| When the jobs are created, people spend. When people spend, more jobs are created. This leads to or maintains local prosperity--and the congressional representative who obtained the earmarks is re-elected.
That's why earmarks are usually popular with congressmen. But those rules don't apply to Bachmann. Her support is proto-fascist. That means that the loyalty of most Bachmann voters is to her personally and the conservative and evangelical political movements. And that means that people who fervently support Bachmann don't care how many neighbors' homes are foreclosed (Bachmann's district had the highest home foreclosure rate in the state, this year)--they will vote for her on her wedge issue politics and conspiracy rhetoric.
They will vote for her even if she breaks her highly touted "I'm not seeking any earmarks" pledge--and takes earmarks. (She has.) The district's economy is in shit and even Bachmann's most fervent supporters are sweating it--it's hard to tell a guy who's lost his job in a poor local economy that he should continue to vote Republican anyway.)
There's nothing wrong with earmark spending, in and of itself. Provided that the earmark project is necessary, provided that the money is spent wisely so it creates the jobs it's intended to create--there's nothing wrong with it in and of itself; it's a way for taxpayers to see their federal taxes come back into their district to stave off economic hardship.
A conservative will tell you I'm wrong about that. He will argue that the private sector can go it alone, in local economies. Oddly enough, you won't find the private sector making that argument. Local private sector businesses--especially small businesses--like earmark spending. It creates customers, and jobs.
A proto-fascist doesn't really care about earmark spending, and Bachmann knows that. A proto-fascist will denounce earmark spending as a violation of core conservative principles--if Bachmann does. That same proto-fascist will ignore the facat that Bachmann is seeking federal earmark money even though this violates core conservative principles, even though she maintains that this violates core conservative principles.
Thus we have this:
...the St. Croix River Crossing bridge near Stillwater may be inching closer to reality after decades of debate. Close enough, in fact, that it's time to start thinking about how to actually pay for the controversial span.
If Minnesota and Wisconsin are successful in seeking $300 million in federal stimulus funds, construction bidding could be moved up to October 2010 -- almost three years earlier than if the states have to fund the entire project themselves...
One of the highest-profile boosters of the bridge -- and the $300 million in stimulus funding -- is Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, whose district includes Stillwater.
http://www.startribune.com/opi...
Bachmann regularly denounces the federal government as filled with anti-Americans, Marxists, a "tyrant in the White House" etc. who are trying to destroy the private sector and impose a centralized command economy. But she wants that $300 million dollars "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" redistribution of wealth; she's absolutely choking for it. That particular redistribution of taxpayer dollars would work in her favor, since she and the private sector have regularly failed over the years to provide working families with the employment level and income level they need to maintain home ownership.
Michele Bachmann--conservative socialist, trying desperately to redistribute our federal tax dollars to her district, so that her political career won't founder on the rocks of a crappy conservative "I believe in small government" economics.
You would think that a politician who feared encroaching big government as much as Bachmann says we should, would reject this federal redistribution of wealth, and tell the private sector to "go it alone" and build the bridge itself, tell the state to "go it alone," and raise taxes to build the bridge--rather than borrow against future federal taxes and increase the dependency of Minnesotans on big government spending.
But that is not the Bachmann way. We must remember at all times that the conservatives of our generation have been taught to eat, sleep, ingest, and breathe hypocritical bullshit when it comes core concepts like "freedom," "liberty," "community," "fairness," "limited government," and "integrity." Michele believes that they will swallow her stinky hypocrisy without choking on it--and she's right. Her conservative voters have no principles--because they are proto-fascists! |
