I think I've mentioned this on the blog before. I had a high school English teacher who told us that we should watch out for people who were always moralizing against others (We were reading The Scarlet Letter at the time.). In his experience (and he had been a minister before he became a teacher), he found that the ones who complained about others the loudest were usually the people with the most problems. Well here we are just a week or so out of Mark Kirk moralizing about earmarks in the stimulus package he voted against and we find his name on the list of House members who "secured earmarks for clients of The PMA Group in the fiscal 2008 defense appropriations law." More from CQPolitics.com here. Here's the defense law involved in the scandal.
They say Kirk secured earmarks in the amount of $390,000 for clients of The PMA Group. The PMA Group is a lobbying firm that represents clients mostly in the defense industry. It's most recently famous for being involved in a scandal that seems to be brewing around Congressman John Murtha and is reportedly shutting down as of March 31. For his trouble, the list shows that Kirk received $7,750 in campaign contributions. It looks like $2000 of it was for the 2008 campaign.
The press reported this story as being a problem with the Democrats, but the list of republicans is about as long. Other Illinois reps on the list are Danny Davis, Phil Hare, Ray LaHood, and Dennis Hastert.
Here's an interesting find on earmarks called the Favor Factory from the Seattle Times. They report Kirk as the lawmaker responsible for $5,100,000 in 2008 defense earmarks and report related campaign contributions from 2003-2008 of $154,400. Here's their explanation of how they got their numbers.
In January, Kirk got Roll Call to call him "the only appropriator who does not request earmarks". Oh, please.
