Posted on 06/13/2007 9:05:29 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento
San Diego Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter has wasted over $60 million dollars in taxpayer money, shoveling it to a political contributor through budget “earmarks”.
An “earmark” is money inserted in a bill by a single Congressman. No hearing. No oversight.
Hunter’s “earmark” went for research and development on a plane design which was unwanted by the Pentagon. A warplane unwanted by our warriors. Hunter has been throwing money at it for years. It has not flown successfully. It doesn’t work. (That’s probably why the Pentagon doesn’t want it).
So why has Hunter continued to throw our tax dollars into this plane design? Is he a visionary? Does he know more than the Pentagon experts?
Or was he unduly influenced by the $36,000 the design firm contributed to his account?
Voters will have to draw their own conclusions
The Congressman is reported to have vigorously defended his earmarking actions, saying in effect that the Pentagon is too conservative in design approval. Other sources argued that the plane in question was more in the nature of a “hobby” than a serious defense R and D project. A “hobby” funded by taxpayers.
Now that the Democrats are in control, this process of “earmarking” for hobbies will be stopped (at least for Republicans like Hunter).
For crying out look at the thing, it is a toad!
One of the Ruskie's first jets looked like this.
Remember the Late Roy Lopresti's axiom, if it looks good it will probably fly good.
** ping **
Experimental aircraft can be pretty ugly and still be used to solve problems that no one considered before. Unlike a bridge to an eskimo village that no one will ever use.
So since when have some gotten religion when it comes to earmarks and corruption in big gubamint or the appearance of it anyway.
Much hoopla by some over much of nothing (63 million? chump change imo)..
nothing new here or grand jury worthy, move on kids.
In the 80’s I was the guy at a high tech company that got to break in the NEW College Grads in various engineering disciplines. We hired almost exclusively from Stanford and Berkeley. The higher their degree the longer it took to make them useful and the less they knew about the real world. Had one Berkeley PhD that never did figure out how to load the large format printer - physics.
Read post 14 and the link I provided. This story is full of shit. Period.
One of the Cal kids I worked with was actually “smart”. Could do math very well. But damn if he wouldn’t stress out and nearly have a nervous breakdown when electricians started pointing out the flaws in his designs.
....well is some ways that is true of alot of disciplines.. you can be #1 in your law class and don’t know crap how to be a lawyer or #1 in your medical class and still don’t know shit about being a doctor....it is all a weeding process...experience is always best but that would then be true for all other schools as well....
author of this is a card carrying Liberal/Socialist
The article linked to in paragraph 3 contradicts you. It says two decades and 1988.
That’s why you can’t trust articles. Even the lib websites propogating the story posted a memo from Hunter from 1992 where he was telling the DOD to start funding the program, because they had not done so.
The program to develop a prototype model started funding in fiscal year 1997, as the testimony states.
BTW, did you catch all the hoopla NBC created with their Dragon Skin body armor story last couple of months? How the DOD purposely chose a body armor not as good as Dragon Skin? Guess who debunked it during the first oversite hearing?
You should know better that to trust the liberal media by now.
You sound like Dan Rather.
No, the guy who wrote this and the fools that believe the spin sound like Dan Rather. I took the time to dig up and post the congressional record regarding this craft.
I see logic was not included in your studies.
In the 4th and 5th line it says funded exclusively thru congressional earmarks since 1988.
Written by democrats. I’ve got lots more on this. Stay tuned.
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