John McCain's "It's Time for Action" tour took him to remote Gee's Bend, Alabama, Monday, a town isolated for more than 40 years when county officials cut off the ferry connecting the mostly black hamlet to the larger town across the Alabama River.
The ferry was reinstated in 2006.
McCain rode the ferry today with a dozen Gee's Bend residents; a perfect photo op: A sunny day, a slight breeze, a pretty landscape and a white politician surrounded by African-Americans.
Except for one thing: McCain has long crusaded against earmarks. He's even promised to do away with them if he's elected.
And the Gee's Bend ferry was reinstated with the help of a $2 million earmark in a 2005 congressional spending bill.
Earmarks make the news every so often as a sign of Congress's wastefulness, etc. I don't know the precise percentages, but my understanding is that earmarks make up an extremely small amount of our budget. They shouldn't be done away with; perhaps a focus on other parts of the budgets would be more worthwhile.
Posted by: ivmurillo | April 22, 2008 at 03:24 PM