Oink! Oink! Murtha’s porkfest

cnredd · #1 (**permalink**) 02-27-2008, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Rep. John Murtha is hosting a gala dinner tonight at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City for defense industry lobbyists who have received and who hope to receive millions of tax dollars via earmarks sponsored by the Pennsylvania Democrat.

Murtha is one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s closest allies and one of the leading earmarkers in Congress. Tickets for the “Evening with Jack and Joyce Murtha” dinner cost $1,500 per person. Murtha and cohorts like Rep. James Moran, D-Va., and Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., have refined the earmark-for-a-contribution process to a fine art. A Roll Call investigation last year found, with assistance from Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Sunlight Foundation, that the three Democrats funneled millions of dollars in earmarks for firms whose executives then contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to their re-election campaigns.

But Murtha’s porkfest is not going unnoticed. Three conservative citizen activist groups and a conservative blog that are active in the anti-earmark Porkbusters movement are gathering protesters, posters and pigs and plan to crash the Murtha pork bash.

RedState.com is the blog that put out the original call for protests. The responding groups are Americans for Prosperity, Citizens Against Government Waste and the National Taxpayers Union.

The protesters are meeting at 5:30 p.m. at the top of the Pentagon City Metrorail station outside the Ritz-Carlton Hotel at 1250 South Hayes St. in Arlington. Organizers say photographs of attendees will be taken and posted on the Internet.

Public disgust with such blatant congressional corruption is growing and pork-barrel politicos like Murtha and Moran should not be surprised if tonight’s protest is only the first of many more to come until Congress cleans up its act.

I hope this protest gets the attention it deserves...

MountainMike · #2 (**permalink**) 02-27-2008, 02:20 PM

The other connection with Murtha's pork projects is that he will always seek funding for military projects, needed or not, as long as they keep his constituents employed.

As much as I like some of the things Murtha has said and respect his military background, he is an old line Democrat. As much as I dislike the Bush Republicans and want them out of office, we need to remember the need for a public mandate for the Democrats to CHANGE on the issue of spending. I believe the Heritage Foundation recently cited a pork increase for fiscal 2008 of 460% and Democrats are as bad as Republicans in being responsible.

We need more options that the Bush tax cuts to the super rich and spend, spend, spend and the old line Democrats' tax and spend. They have just passed the most expensive bill in history, Omnibus Bill at $550, and tacked on $170 billion for rebates, and Bush has just made the most expensive proposal for spending in history, his 2008 $3.1 trillion.

Mikeyy · #3 (**permalink**) 02-27-2008, 08:36 PM

I guess that redstate has a list of republican pork too. There is plenty of pork going around the congress. Lets hope the next election brings some changes across the aisles.

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