I happen to focus a lot of my time these days on technology and rarely get involved in politics, so when I came across this article about Rep. John Murtha's airport that he get money for which nobody uses (and which concidentially enough is also named after him) I got physically ill...and angry.
There is something just very undemocratic about the idea of elected officials getting things named after them that they helped get the funding for. It sounds like somehting you would read about in a corrupt central African dictatorship.
How many other examples of this are there like this? We can start with Bob Byrd, Ted Stevens.I see the whole “naming things after elected officials” as putting them in a higher league above everyday citizens and only seeking to make permanent that element of big government (i.e. to eliminate the airport would be disrespectful for the person it was named after, therefore, we cannot get rid of it).
After all, the late-Sen. Daniel Moynihan once remarked on Meet the Press that the reason he was able to restore funding for the International Trade Center when it was on the chopping block was that he decided to get it named after Ronald Reagan.While we’ve been told American’s like their earmarks and not everyone elses’,I wonder what kind of reaction there would be if a bill was introduced that simply said “elected officials cannot accept or vote for government funded projects (especially they helped secure funding for) named after them while they are in office.”In some respects, such a measure also has roots to the founding documents of the Republic, when you consider that,
- In Federalist 84, attributed to Hamilton, he ranked the banishment of nobility titles at the top, he even used all capital letters for emphases when he wrote, “The establishment of the writ of habeas corpus, the prohibition of ex-post-facto laws, and of TITLES OF NOBILITY, TO WHICH WE HAVE NO CORRESPONDING PROVISION IN OUR CONSTITUTION, are perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any it contains”
- And the Constitution very clearly states (in Article I, Section 9) a prohibition against states and the federal government from granting titles, “No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign State”
(Somehow Ted Kennedy never got that message when PM Gordon Brown announced on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II that he would receive an honorary knighthood.In some respects it is also why we have “dark period” period for Congressman who retire and become lobbyists, to reduce undue influence.I think people would really rally around such a law. Such a small measure might even help stem the tide of corruption of money in government.
What do you think?
