In today's The Wall Street Journal, Tyler Grimm takes a trip to Johnstown, PA, where he reports despondently on the John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport, which services roughly 30 people a day and has received over $130 million in federal assistance over the course of 20 years thanks to earmarking efforts of Representative John Murtha.
It's easy to condemn Murtha a corrupt pork-barreler. But as Jason Zengerle argues in his recent piece for The New Republic, Johnstown has become dependent on Murtha's earmarks and defense contracts. As the CEO of a local defense firm told Jason during his recent trip to Johnstown, “If there weren’t earmarks, this town would be dead.” The piece tracks Murtha's early career in the Congress, and how he saved his hometown as industry began to leave:
From his perch on the House Appropriations Committee, Murtha had, over the years, directed $2 billion in federal spending to his district. ... “I’m certainly a Republican ... and I don’t think Mr. Murtha and I would agree on everything,” Mark Pasquerilla, a Johnstown businessman who attended the fundraiser, later told me. But “on an economic-development level, he delivers.” In steel’s place, Murtha had become Johnstown’s economic engine, keeping it afloat with a steady stream of government cash that flowed to the city’s private businesses, its hospitals, even its airport--which, like so many things in Johnstown, now bore his name. Murtha was not just Johnstown’s congressman; he was its savior.
With Murtha under investigation for corruption charges, the possibility of the city surviving without him is uncertain.
Click here to Jason Zengerle's piece.
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COMMENTS (1)
WHO received the $130,000,000?
Did Murtha con his constituents by having the overwhelming prepondereance of the cash set aside for a few rich businessmen in his Congressional District....those folks who bankrolled his political career?
Or did the bulk of the money end up on Main Street, passed around to thousands of Joe and Jane Sixpack constituents instead?
That's the cruicial distinction for most voters. What enrages them about the Wall Street bailouts is precisely the fact that HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS were sent to those blue bloods floating about in their gigantic swimming pools in their gigantic mansions paid for by their gigantic salaries and bonuses. The very scumbags [from their ... view full comment
WHO received the $130,000,000?
Did Murtha con his constituents by having the overwhelming prepondereance of the cash set aside for a few rich businessmen in his Congressional District....those folks who bankrolled his political career?
Or did the bulk of the money end up on Main Street, passed around to thousands of Joe and Jane Sixpack constituents instead?
That's the cruicial distinction for most voters. What enrages them about the Wall Street bailouts is precisely the fact that HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS were sent to those blue bloods floating about in their gigantic swimming pools in their gigantic mansions paid for by their gigantic salaries and bonuses. The very scumbags [from their point of view] who caused the fucking calamity in the first place!!
Maybe keeping Johnstown afloat by doling out the cash from Congress isn't the most rational way in which to sustain their economy. But many of the jobs lost in the rustbelt over the past 20 odd years came about precisely because Wall Street tycoons, in conjunction with their friendly benefactors in Washington, did little or nothing to stop the hemmoraging of jobs like this overseas....jobs in industries that actually paid a living wage. Instead we got the rhetorical bullshit about how, in the long run, ALL of us would profit considerably once Nafta was writ large across the globe. Freedom itself was at stake here!! The only alternative being Socialism!!!
The liberal intelligensia love to huff and puff about all this porkbarrel crap. But what the fuck do any of them really know about what the fuck has gone down economically in Johnstowns all over the nation?
Not a fucking thing really. They're too busy congratulating themselves for trying to expose all this unseemly stuff.
george