Congressional GOP Misfire In ‘War Over Earmarks,’ Target Bipartisan Program For Military Kids
Congressional GOP Misfire In ‘War Over Earmarks,’ Target Bipartisan Program For Military Kids
Earlier this week, congressional conservatives mapped out a plan to engage in a “war over earmarks” with the majority in Congress by targeting “certain earmarks” deemed “egregious” and “wasteful” to “question spending priorities.”
One of the first skirmishes in this new “war” was a coordinated effort by the right wing to attack an earmark benefiting House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) placed in the Defense Appropriations bill. The earmark provides $3 million to The First Tee, a program “that uses golf to ‘teach life lessons’ to low-income kids.”
In the past two days, the National Review, Hot Air, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), the South Carolina Republican Party and the National Republican Congressional Committee have all lit into Clyburn, calling the earmark “disturbing” and “wrong.”
Unmentioned by Clyburn’s critics, however, is the fact that First Tee has been heavily praised by movement conservatives like Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), who organized a hearing to attest to the program’s virtues, and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who delivered official testimony in support of the program:
We’re here today to recognize the efforts of The First Tee, a youth character building organization with programs located throughout the country that provide young people of all backgrounds an opportunity to develop, through both the game of golf and character education, values and character traits that will positively impact their lives and experiences in school. [...]
No activity better parallels life and teaches you the character you need to be successful in life than the game of golf. On the golf course, you learn responsibility, honesty, patience, self-control, integrity, respect, confidence, and sportsmanship. [...]
The First Tee is working to make the game of golf more affordable and accessible to young people throughout the nation.
The conservatives have crowed over the fact that the earmark is in a defense spending bill, but as Clyburn’s spokeswoman, Kristie Greco, told the National Review, the funds are specifically meant to spread the program to the “children of servicemembers all over the nation.”
The fact that after searching through all of the earmarks, the best conservatives could come up with is a program benefiting the children of military families that has bipartisan support, suggests that their claims of “egregious” and “wasteful” earmarks are nothing but hype and political posturing.
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What?! Golf isn’t even a real sport, much less the activity that best prepares one for life.
Why do Republicans hate Christianity?
November 9th, 2007 at 5:35 pmBut…but…golf IS the best activity to prepare Republicans for life! After all, how else are you going to spend time with your CEO and lawyer and lobbyist buddies, sitting at a bar?
November 9th, 2007 at 5:38 pmThe Majority Whip is a Republican?
November 9th, 2007 at 5:38 pmNo activity better parallels life and teaches you the character you need to be successful in life than the game of golf. On the golf course, you learn responsibility, honesty, patience, self-control, integrity, respect, confidence, and sportsmanship.
Um…aren’t these values that you’d pick up in any sport? Or any activity that requires a certain amount of discipline? Good heavens, you could learn these things taking piano lessons.
This is an obvious boondoggle for the golfing industry. Why not take the kids bowling? Lane fees are a lot cheaper than greens fees, and that money could reach a lot more kids.
Oh, back on topic — everybody knows that earmarks are only “egregious” and “wasteful” when they come from those awful “tax and spend” Democrats. IOKIYAR.
November 9th, 2007 at 5:41 pmJohn Boehner and Kids are a prescription for pedophile disaster.
November 9th, 2007 at 5:47 pmhey, boner – you missed!
November 9th, 2007 at 5:52 pmObviously, all that self-tanner is affecting the Boner’s mental capacity.
November 9th, 2007 at 5:58 pmAnd let us not forget… cheating.
November 9th, 2007 at 5:58 pmhey, boner – you missed!
Comment by katy
Guess he didn’t learn his life lesson =)
November 9th, 2007 at 5:59 pmThe money would be better spent buying cans of spray paint and letting the kids go hog wild tagging the greens.
November 9th, 2007 at 6:02 pmHe didn’t miss, he probably tees up 2 balls at every hole and takes the better of the two shots.
November 9th, 2007 at 6:02 pmGolf, the only sport where you hold a hard shaft and swing vigorously, trying to get a tiny ball into a far away hole.
No wonder GOPers love it.
November 9th, 2007 at 6:04 pmThe WGA may be on strike but I think we’ve got an outline to go into pre-production on Caddyshack 4: The Sand Trap.
November 9th, 2007 at 6:06 pmAbout par for GOPee
November 9th, 2007 at 6:09 pm“Bipartisan”, the neocons new “librul”.
Once the rabies takes hold, there’s no getting better. They’ll be eating (more of?) their young soon.
November 9th, 2007 at 6:12 pmGolf the only sport where you can legally drive drunk
November 9th, 2007 at 6:17 pmFolks, it’s not a misfire until and unless it is exposed. Catapult the propaganda…
November 9th, 2007 at 6:27 pmBoner is the perfect poster boy for the Repug party: all swing/no action. And loves to wear powder blue clothing (and maybe matching bra and panties?)
November 9th, 2007 at 6:28 pmAnd we all know that golf clubs are so inclusive. These are certainly the places that women and African Americans will do the business deals that will at last give them equality in the board room.
Sorry, give to real charities that provide food, clothes, education, and medicine for the children of vets.
