More left-wing pandering

[Jedster]

Apparently Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and George W. Bush are pandering like crazy to the left-wing in this country.

Check out these stats, courtesy of the conservative Club for Growth blog (http://www.clubforgrowth.org/blog/archives/026385.php):

Number of Pork Projects in Federal Spending Bills

2005 - 13,997
2004 - 10,656
2003 - 9,362
2002 - 8,341
2001 - 6,333
2000 - 4,326
1999 - 2,838
1998 - 2,100
1997 - 1,596
1996 - 958
1995 - 1,439

Makes a pretty good case for the Gingrich-Clinton era as opposed to the GWB-Frist-DeLay era, right?

[lehighguy]

Would be even more interesting to expand the sample (say 50 years).

If you expand the sample, I believe that the numbers get extremely low the further you go back in years. In the 80's, Reagan vetoed or threatened to veto a bill because he was disgusted that it had I think "8" items of pork in it. The numbers that the Republicans are putting up now are all records.

[BCPVP]

[ QUOTE ]
Apparently Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and George W. Bush are pandering like crazy to the left-wing in this country.

[/ QUOTE ]

From CAGW.ORG
House of Representatives
2003 2004
Democrats 17% 11%
Republicans 72% 63%
All 46% 39%


Senate
2003 2004
Democrats 19% 16%
Republicans 70% 63%
All 45% 40%
(100% = least wasteful, 0% = most wasteful)

You are correct. Apparently they are appealing to the left, because they sure aren't pandering to the right!

[Jedster]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Apparently Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and George W. Bush are pandering like crazy to the left-wing in this country.

[/ QUOTE ]

From CAGW.ORG
House of Representatives
2003 2004
Democrats 17% 11%
Republicans 72% 63%
All 46% 39%


Senate
2003 2004
Democrats 19% 16%
Republicans 70% 63%
All 45% 40%
(100% = least wasteful, 0% = most wasteful)

You are correct. Apparently they are appealing to the left, because they sure aren't pandering to the right!

[/ QUOTE ]

Such an elegant proof! Can I frame it?

[BCPVP]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Apparently Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and George W. Bush are pandering like crazy to the left-wing in this country.

[/ QUOTE ]

From CAGW.ORG
House of Representatives
2003 2004
Democrats 17% 11%
Republicans 72% 63%
All 46% 39%


Senate
2003 2004
Democrats 19% 16%
Republicans 70% 63%
All 45% 40%
(100% = least wasteful, 0% = most wasteful)

You are correct. Apparently they are appealing to the left, because they sure aren't pandering to the right!

[/ QUOTE ]

Such an elegant proof! Can I frame it?

[/ QUOTE ]
By all means.

[frizzfreeling]

Interesting site. Still trying to figure out their rating system, though. Seems like a lot of these bills have nothing to do with pork (the congressional scorecard). They show a yes or no vote on general bills as evidence that individual congresspersons are getting pork. Am I wrong here, or whats the deal? /images/graemlins/confused.gif

Chcek the list of names. At the numbers at the tops of each column #1 through #16 are the actual bills they voted on. For instance, #9: By a vote of 65-30, the Senate adopted the bill that provides $388.4 billion in discretionary spending in fiscal 2005 for nine previously separate appropriations bills. THE TAXPAYERS LOST.
How does voting for this bill automatically give someone a bad score. This has nothing to do with the individual congressman getting pork spending.

[BCPVP]

[ QUOTE ]
Seems like a lot of these bills have nothing to do with pork (the congressional scorecard). They show a yes or no vote on general bills as evidence that individual congresspersons are getting pork. Am I wrong here, or whats the deal?

[/ QUOTE ]
I think they're also rating whether the congressperson votes for or against wasteful spending. So just because they didn't reap the benefits of the pork, they still get a bad rating for ok'ing the bill.

[ QUOTE ]
For instance, #9: By a vote of 65-30, the Senate adopted the bill that provides $388.4 billion in discretionary spending in fiscal 2005 for nine previously separate appropriations bills. THE TAXPAYERS LOST.
How does voting for this bill automatically give someone a bad score. This has nothing to do with the individual congressman getting pork spending.

[/ QUOTE ]
See above.

