EARMARKS - modest suggestions

yesterday, a co-worker blathered on about "earmarks" and "pork" - you could have run an audio of limbaugh side-by-side with him and wouldn't notice a difference.

so I asked him - if the Republicans were soooo upset by earmarks, why haven't they withdrawn their own earmarks from the budget? Of course the co-worker had no answer and went into ditto-heading another limbaugh blather.

This got me to thinking - how to address the issue of earmarks.

Some suggestions:

1. no earmarks are allowed to be added to a bill which are not related directly related to the bill. Example: An infrastructure bill to repair bridges can't have an earmark in it for promoting free-range chickens.

2. OPEN and TRANSPARENT disclosure of who requested the earmark. There are several sites which track earmarks but it takes some digging to find out who requested what. there's an OMB page dealing with earmarks, but it doesn't specifically list who requested the earmark. If a congress critter wants $X for an earmark - their name should be on it and we should be able to know who they are.

3. If a congress-critter objects to $x for a particular earmark, they should be willing to withdraw an equal $x for their earmark. (Double or nothing rule.) If repubs objects to $50k to study med-fly mating rituals, the repubs would with draw $50k worth of their own earmarks - same would apply to Dems.

4. No earmarks in budget, supplementals, or any other bill. Earmarks would be handled by it's own separate bill, complete with a listing of who asked for what and how much.

---------Remember if you hear someone on TV/Radio mentioning any/all of these - you saw it here first.

have politicians, ALL politicians, wear a uniform similar to the ones worn by NASCAR racers, with all the sponsors on it. Any company who contributes large amounts of money to a politician gets free advertisement on the politician.

I think that one thing alone would do wonders for fixing our corrupt system.

a few critters having to have signs that say "see other suit for more sponsers"

and others with chalk marked spots saying "this space available"