AP Bullsh#t on new Spending Bill

[edhopper]

On Yahoo we get this Headline:
"House Dems unveil $410 billion spending bill filled with earmarks"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090224/ap_on_go_co/spending_bill

And the second graph says this:
"The measure includes thousands of earmarks, the pet projects favored by lawmakers but often criticized by the public in opinion polls. There was no official total of the bill's earmarks, which accounted for at least $3.8 billion."

So a bill that has LESS THAN 1% with projects, many of which might be quite worthy and or important, is FILLED with earmarks.

Your Lib-er-al media at work.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. Not to mention that it's down from Republican totals. (nt)

[gratuitous]

2. Oh noes! Not earmarks!

I'm not sure how "earmarks" got such a bad rap that less than 1% of a spending bill makes the whole thing rotten (at least in the AP's eyes). What an earmark does is dedicate funds to a specific project. It can't be appropriated by local officials to spend on something else, if the money was earmarked for building a bridge or widening a road or whatever.

You can bet that in the months to come, some of these approrpriations will be spent on "wasteful" (meaning, not on the overpaid blow-dried pundits who rule our national discourse) projects, and then they'll be bitching about that.

[Triana]

3. The aye-pee has its marching orders from corprat....

...and there they are. Shit on the bill BEFORE you even know what's in it. Talking points all lined up and ready to go from the Pigshits and their corprat-pwned media! I just hope to GOD that the Obama admin doesn't let the lame$tream pighshit-pwned media DRIVE the damn public conversation on THIS too. DEMOCRATS need to be out there NOW talking positively about the bill - they need to go viral with it. Or else, we're going to be BOMBARDED with negativity and bullshit from the corprat-pwned lame$tream for the next several weeks about it.