The Queen of Pork

The thing that's really vile about earmarks is how cheaply we all get sold out. Two million of your taxpayer bucks in exchange for a $5,000 donation? Greenlighting a billion-dollar Pentagon boondoggle for a couple of free flights? Hey, if you're going to sell us out, at least fucking bargain. But it's not their money, and they never do.

Hillary isn't alone among the candidates in selling us down the river for a few campaign contributions. Unlike Clinton, who has only disclosed the pork she actually succeeded in doling out, Barack Obama has supplied reporters with a list of every earmark he requested. But the list only served to highlight Obama's own pork, including $8 million for a "High Explosive Air Burst Technology Program" that would have been overseen by General Dynamics. Obama's Illinois finance chairman, James Crown, not only sits on the board of General Dynamics, he and his wife are both Obama bundlers who have raised more than $200,000 for Obama's campaign. Obama was also alone among the remaining candidates last year in using his leadership PAC to hand out money to politicians whose support he sought in his presidential run.

McCain, meanwhile, has run a finger-wagging, holier-than-thou campaign. He insists he doesn't request any earmarks, even though he has: In 2003, he doled out $14.3 million to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. He also insists that he is "the only one the special interests don't give any money to," even though he has lapped the field when it comes to surrounding himself with lobbyists. Public Citizen, the nonprofit watchdog group, has identified sixty-six current or former lobbyists who are either major fundraisers or bundlers for McCain, a number that far exceeds either Clinton or Obama.

Like Hillary, McCain has not been shy about doing favors for his lobbyist friends while milking their companies for campaign contributions. As chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, McCain obliged several firms, including Paxson Communications and Glencairn, by proposing an amendment that would have enabled them to own multiple TV stations in the same market. Though the measure was never adopted, Paxson rewarded McCain with a flight on its private jet, and a Glencairn executive made donations to McCain's campaign a month after he held the hearing.

But neither McCain nor Obama have been able to match Clinton when it comes to playing on their connections for campaign contributions. Last fall, while Obama was answering questions about using his leadership PAC to give $10,000 donations to politicians who supported him in key campaign-trail states, no one blinked when former senator Bob Kerrey showed up in Iowa to campaign for Hillary. Kerrey these days is president of the New School in Manhattan, which, like Butts' Abyssinian Development Corporation, scored more than $1.5 million in federal earmarks this year courtesy of Hillary. The school also boasts three trustees who are "Hillraisers" or Hillary bundlers — meaning they've raised $100,000 apiece for her presidential run. The notorious scam artist Norman Hsu, who raised $850,000 for Clinton before being indicted for fraud last December, was another New School trustee.

Nor is Hillary shy about funneling earmarks to big donors who don't even need the money. Real estate developer Robert Congel, another Hillary earmark recipient who has graced the Forbes list, scored $10 million in pork courtesy of Hillary for use in developing, of all things, a megamall. Why the hell we need to pay taxes to help billionaires build luxury shopping malls is a troubling enough question, without even considering the $26,700 that Congel and his wife have contributed to Hillary over the years. That's all it costs to get $10 million out of a U.S. senator? Where are the pitchforks?

Earmarking is only one small slice of the political cash game, but it has the advantage of being a slice we can actually see and quantify. And what we see of Hillary's record here suggests a couple of things. One: She has no qualms whatsoever about trading your tax money for personal political capital. And two: She likes to trade much of that money for favors in the defense sector, even if it hurts the people doing the defending.

As is often the case with defense earmarks, some of Hillary's pork spending is taken out of the Army's Operation and Maintenance budget, which is supposed to be used for troop-support initiatives like body armor. In simple terms, Hillary's rampant marauding of the defense budget takes money away from troops in the field. Soldiers wind up short on equipment, and Clinton winds up with hefty campaign contributions and free flights on private jets. Carrying charges, my boy, carrying charges!

If earmarks are just a little slice of the pie in the Washington cash game, imagine what would happen if Hillary got to serve up the whole meal. It's been so long since the Clintons were in office that we scarcely remember all those funny-sounding names of scandal-plagued campaign contributors — names like Roger Tamraz, "Charlie" Trie, Wang Jun and John Huang. When it comes to the Clintons and money, there was always somebody with a story buried beneath the line item, a hard-to-find dollar figure stuck to every Calvin Butts or Robert Congel. Are we really ready to go back to those days full time?

[From Issue 1051 — May 1, 2008]