the taxpayer in Wisconsin and Texas are already taxed the money. this only directs where the money goes.
Try reading the Constituiton some time. It defines quite clearly where the money is allowed to go.
Let's stroll through Paul's Little List of Little Earmarks:
• $250,000 for Galveston Economic Development Partnership, for Galveston Center for Business and Technology Development to help spin off private investment at National Lab of the University of Texas Medical Branch
The limit to the Congressional power to "promote the progress of Science and useful Arts" (funny, that word useful..) is the granting of copyrights and patents. Spending a quarter million on spinning off private investment isn't allowed.
• $500,000 for City of Bay City for NuBlac Rehab Center (youth rehabilitation)
A clear half-million dollars taken from Nebraska who have their own children to take care of, and clearly a violation of the Tenth Amendment, since it is not allowed by Article I, Section 8.
$3.5 million for study of health risks of exposure to vanadium
Is this truly defense related, or defense-contractor related?
• $2 million for City of Bay City for NuBlac Rehab Center (serving minority veterans)
Covered
$41.073 million for Army Corps of Engineers to deepen and widen Texas City Channel
• $21.6 million for Army Corps of Engineers to dredge and reconfigure jetties at mouth of Colorado River
• $7.02 million for Army Corps of Engineers to dredge Freeport Harbor
• $16.021 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Galveston Harbor
• $1 million for Army Corps of Engineers for construction at Cedar Bayou
• $3.297 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Texas City Channel
• $200,000 for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Cedar Bayou
• $13.038 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Matagorda Ship Channel
• $42.018 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Gulf Intercoastal Waterway
• $3.026 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain channel to Victoria
• $600,000 for Army Corps of Engineers for feasibility study for Sabine Pass to Galveston Bay
• $400,000 for Army Corps of Engineers for feasibility study for Feeport Harbor
• $100,000 for Army Corps of Engineers for feasibility study for Lower Guadalupe River Basin
• $400,000 for Army Corps of Engineers for preliminary engineering and design study at Freeport Harbor.
• $21.7 million for Army Corps of Engineers for construction at Houston Galveston Navigation Channel
• $2.165 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Trinity River
• $6.979 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Wallisville Lake
• $1.3 million for Army Corps of Engineers to study flooding around Colorado River
• $11 million for Army Corps of Engineers for construction at Wharton and Onion Creek
• $3.026 million for Army Corps of Engineers for Chocolate Bayou
• $533,000 for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain channel to Port Bolivar
• $41.623 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Houston Ship Channel
• $1.01 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Double Bayou
• $3 million for Army Corps of Engineers for construction at Clear Creek
• $500,000 for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Port Palacios
• $100,000 for Army Corps of Engineers to study sand placement near Brazoria County shoreline
Almost 100% of the above are not defense related projects but projects of commercial development, and as such are outside the authorization of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
• $5 million for Fort Bend County for City of Kendleton water and sewer improvements
All the other states have to take dumps, too, so besides not being allowed by Article I, Section 8, it's just re-shuffling money. It the politician's all agreeing to take money from your pocket then telling you that they have some money to buy you present with.
The states are amply able to take care of their own sewage.
• $10 million for Coast Guard to improve Galveston Rail Causeway
No particular reason the privately owned railroads can't fix their own bridges?
• $8.8 million for FEMA for drainage at Cove Harbor in Aransas County
State and local issue of no concern to taxpayers in other states, who all have their own harbors to drain, unless they're New Mexico or Nevada or the like...
• $2.2 million for FEMA to reconfigure and stabilize Capano Causeway Pier
Is this part of the federal interstate highway system, a national defense project, or a state-owned road that's the responsibility of Texas to care for?
• $500,000 for FEMA for Aransas County drainage master plan
Aransas County can use it's own funds to figure out how to drain. No need for the taxpayers in Onondaga County, New York to foot the bill.
Hint to Aransas County: Water flows downhill.
• $35 million for FEMA for drainage in Friendswood
Again.
• $10 million for FEMA for drainage project for Friendswood/Clear Creek
Again.
• $10 million for FEMA for drainage project for Friendswood/Clear Creek
Perhaps Paul is suppressing news of a potential prostate gland problem of his? What's with all the drainage issues here?
• $5 million for FEMA to recycle household hazardous waste in Friendswood
A local issue. Again, not Constitutionally authorized. The taxpayers in Montana don't give a crap what the people in Friendswoo do with their old mercury filled CFL's. If any do, they can write their own checks.
• $1.96 million to replace buses in and around Victoria
Flatly not allowed under the Tenth Amendment. Article I, Section 8 says the federal government may build "post roads", it says nothing about providing mass transit on them. Ergo, Tenth Amendment applies.
• $2 million to renovate transit maintenance facility in Galveston
Ditto what the Mayor just said.
