Gary Van Winkle – 12/14/08

This page was last updated on December 14, 2008.

Let’s bring home the bacon big time; Gary Van Winkle; Beaver County Times; December 14, 2008.

Though Mr. Van Winkle has written numerous letters, I critiqued only two previous letters (here and here).

Below is a detailed critique of the letter.

“Extraordinary ideas often hit us in ordinary situations: Archimedes in the tub; Newton under the apple tree; Einstein on the trolley; me washing dishes.”

[RWC] I’ll give Mr. Van Winkle the benefit of the doubt and assume this is a tongue-in-cheek letter. Even so, you’ll see he didn’t do his research.

“There’s nothing wrong with U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire’s 4th Congressional District that an extra $1 billion couldn’t fix. It might take 10 years to enhance roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, etc. Set up industrial parks for alternative energy research and development, etc. Provide industrial loans for clean air and clean water.

“The mind boggles. What if the district received federal grants of $1 billion every 10 years in annual installments of $100 million? We’d soon be living in a revitalized community, barring fraud and graft, of course. We could even cut real estate taxes in half.

“Suppose every congressional district got the same deal — $1 billion dollars every 10 years. Annual total: about $44 billion nationwide. Trivial compared to the sum of the bailouts.

“The House of Representatives was established to provide communication between grassroots voters and the federal government. It was horse-and-buggy times. No electronics, no automobiles.”

[RWC] I wonder where Mr. Van Winkle learned his history and civics. While what Mr. Van Winkle stated was a by-product, it was not the reason our Founding Fathers formed a representative republic instead of a democracy. Our Founding Fathers knew a democracy was just an eyelash away from mob rule. It’s also a reason the Founding Fathers had the senators appointed by the states (Article I, Section 3) instead of being elected. That was changed by the 17^th Amendment.

“In modern times, the House has two missions: Get re-elected and bring home the bacon. Bacon comes home as ‘pork,’ which is larded onto virtually every legislative bill.”

[RWC] In this paragraph and the next, Mr. Van Winkle appears to place most of the blame for “pork” on representatives. Has Mr. Van Winkle heard of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) and former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK)? It’s only a slight exaggeration to say you can’t drive five miles in West Virginia without driving on or by something named for Mr. Byrd paid for via a “pork” project.

“With my proposal, we’d have no more need for ‘pork’ and so we could dismiss the entire House of Representatives. We’d save some tax dollars. We’d still have the U.S. Senate, which also has a taste for lard, but it’s easier to keep an eye on 100 politicians than 535.”

[RWC] “We’d save some tax dollars?” Not exactly. If Mr. Van Winkle had done his research, he would have found the most “pork” we had was in 2006 at $29 billion. The “pork” for 2008 was $17.2 billion. Mr. Van Winkle proposes a minimum of $43.5 billion. I use the Citizens Against Government Waste definition of “pork” which states a “‘pork’ project is a line-item in an appropriations bill that designates tax dollars for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures.”