[DVaut1]

[ QUOTE ]
From CAGW.ORG

[/ QUOTE ]

Some on the left seem to think CAGW (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Citizens_Against_Government_Waste) is just a corporate-front group. (http://web.archive.org/web/20001020094216/www.alternatives.com/library/env/envattak/mask0010.txt) Since I don't know much about them, I'm probably not fit to judge - yet I can't imagine a good reason for opposing open-source software (well, I can if you're Microsoft) - and what in the world that has to do with government waste.

From the NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/11/biztech/articles/07strategy.html) (I know, I know, a liberal rag):

"Microsoft's paid spokesmen are so numerous and prolific that quite often they wind up quoting each other's work to support their arguments.

For example, Barbour, whose lobbying concern earned $600,000 from Microsoft last year, wrote an opinion article for The Chronicle of Augusta, Ga., last December that offered the opinion that the American public opposed the government's suit. To support that, he cited the findings of a national survey published by two other Microsoft-financed groups: Citizens Against Government Waste and the Technology Access Action Coalition."

[BCPVP]

[ QUOTE ]
Some on the left seem to think CAGW is just a corporate-front group.

[/ QUOTE ]
Kinda weak, DVautl1. I guess it's easier to descredit the source than to argue against it. You're better than that.

[DVaut1]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Some on the left seem to think CAGW is just a corporate-front group.

[/ QUOTE ]
Kinda weak, DVautl1. I guess it's easier to descredit the source than to argue against it. You're better than that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Point being: the group appears to get most of their funding from large corporations, whose interests lie in decreased government regulation - and exist as a 'corporate front' so that their donors can cite CAGW statistics (as they are, at first glance, merely a 'watchdog' group) in various information venues to use against whoever opposes corporate-friendly/deregulation policies.

Politics is a dirty business. I'm sure the left has similar, echo-chamber type fronts. But I don't think it's outlandish to be concerned with the objectivity of sources.

Or, conversely : Kinda weak, BCPVP. I guess it's easier to stand by a biased source than try to find something more objective. You're better than that. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[BCPVP]

[ QUOTE ]
Point being: the group appears to get most of their funding from large corporations, whose interests lie in decreased government regulation

[/ QUOTE ]
I think this is a good thing.

[ QUOTE ]
and exist as a 'corporate front' so that their donors can cite CAGW statistics (as they are, at first glance, merely a 'watchdog' group) in various information venues to use against whoever opposes corporate-friendly/deregulation policies.

[/ QUOTE ]
Then please explain why the main focus of CAGW is wasteful spending and not regulation policies? If CAGW existed merely to decrease regulation, why bother with pork?

[ QUOTE ]
Or, conversely : Kinda weak, BCPVP. I guess it's easier to stand by a biased source than try to find something more objective. You're better than that.

[/ QUOTE ]
I believe "unbiased sources" are nearly non-existent. It's up to the user to recognize bias and factor that in and get other pov's. So your argument that they're biased against big government is dumb. Of course they are! It's their raison d’être!

Is that really the best you can do, DVault1? That they're biased towards big gov't?

[frizzfreeling]

An example of why I have a problem with their info: New Jersey gets the least pork per capita of any state in the country @ $11.70. Alaska gets the most @ $808.13 per person. New Jersey's Democrat congressmen Jon Corzine and Frank Lautenberg get dismal ratings of 25% and 21% respectively. Alaska's Republican congresspeople Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski both got much better ratings of 56%.
Both Democrats lost points because they voted "yes" on the highway bill. But this says absolutely nothing about whether they are pork friendly. There could be a number of reasons why they voted for the bill. The pork ratings should be based on what each state gets per capita and what each congressperson tries to push for their state even if they dont get it. The arbitrary system CAGW is using to rate them isnt even close to being an accurate representation of Piggy reality.

[BCPVP]

Ok, it looks like the rating is based on how the individual votes on legislation that is either endorsed or opposed by CAGW. It's not only on how much pork that particular congressperson brings back. It sounds like you want the rating weighted for the amount of pork they get.

I understand your point. It would be nice if CAGW could list all the pork projects and their costs for each congressperson. I wonder if the problem would be digging all that info out of the budget bills and amendments. That sounds like a nightmare.

The CAGW thing is a red herring. The point is that the Republicans, who were elected in 1994 on a platform of curbing government waste, have become just as corrupt, or even more so, than the people they replaced. It took the Dems 40 years in power to get seriously corrupted, and the GOP has managed it in 10.

Seriously, who do congressional Republicans represent anymore? It seems like just about anything congress is doing is for the benefit of their biggest donors rather than the citizens.

