Ney’s history raises the question…

As regular readers know, I struggle to understand the US political system in the context of broad representation and fairness. Well, I struggle full stop, but let’s just focus here.

Cruising the news, as one does, I came across a regional Ohio newspaper (The Canton Repository) which actually carried some stories on Ney’s departure. Sad they were too, because their boy delivered!

“Rep. Bob Ney’s decision to drop his re-election bid means his successor will be a freshman lawmaker without nearly the clout the six-term lawmaker had.

“In the past two years alone, Ney got more than $80 million for highway, dam and water projects, flood prevention and other initiatives that benefited the district, according to a spending review.

“As one of just two lawmakers from Ohio on the House Transportation Committee, Ney steered more than the average congressman’s share of highway spending to his area.

“When Congress passed the highway bill in July 2005, it included $52 million in projects that Ney had requested for his district, said Keith Ashdown, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, an organization that monitors congressional spending.

“The average congressional district received just $12.8 million in highway projects in the bill, Ashdown said.

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but you give one of the bozos a job on a Committee, any Committee, and his primary task is to send as much of the loot back home as possible?

I take it these Committees don’t bother to take submissions and look at priorities and needs, they just have to work out how to divvy up the spoils so no-one complains too much about missing out, least of all there respective constituents.

I can see an even better system here. You don’t need these full time turkey buzzards, all you need is to elect them for long enough to be shuffled onto their various Committees then send them home again.

A simple computer program could easily divvy the cash after that, according to the nominal Committee membership. The extra savings might even flow to those districts who miss out on the plum jobs.

But probably not, the computer would surely direct the excess back to those members. Still, at least the hypocrisy is cut down to nil.

Sidebar:

One Republican strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity, said lawyers had concluded Ney’s replacement, Joy Padgett, was likely covered by the so-called political sore loser's law and thus would not be eligible to run. More fun and games?