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A headline in the news today may really be repeating a familiar story that has been around as least since last Spring and possibly for every year since Hillary Rodham Clinton has been in the Senate. It is also possible that it cannot be simply attributed to partisan politics in terms of criticism as there is evidence it has at least been mentioned at Huff Po and the Daily Kool Aid, correction, Kos. It is sad when blogs resort to unflattering remarks like the one just presented but what goes around comes around, it provides a little entertainment and we’re all adults and can handle it, right?

Hillary Clinton Lands Earmarks For Campaign Contributions - The Huffington Post.
www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/10/hillary-clinton-lands-ear_n_76048.html

Clinton’s earmarking history was brought to my attention in another diary … Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has secured more earmarks in the fiscal 2008 …
www.dailykos.com/story/2007/11/10/12507/504

You’re right. The links are not hot as there is no forthcoming dialogue about the content at those two sites on HRC’s propensity for earmarks. The fact that there are search engine results pointing to Clinton earmark discussions on liberal blogs is information enough for the purposes of this post. That is to say, they are aware of it. Feel free to inform about others favoring the earmark practice as it is a bad thing no matter who does it.

The USA Today was responsible for the first story noted about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s earmark history in the news today. It points to a story in the LA Times that was not reviewed here as they required at least registration with a username and password or the like and that is not worth the time and effort nor a trend that is looked upon favorably here. So the next best and quickest source for the data on Clinton earmarks was avaiable at The Hill dot com.

Apparently the LA TImes indicates Clinton has provided $500 million in earmarks for 59 corporations in the state of NY since 2001. About 2/3 of those corps contributed to her campaign. She has a total of $2.3 billion earmarks since entering the Senate but is not the leader on earmarks except when compared to others with her relatively low seniority. Her pal Senator Chuck Schumer and her agreed to work together on earmarks for business in the state their Senate seats represent.

The idea is that the earmarks build a questionable set of relationships within a state and then spread nationally to enhane the ability to raise cash for a campaign. The details of the money numbers are basically the same in the notes on the LA Times story and the information at the Hill dot com.

The Hill adds that other candidates, specifically Barack Obama who had one earmark for education related to children with disabilities and John McCain who had no earmarks at all. What does this tell you about Hillary Rodham Clinton? Should she be assailed for participating in the practice? Perhaps or perhaps not depending on your own preference. But the examples of Obama and McCain suggest that not all politicians abuse their influence on appropriations.

L.A. Times: Clinton embraces ‘pork-barrel politics;’ her aides say she’s helping constituents

The Los Angeles Times this morning takes a long look at what it says is Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s use of “old-fashioned pork-barrel politics, first to build power in the state, then to extend it nationwide as she becomes a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.”

Clinton can boast wealth of earmarks
By Roxana Tiron and Ilan Wurman
June 13, 2007
Presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has secured more earmarks in the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill than any other Democrat except for panel Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.).

The bill contains about $5.4 billion in earmarks, or projects not requested by the Pentagon. With their slim majority, the Democrats on the panel claimed two-thirds of that sum. Clinton is among their more junior members.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Money Matters, wordpress, Politics, campaign, McCain, Clinton, disclosure, ethics, oversight, obama, hillary, Carl Levin, Sen Chuck Schumer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.