Earmarks shmearmarks

The skinny jeans and latte crowd is always quick to pounce on the latest "trend", lemming like, in order to retain the all important status of being "in" at all times. This by necessity extends to thought and manner, and thus short-circuits the process of critical thinking which is essential to the existence of a well informed citizenry.

So it is with the hulabaloo over "earmarks" in congressional spending bills.

What are earmarks? Earmarks are riders inserted into a spending bill by legislators which dedicate an amount of money out of the entire public budget for specific projects. They do not serve to increase the amount of funds spent, only to further the disposal of public revenues already appropriated. In this manner, elected legislators specify where public monies are to be spent. For in the absence of earmarks, uncommitted outlays are thrown into a general appropriations pool, to be expended at the will of the executive branch - that is, the dictator, working through his unelected Praetorian administrators.

This process, despite what you hear in the media, is harmless and actually beneficial, as dedicating revenues for say, a community center in rural South Dakota, prevents their use for other, perhaps more nefarious purposes.

The real insult is not how the money is spent, but how much money is spent. $410 billion and counting for the current budget, as the latest insult to the taxpayer attests - not to mention the inconvenient matter of a $1 trillion-plus deficit (and counting).

So why the "hype" on a logical non-issue?

This is just another technique the dickheadery uses to divert attention from the real issues in our society. The morass of intellectual simpletons into which most Amerikans have devolved are easy marks for the razzle dazzle school of propaganda. The skinny jeans crowd, lacking even a shred of personal integrity and ready and willing to sell themselves out to the Corporate power every time, believes every lie swallowed by their media overlords, abdicating their ability to think for themselves and apply their precious university educations to issues which could pose grave threats to their shallow gilded lives.

After all, we're talking about the same folks who think nothing of plunking down $200 or more for "destroyed jeans" at Hollister or some other such retail magnet of the metrosexual class. So why be surprised? Nihilism is their creed, orgiastic pleasure is their end.

Indeed, it will be their end.