Unless you’ve been on Mars, you’ve been hearing about earmarks. Earmarking is legalized stealing of your money by members of Congress. It involves taking from the poorer and giving to the richer.

I thought maybe you’d find some specific info interesting, and luckily the Bill Moyers Journal on PBS aired a program on earmarks just awhile back. It featured an exhaustive project that was undertaken by an investigative reporter for the Seattle Times. He spent many months digging this stuff out and it only represents the tip of the iceberg.

Now, these earmarks are darn near “top secret” in terms of the difficulty you face if you try to dig them out of Congressional documents and budgets. Why? Because Congress members don’t want you to know how much money they siphon off for special interests or who those special interests are, or what the money is used for. That’s why!

What I’m about to show you is a teensy little sample of what’s been uncovered and made available to look at and it’s only earmarks buried in the 2007 Defense Appropriations Bill. I’m only going to list the earmarks obtained by our Washington congressmen and senators, but at the end of this article, I’ll give you the internet address where you can go look at the whole sheebang.

A lot of the earmarks seem to be for “research and development,” which usually means the recipients want the government to pay for developing stuff the recipients will later try hard to sell to the government.

As you read on, be aware that not one penny of any of this money was requested by the military. This is all payola to constituents of congressional members.

OK. Here’s the goods.

Let’s start with $6.5 million for “future medical shelter system.” One of the recipients is a foreign company, EADS, currently involved in the Air Force tanker debacle. Earmark sponsored by Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. One of the subcontractors is in Oregon and supposedly 250 of its employees live across the river in Washington.

Murray and Cantwell teamed up with Democrat Rep. Brian Baird to get $5 million for nLight Photonics Corp. in Vancouver, Wash., for a “lightweight, multi-purpose laser.”

The Patty and Maria duo teamed up with Richard Harkin of Iowa to get $3.9 million for Rockwell Collins, headquartered in Iowa, but which also has a facility in Pierce County. This time for an advanced GPS receiver.

Our gals then hooked up with Democrat rep Adam Smith of Washington to slurp up $3.3 million for WSU (Go Cougs) and Avure Technologies in Kent for some new Meals-Ready-To-Eat, aka MREs.

These things have been around since the early ’80s. What could be left to research?

And our own Democrat rep Rick Larsen signed on with the ladies to get $1 million for our own Puget Sound Rope, right here in Anacortes, to test their new rope to see if it would break if the Navy pulled on it. But Rick’s total score was a paltry $3 million. Pretty low amount for feeders at the public trough.

Democrat rep Jim McDermott scored just a smidge better by getting $3.275 million, but Republican rep Cathy Ann McMorris didn’t go after one red cent nor did Democrat Jay Inslee. Doc Hastings, Republican rep, scattered $51,450 among 11 defense contractors. Republican Dave Reichert was more ambitious, getting $17.56 million for a lot of those same recipients. Democrat Norm Dicks sent $24.25 million up in smoke but he didn’t inhale.

So, the absolute winners in the annual take us to the cleaners contest were Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray who tied for the lead with $51.575 million in earmarks. But remember, these figures are only for earmarks they attached to the annual Defense Bill. There were plenty of chances to get more millions by earmarking other bills, like Agriculture, Education, etc., and I’m almost certain that’s exactly what they did but we’ll probably never know because no one has the time to wade through those thousands of pages and painstakingly extract the information.

So, is earmarking what you want done with the taxes you pay? You decide. I personally think it’s a real sleezy practice. If it wasn’t, they’d be doing it in the light of day and claiming great credit for their deeds.

Now, here’s the link to a very easy-to-use data base. Enjoy! http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/favorfactory/lawmaker.php?id=H0AL05049