A few weeks ago, the Washington Post decided to sponsor a contest to find “America’s Next Great Pundit.” Being one who likes to compare himself with others in his field and who likes to write anyway, I submitted an entry like about 4,800 other people did.
After reading the winning entries though, I’m not sure if the judging was based solely on writing ability or if there wasn’t a heaping helping of political slant involved. Obviously the Post has a pretty liberal editorial viewpoint but it’s hard for me to believe that many portside writers are that much better than those of us who toil on the conservative side. Besides, with twice as many Americans identifying themselves as conservative as liberal, the numerical superiority should be on our side, even in this case.
But I’ll let you judge for yourself. You can read the ten finalists’ entries here and compare them to what I wrote. Honestly, I found some fairly witty and well-written but others made me wonder what the judges were thinking. The entry bounced off a post I did about earmarks last month.
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Earmarks: tip of the iceberg
The other day I received an e-mail from the campaign of Dr. Eric Wargotz, one of several Republicans aiming at a chance to unseat Maryland’s longtime Senator Barb Mikulski next fall. Citing a news report, Wargotz chastises Mikulski for steering $10.5 million in earmarks to three of her largest campaign contributors as part of $42 million in pork spending she slipped into the upcoming defense appropriations bill.
This implied quid pro quo often infuriates supporters of campaign finance reform and advocates of good government, and similar practices were even a minor issue in last year’s Presidential campaign as both John McCain – a longtime foe of earmarks – and Barack Obama vowed to cut back on the practice, promising to veto earmark-laden bills placed before them.
We’ve seen the result of President Obama’s nod to fiscal conservatism, but there’s much more afoot at the people’s house than a few million dollars’ worth of what are essentially no-bid contracts.
To complain about a proverbial drop in the federal bucket when Congress is considering provisions which would balloon the deficit and enrich some favored corporations and industries at the expense of others misses a larger point. Nor can we discount that much of the new bureaucracy being conceived will take the decisions of everyday life out of the hands of individuals in the private sector and place it safely within the Beltway, empowering wannabe experts who may not have even been vetted to make economic decisions affecting all of us.
Simply put, it is not the place of government at any level to create law picking winners or losers. Naturally some adroitly adapt to changing regulations and prosper, but too many corporate entities look to government as their salvation and far too many public servants, both in Washington and state capitals, are only too happy to help because it also gives them a reason for being.
Perhaps the true intention behind the complaint about Senator Mikulski is to make a clarion call for returning to a more principled government. To Americans who are simply fed up with “politics as usual”, the only steps which may be satisfactory to them would be those taken to reduce the size and scope of government. Earmarks are the low-hanging fruit, but the tree is ripe for the picking.
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So what do you think? The worst offense may have been mixing metaphors, but that’s nothing I’ve not seen other columnists do.
