Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Politicians - and Funk Music?
This earmark thing is just unbelievable.
Our corrupt, unaccountable politicians just keep wasting our money...
Our corrupt, unaccountable politicians just keep wasting our money...
At the WashingtonPost.com, Mary Beth Sheridan writes about it:
"'We made very substantial progress in making sure that earmarks, which I support, are transparent,' Hoyer said in an interview.
And yet, pet projects can still be slipped into bills with little scrutiny.
Consider the $450,000 that Hoyer inserted into a 2008 education spending bill for the California-based InTune Foundation Group, whose Web site describes it as a music-education nonprofit group.
In 2005, InTune got a previous earmark for nearly $500,000 to develop lesson plans on funk music and Nobel Peace laureates. Asked recently how effective that program had been, Education Department officials said they didn't know. InTune hadn't turned in a report on what it did, officials said.
'It is significantly past due,' department spokeswoman Rebecca Neale said, noting that the deadline was September 2006. She said that the department had tried to reach InTune but that its old telephone and e-mail were out of service and there was no contact information on its Web site.
After The Washington Post asked InTune about the delay, the foundation got in touch with the department, Neale said last week. She said the group had not yet submitted its report."
