Maybe you should come here and do a story on that as a link to the total fiasco which is ALDOT!

Pork barreling and rent-seeking: Shelby’s insertion of the funding (appropriate word, insertion) for the north beltway loop into the transportation bill is the usual modus operandi of almost all members of both houses of Congress, of both parties, so this is hardly evidence of any special evil on the part of Republicans or Alabama politicians in particular.

Robert Byrd, the very longtime Democratic Senator from West Virginia is a universal master at this, as was the unlamented former Republican Senator Ted Stevens, as are many others from both sides of the aisle too numerous to mention.

Rent-seeking corporations and business interests are attracted to fresh troughs of billions of tax dollars dished out by members of Congress in the same way pigs are attracted to fresh troughs of slop.

Logically, if Congress did not have virtually unlimited power to dish out the dough, those rent-seeking corporations would not be hanging out at the DC troughs. Pigs do not bother to go where there is no food, after all.

To stop this abuse, new limits, by constitutional amendment, need to be placed on Congress. Currently there is no constitutional barrier to how much Congress can tax, or spend, and no oversight except what Congress chooses to accept for itself.

Yes, there are elections in which, theoretically, members of Congress can be defeated. But thanks to state ballot laws limiting access for third party and independent candidates, “campaign reform” laws which stack the campaign fundraising deck in favor of incumbents, not to mention gerrymandering to insure safe seats for incumbents, not much will happen by way of substantive change in the makeup of Congress over any 10 year period. Meantime, the “newbies” who came in promising reform have become part and parcel of the continuing problem.

It’s a systemic problem, not one that can be logically laid at the feet of a few corrupt Senators or Congress members. If the latter were the case, it would be very simple to clean up — just limit the access of the corrupt few to the spending decisions.

But there are not just a few corrupted folks in Congress. There are hundreds of them. And that begs for a systemic solution, i.e., a constitutional amendment or amendments limiting the power to tax, spend and create deficits.