November 9th, 2007 at 6:30 pmThe most important story of our time:
http://rawstory.com/comments/40443.html
http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/2007/11/sibel-edmonds-case-untellable-story-of.html
November 9th, 2007 at 6:37 pmGolf was once a wonderful proletarian game that has been hijacked by the rich. Gotta play it in Scotland to get the true feel.
sincerely,
socialist golf-lover
November 9th, 2007 at 6:47 pmAre the underprivilged kids being taught by the Republicans how in the game of golf, just like life, you’re allowed unlimited Mulligans?
November 9th, 2007 at 6:56 pmDid you all miss the fact that this earmark was requested by a Democrat?
November 9th, 2007 at 7:07 pmThey truly hate kids…
They want them to be born so they can suffer, that’s sick
November 9th, 2007 at 7:07 pmInteresting that they choose a game (not a sport) that most exemplifies that racial, sexual, and economic divide in this country.
November 9th, 2007 at 7:13 pmBob: Interesting that they choose a game (not a sport) that most exemplifies that racial, sexual, and economic divide in this country. – – Whoa there, Bob, they could have used polo.
November 9th, 2007 at 8:13 pmThis is just the latest example of conservatives trying to reclaim the role of being fiscally responsible (like they ever truly were), but the problem with that is the majority of Americans have learned that conservatism is, and always has been, a scam.
November 9th, 2007 at 8:42 pmI can’t get too worked up about this one. I seriously doubt that the average GI these days plays golf or give’s a rat’s ass whether his kids play or golf or not.
Golf has become THE pastime of the idle rich and the one thing they left out of their glowing description of this program is that virtually none of the the kids of those ordinary working class GIs will never be accepted by their local country club or able to afford the greens fees on public course.
While I’d like to support this program just because a bunch of rectal orifices oppose it, Ijust can’t bring myself to do it.
November 9th, 2007 at 9:25 pmA little OT but this is the most concise article I’ve seen on the subject. So much for “fiscal responsibility”.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iysuMkhgYOGlcySlgMom_teZ6WcQD8SP46T00
November 9th, 2007 at 10:42 pmOK, here we go. It’s time to play our favorite game: “Who Said This?”
“It’s time for real people to reclaim the golf courses from the wealthy and turn them over to the homeless. Golf is an arrogant, elitist game that takes up entirely too much space in this country.
…America has over 17,000 golf courses. They average over 150 acres apiece. That’s three million-plus acres. Four thousand, eight hundred and twenty square miles. We could build two Rhode Islands and a Delaware’s worth of housing for the homeless on the land currently wasted on this meaningless, mindless, arrogant, racist game.
November 9th, 2007 at 11:13 pmTheresa, that would be George Carlin, and I agree. It also reminds me of when “Midnight basketball” was one of GHW Bush’s “thousand points of light”— it was such a marvelous reducer of crime by giving juveniles something to do other than hang around street corners late at night. But then the exact same program under Bill Clinton was attacked by the same Republicans as wasteful liberal pork!!!
I agree with Jack Nicklaus who said that golf has to be the worst spectator sport of all time.
November 9th, 2007 at 11:32 pm#31, I agree. The only plus to supporting golf, to me, is that it gives my 86 year old father the opportunity to walk those 150 acres, caddying his own bag (which he has done since 1937 when he was 15 or 16). Otherwise, it’s completely worthless. Dad is slowly giving up the links and has decided to spend his time tending his 20 acres…
Ya think that earmark will let those little dark skinned kids play? And does it include the little girls?
November 10th, 2007 at 12:05 amOK, the Republicans pols here are full of excrement, as usual. But I’ve gotta say…”$3 million to The First Tee, a program “that uses golf to ‘teach life lessons’ to low-income kids???â€
Why teach mostly ethnic kids a rich, Republican white man’s sport at all? Are they gonna be able to afford the course fees later in life? Why not spend that money taking inner city kids to the closest nature reserves to show hawks hunting for mice, and how tree canopies complete for sun exposure. Sounds like some superior “life lessons” to me, something they can enjoy — and afford — when they’re older. Or they can hit little white balls into holes while drinking scotch and talking about lovely “Babs” back at the castle, gossiping in stock tips they’ll never be able to invest in.
November 10th, 2007 at 3:21 amOnce again, our elected officials prove how out of touch they really are.
November 10th, 2007 at 7:05 amGolf?
How about food? How about healthcare?
Golfballs are tough and provide no nutrition.
November 10th, 2007 at 1:27 pmRepublicans only love the golf when it’s for them and it’s at an all white property and given to them in the form of a bribe. This looked all too legal for them to consider it plausible.
November 11th, 2007 at 1:26 amThat’s ofcourse for those that haven’t learned responsibility, honesty, patience, self-control, integrity, respect, confidence and sportmanship at home when they were, say ….five? Essential ethics are not something you learn from golf unless you were born with a nine iron in your hand. Catch up Boehner, you should have passed the mental age of five a long time ago.
November 11th, 2007 at 5:20 amConservatism was not always a scam. It helped make the US to the world power it was yesterday. The problem is not the theory, the problem is the people who keep distorting the theory while in practice doing the very opposite of conservatism. No conservative in his right mind would deny anyone the healthcare they need. Only neocons are ignorant, malignant and apathic enough to “make believe” that having no healthcare coverage is the best incentive for making more money (when did this become the goal at all?) and working yourself out of poverty with a second job…. That is, if you don’t get ill along the way ofcourse.
November 11th, 2007 at 5:36 am