy and destroy him. It could cause another Mogadishu-like defeat, but this time it won't be because a few tanks weren't available; rather it will be because air squadrons, fighting ships and combat battalions won't be ready or able to get there quickly.
The 1994 kings of congressional pork are Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., and Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, but there are dozens of others who, behind closed doors, add on and earmark their own favorite parochial projects, turning military beef into blubber.
Because of such shenanigans, money meant for the Pentagon, not the Department of Health and Human Services, is being spent on such things as breast cancer research ($230,000), AIDS research ($160 million) and bone marrow research ($37 million), according to the GAO report. Billions more are being spent on projects that have nothing to do with war-fighting.
Murtha has scored the biggest hits: $70 million for the University of Pittsburgh, $50 million for a National Drug Intelligence Center in his hometown and $65 million for Centers for Metalworking and Environmental Excellence.
Inouye snagged $6 million to test electric cars and build an observatory to study volcanoes.
Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., earmarked $4 million for a Japanese-American museum and $1.6 million to refit a submarine for another Oregon museum.
In recent years, $36.6 million has been added to the Pentagon budget for athletic events such as the Goodwill Games.
The American people should take a few scalps in the 1994 elections. That would send a message to Congress that our forces won't be condemned to body bags because of the porkers' malfeasance.
The permanent cure for this is to open all defense appropriations meetings to the public, that projects not requested by the Pentagon be "red-flagged" and that the president be able to veto them on a line-item basis. Then he can cut the pork and list the names of the porkers so the public can chop them up in the next election. Better they become casualties than our troops.
David H. Hackworth
February 1, 1994
Interesting. Hackworth has been an embittered and unreliable man since clinton left office, but he seems to have turned up some good stuff here. Still, I'd like to see more investigation of Murtha's activities and some confirmation of these charges, because I don't entirely trust Hackworth.
Is all of this true?
Hackworth is dead. One of his last duties was to support Mary Mapes by saying the Rathergate memos were all true.
I agree with you about Hackworth. That's why I'd like some sort of confirmation from another source. If Murtha is one of the Kings of Pork we should know about it.
If there's one thing a King of Pork needs to do, it's ingratiate himself with the house leadership. I had already speculated that Murtha was probably put up to this by Nancy Pelosi and company. "You're an ex-marine. Give us a little of the old war hero wants to pull out of Vietnam--I mean Iraq--line. And I'll give you more pork in return."
Go to google.com and put the line below into the search box:
+Murtha +pork
Actually, since you and I posted on this thread, a couple of other threads have appeared. One suggests that Murtha should be investigated by the ethics committee for conflicts of interest in his pork. Another suggests that he is a bigtime pork spender from the defense budget.
So, it looks as if this is a live issue, all right. Hackworth may have discredited himself with Abu Ghraib and a lot of other funny stuff, but this looks like something to be followed up.
Now the liberals knock the reserves when it suits thier BS schemes, yet Murtha spent the bulk of his career in the reserves and he's the reincarnation of John Wayne all of a sudden.
That's not knocking his Vietnam service, it's knocking the liberal Democrats selective recognition of our vets...only when it suits the party because it helps the party rather than being based in genuine esteem.
This liberal piggie went to market,...this liberal piggie stayed home,...this liberal piggie had roast beef,...and all the liberal piggies cried all the way home...WAH, WAH, WAH, BUSH LIED, GORE WON, WE ARE NOT STABBING OUR TROOPS IN THE BACK FOR POLITICAL GAIN....
Even a quick Google search will reveal some of the pork for which he can take credit.
A quick example:
John Murtha, who is not a rich man, gave his alam mater nearly $100 million last year.
His secret: The money was yours.
Murtha, an 11-term western Pennsylvania Democratic congressman, quietly slipped his gifts into the huge defense appropriations bill passed by the powerful House subcommittee he chairs.
``Academic pork'' is the name of his game, and it has become a popular pastime in Congress.
A decade ago, fewer than a dozen universities were bold enough to ask key lawmakers to earmark grants exclusively for them. Now hundreds do it. The cost to taxpayers has soared from $11 million in 1982 to more than $650 million this year.
Some of the ways that money is spent are raising eyebrows - like a planetarium for a Michigan community college that has no astronomers, and money for a Chicago gear research institute already under criminal investigation for possible misuse of past federal grants.
Congress also is backing diabetes research by a scientist who never has heard of the National Institutes of Health unit that leads the field, and is sponsoring Chesapeake Bay studies by a new Pennsylvania environmental center 180 miles from its shores.
Sometimes it's hard to know just what America's political philanthropists are up to. Leon Haley, top spokesman for the University of Pittsburgh, Murtha's alma mater, says he knows ``almost nothing'' about how the $99,600,000 in grants to the school included in the 1994 appropriation are being spent.
``Nobody knew what the hell to do with it,'' recalls Lawrence Korb, a former top Pentagon official whose advice was sought by a friend, the university's president, when Murtha first offered the money.
Most of the money actually is going to Concurrent Technologies Corp., a subsidiary of the University of Pittsburgh Trust. Both are nonprofit corporations used to fund academic research by faculty members and others.
According to a CTC brochure, its research is focused on metalworking, manufacturing software and anti-pollution systems. CTC is based in Johnstown, Pa., Murtha's hometown, 80 miles east of the university's main campus.
Generous senior House and Senate Appropriations Committee members like Murtha are behind the successes of the universities and states that have won the most academic pork since 1980.
Pennsylvania is far out in front with an estimated $377,238,000, followed by Massachusetts with $206,191,000. Others in the top 10 are Oregon, Louisiana, Florida, New York, Michigan, California, Iowa and West Virginia, in that order.
From The Virginian-Pilot, Aug 4, 1994
Things haven't changed that much since then...
Maybe Murtha thought he was opening up a can of pork and it will turn out to be a can of worms.
Some of the Freepers on the ethics committee thread thought that this is an awkward time to bring him up on an ethics charge. I disagree. If they wait for the perfect time, they will wait for ever, as usual. It's time to DO IT.
There seems to be evidence of family connections to lobbyists and conflicts of interest in these pork fests. They should go after him.
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