Pork Barrel Spending & Mudslinging = Politics As Usual

Today's Peoria Journal Star has a number of interesting stories that exemplify that politics are running as usual.

For starters, the top headline from Dori Meinert about Rep. Ray Lahood defending a $2.5 million earmark for the Illinois Technology Transition Center in West Chicago. This is typical local representatives bringing back money (pork) for their district so as to secure votes and pay back those who paid to put them in office. This is money we as taxpayers have paid in; earmarked for something that may or may not benefit us. From this article:

LaHood said the center has aided the Peoria-based Firefly Energy, an offshoot of Caterpillar Inc., which is developing a new lightweight and longer lasting battery that it hopes to sell the Army.

So will Firefly sell this advanced battery to the Army at a discount since it was developed with taxpayer funds? Probably not; it will probably be sold to the Army for as much profit it will bear. Kudos to Arizona representative Jeff Flake, who has been featured in the news lately for his critism of earmarks and the federal government providing aid for private sector projects.

Also featured in today's Journal Star was an Associated Press story about the negative ads against Judy Barr Topinka in the last couple of months, something I blogged about last week. The article somewhat supports what I eluded to that Blagojevich feels threatened from his low approval ratings.

Polls consistently show Blagojevich with low support for a Democratic incumbent in a Democrate-leaning state, with Topinka not far behind.

He must be feeling a pinch, and his strategy is to slowly beat down Topinka so by Labor Day, she would be "bruised and bloody," so claims the AP story by Christopher Wills. According to the Topinka camp, these short 15 second clips that are being run in semi-heavy rotation, do not give the full story, which sounds like typical mudslinging campaigns.

Lastly, the Journal Star also reported that the Governor's office used politics in hiring a pilot. According to e-mails acquired by the Associated Press, Gov. Blagojevich's office hired a pilot, Brian Keen, who was the son-in-law of Democratic state representative Jerry Costello. While Blogojevich's office stated that he was hired on merit and not politics, it was discovered that he did not have enough flight hours to qualify. Keen later accumulated the required amount of flight hours, he was still not certified.

Common Sense of it All: Politics as usual in what is, nearly-undisputedly, *THE* most crooked state in the land. The more the two political parties differ, the more they act the same. Our elected officials need to learn to work together if they ever hope to get anything done.