Or even in Illinois, for that matter? Well, there's money earmarked in the federal budget by north Texas' own Congressman Pete Sessions (R-TX) for blimp research and development in Illinois. Because of the furor stirred up by the health care debate, a recent news story about Pete Sessions didn't get the attention it deserved. According to a Politico story on 7/30/2009,
"Rep. Pete Sessions - the chief of the Republicans’ campaign arm in the House - says on his website that earmarks have become 'a symbol of a broken Washington to the American people.'What's this? Pete Sessions? Earmarks? Blimps? for Illinois? Aide? Lobbyist? Criminal record? That's right. Enough keywords to fuel a silly season story for weeks (my apologies to bloggermouse for yet another reference to "silly season"). Except the health care silliness (e.g, "death panels") has starved other stories of oxygen. But one person at Pete Sessions' town hall meeting in Irving did manage to get to the microphone and ask about his sending $1.6 million dollars to Illinois for blimp research. According to Sessions Watch, this is how Pete Sessions addressed the issue (or not):Yet in 2008, Sessions himself steered a $1.6 million earmark for dirigible research to an Illinois company whose president acknowledges having no experience in government contracting, let alone in building blimps.
What the company did have: the help of Adrian Plesha, a former Sessions aide with a criminal record who has made more than $446,000 lobbying on its behalf."
"The appropriators had it for over a year before they brought it to the floor. The appropriators knew that the United States Army and Air Force is in fact looking for the opportunity to take massive amounts of weight from the United States to the theater. Blimps are much like the hydroplanes that the Marine Corps went to where they've got hovercraft. And they spend seventy-eight thousand gallons taking two tanks overseas on an aircraft. This would accomplish sixteen tanks for three gallons. The forty thousand dollars that was spent on the engineering study before they asked for it was looked at by the Air Force and the Air Force is interested in this and you watch what happens. Thank you so very much."So, I take it that Pete Sessions thinks that his own earmarks are good, although he doesn't use the word earmark in his reply. He also doesn't use the words lobbyist, aide, criminal record, or Illinois, either. Nevertheless, according to Sessions Watch, "The overwhelmingly pro-Sessions audience greeted this statement with wild cheers and applause, on a par with the kind Oprah Winfrey gets when she tells her audience, 'Look under your chairs...!'"
Ain't politics grand?!?
5 comments:
No, it ain't grand, and I think that is why so many feel powerless and simply tune it all out and hope for the best -- not wise, as it ends up giving the lunatic fringe too much control. But I empathize -- how I empathize... It does sometimes feel like a lost cause.
Rosie, thanks for the feedback. It does sometimes feel like politics has no place for an honest man.
I won't even start on the earmarks, I've already sent nasty e-mails to Sessions about those.
Blimps may fuel efficient, but they are impractical in all but the safest areas of the world. They are slow moving, can not maneuver quickly and it would take one attack plane, heck it would take a couple of ground to air missiles to take it out and there's be no chance of the cargo (not to mention the crew) surviving. Dumb idea.
Sherri, you are right that dirigibles are big fat targets in war zones. But so are aircraft carriers, all of which would be taken out in the first day of a world war. But they can be useful in peacetime and during regional and guerrilla wars. Here, for example, is a timely story about how "high-tech blimps are earning their wings."
All that said, Sessions' earmark still looks like an old fashioned case of shoveling government money to a favored political friend. The hypocrisy of him doing it while condemning earmarks is disappointing.
Politico reports that "A former aide to Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) has filed suit against the company for whom he helped secure a controversial $1.6 million earmark for a blimp project last year. In his lawsuit, Adrian Plesha says that James Ferguson IV — the son of the owner of the company that got the blimp funding — owes him more than $262,000 in unpaid lobbying fees and expenses."
Looks like Sessions chose a company of questionable business practices to shovel federal dollars to. Or chose a lobbyist of questionable ethics to serve as Sessions' aide before he went to work for the blimp company. Or maybe Sessions' judgment was lacking in both cases.
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