Recomendation

Please read my friend Lucky Fresh.  The Gentlelady from Alabama is doing some good blogging on Labor issues and the Employee Free Choice Act.

Read the Backbencher...

because topics first talked about here will one day be talked about on more popular blogs.

Omnibus Blogging

This week President Obama signed the omnibus budget bill which will fund government operations for the rest of the fiscal year.  The bill included some 9,000 earmarks, and there was usual crying about "wasteful spending."

It should be noted that earmarks are not by definition wasteful.  All earmarks do is direct federal spending towards towards  specific project.  Without a specific earmark, the money would be spent anyway but it would be spent at the discretion of an executive branch agency.  Members of Congress use earmarks to fund projects that are important to their constituents and these projects are often locally useful but have no other means of funding.

Senator John McCain(R-AZ) can always be counted on to do a lot of crying when it comes to wasteful spending and earmarks.  One of his targets was an earmark inserted by Sen. Tom Harkin(D-IA) appropriating 1.7 million dollar for efforts to control the odor created by hog farming.  Senator McCain called the earmark one of the 10 pokiest earmarks in the omnibus bill.

As someone who lives in Iowa , and near a few hog farms, I can tell you this is a needed project.  Iowa is the nation's largest pork producing state and the 20 million hogs in the state creates a lot of manure and odor.  It is a public health issue and a quality of life issue of the greatest importance.  In state based around agriculture as much as Iowa is it is important to find a way to control farm waste so that people can be healthy and enjoy a high quality of life.

Senator McCain is not known for his intellectual depth or his desire to have a greater understanding of issues he knows little about.  He finished near the bottom of his Naval Academy class, and his presidential campaign was proof that his claim not to know much about economics was true.  

One day perhaps there will be a hole the size of the gap between what Senator McCain talks about and what he actually knows that we can use to dispose of hog waste.  Until that day we will just have to relay on government funding to address the issue.

Book Review

In an effort to come to terms and explain what went wrong with American foreign policy many people wrote books to give their views on the problem.  One of the best of these is Andrew Bacevich's The Limits of Power.

Bacevich bases much of his thought on the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr and Niebuhr's book The Irony of American History.  He identifies the U.S.' problem as following an economic policy of rampant consumerism based on the exploitation of fossil fuels and an unthinking faith in American military power.  These twin beliefs lead U.S. policy makers to get tangled up in troublesome places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The only problem is that the U.S. lacks the economic, political, and military resources to fight endless war.

Bacevich recommends that the U.S. return to more modest foreign and military policy goals.  H sees the answer to the economic problems to move from an economy fueled by fossil fuels to investin in alternative energy.  He also believes that the U.S. should return to a more realist international posture when it comes to diplomacy, and that the military should only used in limited circumstances.

I recommend this book and encourage people who want a thought provoking diagnosis to the American dilemma to invest the time to read this book.

Backbencher of the Week

This week's Backbencher of the Week goes to Rep. Brian Baird(D-WA-3).  Rep. Baird was one of three members of Congress to recently visit Gaza.  The other two were Rep. Keith Ellison(D-MN-5) and Sen. John Kerry.  While touring the destruction, Rep. Baird noticed that Lentils were among the items not permitted to enter Gaza.  Rep. Baird investigated and made comments that helped convince the Israeli government to allow lentils brought into Gaza.  Kudos also go out to Senator Kerry for his work to convince Israeli officials to allow in Pasta.

For this bit of humanitarian work we present Rep. Brian Baird with the Backbencher of the Week.

Biblical Question

Is it just me or does anyone else think that the real reason the Apostle Paul became a Christian was that he flunked out of rabbi school? 

Backbencher of the Week

This week's Backbencher of the Week goes to Rep. Yvette Clark(D-NY-11) for work is restoring a little bit of sanity to homeland security.

Rep. Clark is the lead sponsor of H.R. 559 which is a bill designed to make it easier to remove people wrongly placed on the no-fly list.  For a long time the government and the airlines sent people who wanted to clear their names after being wrongly placed on the no-fly list around in circles.  This bill would streamline the appeals process and create a list of cleared flyers, and allow a way for innocent people to travel without being hassled by airport security

The House passed the bill in early February and the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee is considering the bill.

For bringing back a little sanity to domestic security, and for pulling the curtain back a little on security theatre, we award Rep. Yvette Clark Backbencher of the Week.