We need to clean house. Not just replace GOP with Dems, but make congressional seats competitive again. Nearly all seats are gerrymandered to protect the incumbent, and in most districts, there's basically no way a Republican can lose to a Democrat, or vice versa. The only way for a rep to lose his seat is to be too moderate and lose the primary, which ensures that they all take as extreme positions as possible.

[whiskeytown]

fascinating -

as soon as they took control of congress, they started porking the budget -

I think your comment is full of bullshit. They're not pandering to the left wing - when they want bridges built to nowhere and million dollar projects, they're pandering to their voting base and embezelling because of greed, - it has nothing to do with the left.

So how is life in fantasyland? Glad to see you're not letting a little thing like reality interfere with your worldview.

RB

LMAO!

Whiskey, sometimes I just luv ya!

/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[BCPVP]

Check your sarcasm detector, Whiskey. I think it's a quart low... /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[lastchance]

We need to stop accepting pandering, which is corruption. Politicians do it because they get votes, and we don't stop them because we want to be pandered to. This sucks.

[DVaut1]

[ QUOTE ]
Then please explain why the main focus of CAGW is wasteful spending and not regulation policies? If CAGW existed merely to decrease regulation, why bother with pork?


[/ QUOTE ]

If they're only interested in pork, please explain to me why CAGW is concerned with criticizing open-source software. (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7880)

[ QUOTE ]
Is that really the best you can do, DVault1? That they're biased towards big gov't?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not that they're biased against big government (not my thoughts, pulled from the link above, as I certainly have not the time nor the inclination to do a comprehensive study of CAGW; then again, it seems as if you don't either, BCPVP) - CAGW's efforts seem to center not around promoting federal waste-cutting, but instead in promoting federal departmental spending cuts and specific legislative changes to weaken the US government's powers to monitor corporate abuses; in particular, by getting rid of like environmental, health, and safety regulations that current US federal law requires their US operations to comply with. And opposing efforts by the US government to punish corporate violations of federal law. At least, so goes the narrative on the left.

[ptmusic]

As I mentioned in another thread, and several months ago, check out the About Us section of their website. BCPVP didn't like me bringing it up then, and I'm sure he doesn't like it now. But he sure likes bringing up that website!

-ptmusic

[BCPVP]

[ QUOTE ]
If they're only interested in pork, please explain to me why CAGW is concerned with criticizing open-source software.

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't know or particularly care. It is definitely not the focus of CAGW. To argue otherwise is dishonest.

[ QUOTE ]
CAGW's efforts seem to center not around promoting federal waste-cutting, but instead in promoting federal departmental spending cuts and specific legislative changes to weaken the US government's powers to monitor corporate abuses

[/ QUOTE ]
I think this is wrong. I don't know how you can back up this assertion when it's clear that the main focus is gov't waste cutting. Evidence of this would be, for one, the Pig Book, something CAGW is famous for. This is a list of pork earmarks in the appropriations bill. That isn't a department of government, it's a bill full of wasteful spending. Please back up your assertion that CAGW's main purpose is to defund government dept (itself not a bad idea) and reduce oversight on corporations.

[ QUOTE ]
And opposing efforts by the US government to punish corporate violations of federal law. At least, so goes the narrative on the left.

[/ QUOTE ]
Wait, so all of the above was from left-wing sources? Have you even bothered to look around at CAGW or would that upset your delicate grasp of their "true purpose"? And you have the chutzpah to lecture me about biased sources...

[DVaut1]

[ QUOTE ]
] Wait, so all of the above was from left-wing sources? Have you even bothered to look around at CAGW or would that upset your delicate grasp of their "true purpose"?

[/ QUOTE ]

1) No, they're not all left-wing sources. One is from a software blog.
2) Yes, I looked around at the CAGW website. But like I said, I have no inclination to study how accurate their ratings are. Do you?

I do think it's important, however, to point out that we should question where CAGW's agenda really lies - so that, whenever a discussion of pork comes up, merely citing their statistics probably should come with some serious questions about how CAGW arrives at them, and if their statistics are really a reflection of pork spending, or something else - enough so that (at least for me) seeing a CAGW statistic won't end the debate, no more than seeing one from the DNC or RNC would.


[ QUOTE ]

And you have the chutzpah to lecture me about biased sources...

