Ear Marks

Pork or Beef

The big stir in the Washington, if not national, news has to do with the "Tea Party" and their push to ban ear marks, the attaching of money for pet projects to "must pass" legislation without any kind of hearings or debate. Undoubtedly, some of those projects are worthy of funding but many are frivolous and can not withstand the light of day

At first some of the Republican establishment opposed the ban (later called a moratorium) on the grounds that it wouldn't save any money and since the money was already in the budget to be allocated by themselves or some un-elected Washington bureaucrat not under their control, they should be the ones to do it. The question is, why is that money in the budget at all? Leave it out and save several billion dollars. We've got to start somewhere.

In the earlier centuries of this country, even before and certainly after the Revolutionary War, landowners, operating under the Free Range Laws , cut a series of notches in the ears of their hogs, for identifing purposes, and let them forage for themselves from spring until fall. Then they were brought in and pent or penned up for the winter.

Now compare that with the way our present day Congress operates. The Reigning Monarch of each House of Congress allows their subordinates to affix a request for money to fund some project in their home district or state to one of those must pass bills in exchange for an ear mark. Then when the really controversial bills come up for a vote those Reigning Monarchs will call in those ear marks and force their subordinates to vote for something they might not want. Like selling your soul for a bowl of pottage,but us minions are the ones who, in one way or another, will pay the bill.

But then, on the other hand, things could be worse or that's what I've heard. A man I once knew very well for more than twenty years was fond of saying that "a poor man has no more business with his head above ground than a mole" and maybe he was right. For "A man I knew up where I worked wore a fancy cowboy shirt and borrowed money so that he could go. Once when he was down on his luck, I let him have a buck. Why a hundred years from now I'll never know." That's just life.

When it has all been said and done, we at that point may realize that no matter what we try to do, the past we can't revise. Sometime in the distant past Mary A. Ford wrote a poem titled "A Hundred Years From Now." The first verse of that poem should be a lesson taken seriously. It is;

The surging sea of human life forever onward rolls, / and bears to the eternal shore its daily freight of souls; / though bravely sails our bark today, pale death sits at the prow, / and few shall know we ever lived a hundred years from now."

Remember the commercial where the elderly lady said (loudly) "where's the beef"? Sorry folks, there ain't none, except as in complaining. Thanks for listening, stay tuned. William