Senator Clinton: 60's flower child or vigorous defender of upstate NY economy?

It was a rare political slip when Senator Hillary Clinton tried to get $1 million in taxpayer money to fund a museum at Woodstock, New York. If she were merely a New York Senator, like her colleague Sen. Charles Schumer (who is NOT running for President), it would be great politics. After all, nobody in New York City is going to be offended if their Senator comes across as a flower child of the 60's (apparently on a national level, though, that offends some, and rekindles things that people dislike about the Clintons). And for the more conservative people living in upstate New York, they would just be happy for the tourism dollars a Woodstock museum would provide (for those of you too young to realize, Woodstock was a concert, not just a cartoon bird).

Republicans, who vastly increased the amount of bacon Congress handed out during their 12 year control, had a rare success in stripping this bit of pork from an appropriations bill. Clinton's fellow presidential candidate and Senator John McCain criticized the Woodstock project. But both parties do it to win favor with their constituents back home, and it won't end anytime soon. Changing parties in control of Congress won't end these kinds of projects. Only when there is an apolitical process to spend money based on merit, a process not influenced by campaign donations, will we see an end to so many of these pork barrel projects. And that is why our country needs something similar to Arizona's Clean Elections.

According to the Associated Press, the driving force behind the Woodstock museum is billionaire Alan Gerry, who days after the earmark was inserted into the bill gave $9,200 to Clinton's presidential campaign and $20,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, a group headed by Schumer to elect Democratic Senators. I am a political progressive, which is more than just a new, more socially acceptable term for "liberal." From the days of Theodore Roosevelt (a Republican), progressives have fought for government accountable to the people. If Alan Gerry is a billionaire, why doesn't he just spend the $1 million (not a lot for a billionaire) to build the museum, instead of expecting us taxpayers to shoulder the burden? In my opinion, Gerry should build the museum with his private money, and our public money should finance campaigns. A little investment of public money into political campaigns could save a lot of taxpayer dollars in what should be private projects like this.