[/ QUOTE ]


Yeah, so I'm fully open that the sources I linked to are biased (although one was merely from a software programmer, whose political ideology I know nothing about) - although I invite anyone to investigate as they will.

I don't think it would be folly, though, to consider some of the information about CAGW (funded by large corporations, opposes open-source software while cashing big checks from Microsoft) and wonder if their stated purposes may be different from their true intentions.

Regardless, I think enough questions exist that I certainly don't accept their pork ratings as gospel, or indicative of anything other than what amounts to typical watchdog/lobbying groups in Washington - as many such groups exist (on both the right and the left) to serve the purposes of an echo-chamber - that is, in CAGW's case, it may be that they exist only to create statistics which brand politicians who oppose corporate-friendly policies as 'porkers', so that corporate-friendly politicians can use said statistics in campaigns, etc. to label their opponents with something negative (the 'porker' label), even if the label wasn't arrived at objectively.

So yes, like I said, some my sources are certainly biased, and I admitted as much. So what I'm asking is that, when you post a link to a CAGW, you should consider adding the caveat of: "this group takes in big donations from corporations like Microsoft and big tobacco - and coincidentally, they oppose open-source software and label taxpayer money which goes to fund anti-smoking campaigns as pork. So remember, when viewing my CAGW link, it's possible they're really just another corporate lobbying organization, and may not really be interested in pork at all."

Sound fair?

[BCPVP]

[ QUOTE ]
Yes, I looked around at the CAGW website. But like I said, I have no inclination to study how accurate their ratings are. Do you?

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "study". I suppose I could examine each of the key votes that CAGW rates Congressmen on each year and match that with how they voted to make sure it is they way they voted.

[ QUOTE ]
I do think it's important, however, to point out that we should question where CAGW's agenda really lies

[/ QUOTE ]
Agreed, but you need more than innuendo and weak connections to disavow such information.

[ QUOTE ]
merely citing their statistics probably should come with some serious questions about how CAGW arrives at them, and if their statistics are really a reflection of pork spending, or something else

[/ QUOTE ]
I've already stated (either here or elsewhere) that the statistic is not a reflection of how much pork a given congressman recieves.

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah, so I'm fully open that the sources I linked to are biased (although one was merely from a software programmer, whose political ideology I know nothing about)

[/ QUOTE ]
The link to the software programmer referred back to the Center for Media and Democracy page you cited earlier. The tone of the programmer's article seems to be left-ward leaning, but I don't particularly care about CAGW's stance on open-source software.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't think it would be folly, though, to consider some of the information about CAGW (funded by large corporations, opposes open-source software while cashing big checks from Microsoft) and wonder if their stated purposes may be different from their true intentions.

[/ QUOTE ]
Well for starters it would be honest to acknowledge that CAGW is not mostly funded by corporations. According to their financial information page, 75% of their income comes from individual contributions while only 22% came from corporations/foundations. I suppose that that 75% could be made up of large individual contributions from the CEOs of corporations, but I'd like proof of that before jumping to that conclusion.

[ QUOTE ]
So remember, when viewing my CAGW link, it's possible they're really just another corporate lobbying organization, and may not really be interested in pork at all."

Sound fair?

[/ QUOTE ]
I take most things with a grain of salt. That's why I like to see other sources to see if they back up such claims. So far, I haven't found a similar website that rates each member the way CAGW does, but there are plenty of pages that point out waste and fraud so I'm inclined to believe that CAGW is probably correct in its ratings.

[Jedster]

[ QUOTE ]
fascinating -

as soon as they took control of congress, they started porking the budget -

I think your comment is full of bullshit. They're not pandering to the left wing - when they want bridges built to nowhere and million dollar projects, they're pandering to their voting base and embezelling because of greed, - it has nothing to do with the left.

So how is life in fantasyland? Glad to see you're not letting a little thing like reality interfere with your worldview.

RB

[/ QUOTE ]

sarcasm, refers to another thread (the one about how righties think bush sucks, in which they explain they think he sucks because he panders to the left)

[whiskeytown]

sorry - not having booze anymore is throwing my sarcasm detector off... /images/graemlins/grin.gif - although as you can see from my OP, my sarcasm producer is still running at 110% efficency.

when I'm wrong, I admit it - whoops -

or maybe I was just exhausted - after all, I had to go to Iowa - that'll drain the life of any Minnesotan - LOL

pax
RB