Oberstar Watch – Earmarks

This morning I woke to an interesting bit of intelligence about our seniority rich Congressman. It seems that Oberstar used the much criticized earmarking power to authorize 11 million in pork for an almost nonexistant entity (Its only met once since 2004 according to the post) called the GLMRI or Great Lakes Marine Research Institute.

I’ve grown suspicious of anything Oberstar related with the word “Great Lakes” in it. That’s because of the infamous UGRLC Upper Great Lakes Regional Commission which at federal expense provided the work of three secretaries to help win Jim Oberstar the contested Democratic primary in 1974 and his automatic election to Congress. After writing about this last November the only man convicted for stealing any portion of a much talked about missing million dollars gave me a call and prompted me to begin writing a book about the scandal. Sorry to say campaigning for Congress has forced me to shelve the project for now. If only I had three federally financed secretaries to help me mail out fund raising letters. 

Back to the earmark. Some of you may recall that the so called blogosphere ganged up to discover the US Senator who put a hold on legislation to publicize the names of Congressmen who stick earmarks secretly into legislation unbeknownst to the world. Lots of old salts in the Congress hate the idea of transparancy where people can see whose bidding they are doing. Jim must be one of them as he’s been touting his seniority as an important reason to reelect him. Who can quibble with more pork, especially if its our children who have to pay for it?

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