Earmark Sleaze - Coconut Road Wording Changed After Voting (Alaska's Don Young)

[Hissyspit]

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003893.php

Coconut Road Earmark Wording Changed After Voting
By Laura McGann - August 9, 2007, 12:41 PM

They say that earmarking is a rigged system, a system of organized bribery (the "favor factory" as Jack Abramoff called it). But rarely has there been such startling evidence of a quid pro quo as Rep. Don Young's (R-AK) $10 million earmark for a highway interchange in Florida (the state farthest from Alaska). The earmark came only days after a real estate mogul raised $40,000 for Young at an event in Florida.

But it gets worse. It turns out that Young had to bend, if not break, Congressional rules to do it.

The Naples Daily News reports that he probably changed key language in the bill after it had been passed in the House and Senate. The language left zero ambiguity about where exactly all that cash was supposed to go:

The words "Coconut Road interchange" were not in the federal transportation bill approved by Congress in 2005.
Those words were attached to a $10 million earmark sometime after the House and Senate votes but before the president signed the bill into law.

Within that time, someone with access to the bill deleted the earmark’s original language that would have given $10 million more for widening and improvements to Interstate 75 and attached the phrase "Coconut Rd. interchange I-75/Lee County," according to a study by a former federal official who lives on Sanibel Island.

[rodeodance]

1. So, is the Ethics committee taking this up?

[Bitwit1234]

2. If they did this what else did they do??

It is hard to tell what the bushies have authorized.

[seafan]

3. More about the Coconut Road earmark scandal, starring Don Young (R-Of Course)

The word "corrupt" just doesn't seem adequate.

Update, August 9, 2007



Background info:

US Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL) involved in Coconut Road earmark controversy with Don Young (R-Alaska), June 15, 2007

[Hissyspit]

4. .