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).
U.S. News picks UC Berkeley as top public school again 18 August 2006
BERKELEY – U.S.News & World Report released its annual rankings of institutions of higher education today (Friday, Aug. 18), and once again the magazine named UC Berkeley as the best public university in the nation.
I’ve been to UC recently and have witnessed the card-table staffed by the College Republicans sitting lonely and forlorn and detested amid the teeming, pierced mob of pasty, pudgy, unwashed undergrads who yearn for nothing more than public funding for their next abortion. I’ve talked to professors and been astonished at their boiling venom that reflexively spews towards anyone to the right of Trotsky. I’ve seen the placards posted on your walls and bulletin boards and read the announcements of guest speakers and lecture series by the yowlingest avatars of the Left. I’ve parked in that parking structure where the elevator exits at a communist bookstore festooned by posters of Che and Mao.
Are we talking about the same University?
I am familiar with this DP-2 project and at first glance it seems, well, it seems wasteful and without merit. If you examine it more closely, $68 million over 20 years is chump change. The R&D nature of the program is being overlooked. This isn’t about necessarily having DP-2’s in combat tomorrow or 5 years from now. The bang for the buck will come if this principle can be proven. Once proven, and if they can get the particulars dialed in, and address safety concerns such an aircraft would have a myriad of uses. I don’t understand the Pentagon not wanting it, but then I don’t understand many things about the Pentagon. I personally would be willing to pay a lot more than that to get that kind of mobility with that potential for troop movement.
Yes it is....and I’ve been around UCB for 40 years and it is still nothing like the 60s and 70s....you go to Univ Wisonsin Madison, or Columbia and you see worse.....I’m not holding it as some bastion of right wing conservatism, but if you mingle in the sciences and law and business etc, they don’t care about that crap anymore....of course they will have some....it is still the Bay Area.....
.......that doesn’t negate the fact of the rankings as #1 public university and more top 10 grad disciplines in the country......you can see me later posts.....have a great day.....
OH YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Roll on! :-)
Did you happen to see the ABC News video of the test vehicle? It doesn’t fly.
You can think I’m “less than a conservative” as much as you like.
Did you read post 14 carefully. It’s a low level (funding) test concept.
And since when does anyone trust what the MSM’s spin is? Remember the big NBC exclusive on body armor a few weeks ago? What a joke.
After two decades most people would expect the plane to rise higher than a couple of feet before it lurches.
“The project was initiated in the Office of Naval Research in Fiscal Year 1997”
Well....how nice.
Geesh......
Washington Post, Jun 19, 2006 (excerpt)Breaking a tradition of keeping such wish lists secret, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, issued a statement last month of his key "funding initiatives" for the fiscal 2007 budget.
Hunter, whose committee authorizes the defense budget, bristles at criticism of the earmarking process.
"There's a little thing called the Constitution," he said. "It says Congress shall equip the military, not the Pentagon. The Pentagon proposal is just that." He challenged the "presumption that the Pentagon's bill is correct in all respects and any departure is somehow a mistake."
The thought of Congress "giving up its prerogative -- not only prerogative but responsibility -- to the non-elected doesn't make any sense," he said.
Of the 13 defense projects totaling $254.3 million that Hunter listed in his news release, more than $210 million of it was for programs to address roadside bombs, the chief source of casualties for U.S. troops in Iraq. Two others -- $27 million for an inexpensive missile called the "affordable weapon" and $25.7 million for a catamaran ship called Sea Fighter -- would benefit Titan Corp., a large defense contractor in southern California.
There was also $8 million for the DP-2 "vectored thrust aircraft," made by DuPont Aerospace, another southern California firm. The plane's testing was delayed because of what this year's Navy budget justification called "a nozzle box failure" in late 2004.
Hunter also requested $1.7 million to develop a skin disease test for troops in Iraq and $1 million for a wound dressing that includes pure oxygen.
Anyone want to guess who was there to deflate the media egos once again??? It wasn’t FRED!
Exactly. One of the few who consistently goes to to toe with the libs in congress, the political hacks at the Pentagon, the ACLU, the media, the gay rights lobby, and Bush when necessary.
Yet, he gets this kind of treatment here from some conservatives. Yikes.
(VSTOL) airplane DP-2.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007 10:04 AM
VERTICAL TAKEOFF AND LANDING TECHNOLOGY: ANTHONY A. DUPONT
05-09-2001 TESTIMONY OF ANTHONY A. DUPONT
To address the problem of runway saturation at the large metropolitan airports, the duPont Aerospace Company is developing a high performance, vertical and short field takeoff and landing (VSTOL) airplane, the DP-2. The 50-passenger aircraft has both commercial and military applications. Technology to produce this aircraft is available and well proven. Modern turbofan engines currently in worldwide airline service combined with the capabilities of new composite materials provide a vectored thrust propulsion system. A simple mechanical control system powered by the pilot’s hand controls the aircraft in both hover and up and away flight. An autopilot can be clutched in to greatly reduce the pilot workload in hover or for conventional flight autopilot functions.
http://www.skyaid.org/Skycar/congress_dupont.htm
By pissant
1 - the notion that you can find some folks in the Pentagon that “don’t want it” is like saying you can find some freepers that have their own opinion on politics.
2 - Duncan Hunter has butted heads with the Pentagon ever since he got there. The average Pentagon planner, pro-curement types have a life span in the job of about 2 to 4 years. Then take the fact that the Pentagon leadership is political appointees.
3- Hunter fought the “pentagon” to retain far more in SDI/Missile defense funding than was “wanted” during the Clinton Years. He made the Pentagon invest in more stealth, more ships, more C-17 airlifters thatn they “wanted”. He put the brakes on Rumsfelds desire to make the Army even smaller than it is, and he FORCED the Pentagon at various times to purchase ammo they were sorely lacking but not requesting.
4 - 63 million for this type of R&D is peanuts.
5 - This particular program had advocates in the Pentagon and the Military.
Here is the Statement of Thomas D. Taylor, Chief Scientist and Program Manager of Naval Expeditionary Warfare Science and Technology, Office of Naval Research in the 2001 testimony to the Armed Services Committee:
24
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1849081/posts
http://taylorwood.townhall.com/g/4f2cb9c3-2adf-4ecb-888c-fb4bcdd1fed7
If it is earmarks, Hunter is toast politically in my book.
Are we talking about a BRIDGE TO NOWHERE???? No, we’re talking about EQUIPMENT FOR OUR TROOPS....big difference.
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