You Know How an Addict Swears to You That He’s Off the Stuff? He’s Lying.

As many readers know, Congressional Republicans have taken the lead against earmarks, with incoming House Leader John Boehner going so far as to call on the President to veto bills that contain them.

No doubt you see this as a victory for the notion of representative government in that we finally have a political party that has heard the voters loud and clear and demonstrated they are serious about banning the distasteful and corrupting practice of earmarks.

Of course, the voters didn’t say anything about “lettermarks,” or “phonemarks,” now did they? Because those are still going strong!

Now before you get all outraged that lettermarks and phonemarks sound like the same thing there is an important distinction that sets them apart:

They are largely done behind closed doors and without the transparency and openness of earmarks.

So there’s that.

How do these work?  Rather than placing an appropriation in a bill, a Congressional representative instead sends a letter or makes a phone call to an agency strongly “suggesting” that they allocate part of their budget towards funding the construction of, say, a Lint Museum in his or her home district.  This suggestion is made much in the same way “Fat Tony” from the neighborhood would make the suggestion that maybe you need to buy insurance from him to guard against the potential hazard that someone might accidentally douse your place in kerosene and light it on fire ifyouknowwhatimean.

And if you’re getting ready to start writing your Representative demanding an end to lettermarks and phonemarks, we have one word for you:

Twittermarks.

The core problem is the strange practice in which the federal government acts as a middleman, collecting money from everyone, taking a cut, and then giving the money back to the various localities.  Eliminating this would mean that local and state governments would have to carefully weigh the benefits of various projects given their more limited borrowing and spending capacity, and the people would have a much closer relationship to the real costs and burdens of many government programs.

Which could very well put that Lint Museum in jeopardy.

Sorry, that’s just our libertarian crazy talk again. 

Now, about those Twittermarks…

J.