• $5 million to reconfigure Texas Clipper training ship
Does the Navy still use schooners? Only to drink from. Not a defense related expenditure, not allowed under the Tenth Amendment.
• $25,000 to install security cameras at Fox Run Apartments in Victoria
If they're fox run apartments, let the foxes install the security cams.
• $2 million to beautify Galveston Seawall and support Transit Access Program in Galveston
Galveston Seawall isn't required to be beautiful by the Constitution, and the taxpayers in Spokane don't care if it's as ugly as Janet Reno. Also, the Constitution doesn't say a damn thing about making 'transit" accessible to anyone, ergo the Tenth Amendment prohibits the federal government from doing this.
• $3.6 million to construct inter-modal transit facility in Victoria
Sounds like something the shipping companies can invest in, and will invest in, if the government stopped violating the Constitution.
• $3.5 million for analysis of commuter rail alternatives in Galveston
Nothing to analyze. First off, Amtrak should not be subsidized, and if Amtrak isn't the operator, then the state and local government should be footing the bill, not the people in Billings who aren't affected by traffic problems in Galveston.
Any particular reason the commuters in Galveston are considered too damn stupid to figure out their own alternatives to light rail?
• $10.3 million for City of Bay City for NuBlac Youth/Community Center
The phrase "Community Center" does not appear, not once, in the entire Constitution.
What does appear is this:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
• $2.2 million for City of Bay City for improvements to electrical wiring in low and moderate income housing
This must be so low and moderate income people won't burn their houses down with their gigawatt televisions?
This is a responsibility of the federal government? The Mayor would think certifying the electrical wiring should be a periodic requirement of the insurance companies, and policy rates adjusted as appropriate.
Perhaps Ron Paul isn't aware that the free market provides solutions to life's little problem's?
• $90,000 for Victoria Chamber of Commerce for business/career-related education for youth
Sounds like Paul wants the federal government to usurp not only state responsibilities, not only city responsiblities, but parental responsibilities, too.
And you all want to pretend he's not a dweeby little socialist.
• $248,942 for UTMB for employee wellness program for small businesses
If small businesses don't want to pay for their employees to be well, they get to have sick employees. That's certainly not a federal matter.
• $1.748 million for University of Houston-Victoria for DNA testing and genetic diagnostic lab
Sounds like an excellent program for the great state of Texas or private charity.
It's certainly not a matter for Farmer Brown in Iowa.
• $300,000 for Bay City MEHOP for fund reinstatement of mobile unit
Let's get this straight. The MEHOP lost it's mobile unit? So ME only HOPs in one place now?
And this is a matter for the federal government, as authorized by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution?
• $200,000 for Bay City MEHOP to recruit nurse practitioner
The Mayor never realized that putting out ads in the Help Wanted Section of the Bay City paper was so expensive.
And this concerns the clerk in the haberdashery at JC Penny in Nashville because....?
• $1.92 million for UTMB to study muscle mass loss in aging vs. microgravity (NASA related) at International Space Station National Lab
Is it defense related? No? The nation doesn't plan on having military astronauts on military missions for weeks and months of extended time in the foreseeable future? No? Then it's not a problem for the taxpayers to worry about.
• $750,000 for Houston Memorial Hermann HealthCare system for Life Flight operations center
Again, the State of Texas is wealthy, it can, for itself, decide if and when it needs new medivac helicopters.
The federal government doesn't have to violate the Tenth Amendment to provide them.
• $26 million for Washington, D.C. “Reading is Fundamental” program
Well, this really helps the people of Texas. But the exemplary quality of public education in Washington, DC does illsustrate the complete failure of the theory of government schools, doesn't it?
Nor should the Mayor refuse to point out that the Constitution does not allow the federal government to spend tax dollars on education. Read Jefferson's sixth state-of-the-union address if you don't believe him.
• $10 million for Boston, Mass., “Reach Out and Read” national center
One could, by wild stretching of the clause giving Congress sole legislative control over DC,say that Congress might have to expend federal tax dollars on educating the people living there, but no sretching short of rupture can allow Congress to spend tax dollars on Boston, or any other place.
And he voted against every one of those pork bills. But since he knows they are going to pass, he is doing the right thing to make sure people in his district get some benefit from the money taken from them.
so you can stop demagoguing anytime.
No, you may stop trying to fit Paul's tiny head with a halo.
The Mayor just spent a signficant fraction of time (well, he put a new hard-drive in an old notebook and he's waiting for the programs to reinstall...) pointing out that Ron Paul, like every other politician, uses the Constitution as his TP. The words written on it don't matter, he's not reading them.
But Paul is a wors hypocrite because he pretends to be a Constitutionalist. Most of the others are pretending to not be socialists.