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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mph who wrote (61620)	8/6/2007 7:10:29 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Pelosi’s direct-to-own Congress Don Surber blog Or meet the new boss, worse than the old boss… In 2006, Democrat Nancy Pelosi was a firebrand against lobbyists. She told CNN: <<< “The intention of our Founding Fathers was for Congress to be a marketplace of ideas. The Republicans have turned Congress into an auction house, for sale to the highest bidder. You have to pay to play. That’s just not right.” >>> Now that she is speaker, no more auction house. Pelosi has cut out the middle man and has produced Favor-Factory-direct earmarking for defense contractors and others who pay the congressional troll. Bloomberg News reported that Mrs. Pelosi may be a dove on actually using our military to fight wars, but she is a hawk when it comes to Pentagon spending in her district: <<< Some companies stand to gain from Pelosi’s earmarks. The California Democrat has won funding for six companies in a 2008 defense funding measure. One is a $4 million request to develop a “novel viral biowarfare agent” for Prosetta Corp., based in her San Francisco district. Tom Higgins, the company’s chief executive officer, says he talked to the Speaker’s staff directly rather than hiring a lobbyist and hasn’t given money to her campaign. “We’re just a little company,” he says. Another of Pelosi’s earmarks was $2.5 million to Bioquiddity, Inc., a San Francisco biotech company with nine employees, to continue developing drug-infusion pumps. Bioquiddity President Josh Kriesel, who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the state legislature in 2002, has donated $6,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee since last September. The company received a total of $3.9 million in earmarks in the last two years. Kriesel declined to comment directly on the earmarks. Pelosi has said some earmarks are “worthy.” And she said there is a distinction between those for public projects, which she sometimes touts with press releases, and special interest earmarks. >>> If these earmarks are so “worthy,” why must they sneak in through the back door at the Pentagon instead of being proposed by the generals who run the military? Republican Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona spoke up for the taxpaying people, when he told Bloomberg News: “It baffles me how people can complain bitterly about Halliburton and no-bid contracts and then lard up a bill with literally thousands of earmarks to companies when that’s all they are — no-bid contracts. … So many of these companies turn around and give campaign contributions right back to the sponsor of the earmark. This kind of circular fund raising is unbelievable.” Now we know why the Democrats and their handmaidens in the press are pursuing those 8 fired U.S. attorneys. They are a-feared that President Bush’s Department of Justice will go after Democratic corruption with the same vigor it went after Republican corruption. They want a Janet Reno who sits around and does nothing. Now we know why Mrs. Pelosi went after lobbyists: She wants to deal directly with the companies she favors. blogs.dailymail.com