The bunny is Not Amused.
After vigilantly upholding his one principle prohibiting the Three P's in this blog (porn, profanity, and politics), he has been forced to break his own rule.
The instigator: the United States Congress.
The bunny has had enough.
Hypocrisy, it must be said, has been part of the politician's makeup for so long now that it is widely taken for granted, nay, even expected by voters who re-elect the swine term after term (while the Founding Fathers were clear on presidential term limits, the bunny concludes that when it came to Congressional ones, they must have all been too busy campaigning for re-election to write in this most crucial of clauses).
But on this sunny Saturday, when the bunny was looking forward to a day of tending to his coat and crunching intermittently on raw almonds, he was so shocked and awed to open the morning papers and see such an avalanche of Congressional duplicity he just had to blog about it.
Exhibit A is the tooth-gnashing tour brochure of a ten-member Congressional New Year's lurch around the world to study climate change (four with their spouses in tow) on an Air Force C-130 modified with rockets and skis to handle the load and terrain. The cost to taxpayers? A paltry $103K. That, at least, was the figure reported by those intrepid lawmaker/explorers. The actual cost, according to the Defense Department (which is somewhat more versed in the real-time costs of keeping combat aircraft flying), topped $500K. (This according to "an analysis piecing together the specifics of the excursion"--the piecers of today's missive being Brody Mullins and T.W. Farnam of the WSJ).
This occurs in the same issue (three pages later, above the fold, also with Mullins sharing the byline) as Exhibit B, the grousing of that selfsame Defense Department which was fingered for the purchase of eight passenger jets which (shockingly) the DoD said it neither needed nor wanted. Lawmakers cut back with a volley of statistics showing military usage (with perhaps one faulty round in the chamber, since according to their own data they themselves use the jets 14.5% of the time). Total cost: $550 million. That should've been covered by the termination of future orders for F-22 fighter jets, except that (aw, shucks!) funds were allocated for an engine redesign for the forthcoming F-35. Total cost: $560 million. Never mind that this more than doubles the original presidential request for four of the jets, including two currently under lease from the Air Force (at a comparative cost of $220 million). Never mind that this comes on top of the $485 million revival of a contract for a presidential helicopter already shunned by the White House for its absurd cost creep, which has already surpassed that of the 747 jumbo jet known as Air Force One (see posting 3.25.09).
This comes a mere three days after Exhibit C, which the bunny came across online after seeing a a CNBC headline he just couldn't pass up ("Stimulus Spending Fails to Follow Unemployment, Poverty", 8.5.09). According to ProPublica ("an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest" according to CNBC--how's that for a lede?), the $787 billion stimulus package passed at the beginning of the year (which the president had to admonish Congress to bring down below $800 billion from over $900 billion in its original--Capitol--form before he would sign it) has blown all over the map without rhyme or reason, ignoring some of the hardest-hit states while showering money on others less impacted by the financial crisis. The ProPublica survey goes down to the county level--you can view it at http://projects/propublica.org/recovery.
Never mind that Congress has cashed in on public outrage over executive excess and blundering to make itself the public pillory of any corporate executive that will get a legislator's face on camera. Never mind that nonstop Congressional grandstanding about corporate financial excess belies the greatest increase in government spending since WWII. Never mind that after endless on-air harangues about the financial abuses of corporate America, the highest body of lawmakers in the land is voting to give itself more private planes (hey, c'mon, the military needs more airborne swivel chairs!) months after taking the titans of Detroit over the coals for their private jets (and for whom they just kicked out another $2 billion in car subsidies before conveniently going on vacation).
Hypocrisy, thy name is congressman.
Bunny Bombs Away:
"Lawmakers' Global-Warming Trip Hit Tourist Hot Spots" by Brody Mullins and T.W. Farnam, Wall Street Journal (8/8/09)
"Pentagon Takes Aim at Jets for Congressional Travel" by Brody Mullins and August Cole, Wall Street Journal (8/8/09)
"Hair of the Dog" by Alan Abelson, Barron's (8/8/09)
"Stimulus Spending Fails to Follow Unemployment, Poverty", CNBC.com (8/5/09)/"How Much Stimulus Funding is Going to Your County?" by Michael Grabell, Jennifer LaFleur, Dan Nguyen, and Jeff Larsen, ProPublica.org/recovery (8/5/09--source claims data current as of 7/20/09)
Singer, P.W. Wired For War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. New York: Penguin Press, 2009.
