Earmarks: the other, other white meat
January 25th, 2006 by Scott BannonWhat was wrong with calling it Pork, were the pigs offended?
The [American] English language constantly changes. I’ve heard that it’s the hardest of all languages to learn–though I picked it up easy enough (my teachers all sed I wus da bestist in da class) as a small child–but in adult reflection I can see why it’s so hard for someone who didn’t grow up with it to master. Just when they think they’ve got it, we change it.
Pondering some obvious examples of our evolving language; handicapped became disabled and are now challenged, soldiers suffering Shell Shock saw their conditions upgraded to Combat Fatigue, but have since acquired Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Christmas Trees are calling themselves Holiday Trees all of a sudden.
It doesn’t take anyone who’s watched the softening of our language long to realize that many of these euphemisms tend to begin with the Political Correct crowd. The self-appointed speech police who’s ideas and opinions are enlightened beyond the intellectual grasping of us common folk who have decided that humanity’s continued existence depends solely on no-one ever feeling the least bit bad about themselves or their lot in life again, lest we might see a need to do better.
That seems too easy of a target though and not all euphemisms can be cleanly traced to them, but I’ve found that while much of our softening language does stem from the P.C. crowd, all of our softening language seems to begin in Government. That makes sense, the most vocal P.C.’ers are all in or running for office, and who better than someone that needs you [the voter] to speak in circles that will avoid ever opposing your opinions [even when it does] and only serve to make you feel… well, better about yourself and just happy in general.
In addition to ‘feel better’ words and phrases from the P.C.’ers, non-P.C.’ers in Washington have found that by rewriting the language they can better direct our opinions and focus on issues (which used to be problems) they favor or oppose. For instance, remember when the Estate Tax became a Death Tax? When rich politicians who were tired of paying taxes after they died decided they could get poor voters to support their efforts by changing the label to something that poor people fear, death. Up until then, poor people could care less about the Estate Tax–since most poor folk have no estates to tax–but death, well, that’s something even poor people get eventually and no poor person wants to be taxed during their trip to the (insert your P.C. choice of eternal dwelling here please).
How about “collateral damage”? It may sound like something the P.C.’ers came up with, but in fact it was the military who coined this one to avoid questions on how or why their “Smart Bombs” could have slaughtered civilians during the conflict. Another famous military input has been “friendly fire”. I first heard that one in the early 1990’s, during the Gulf War and still have no clue what it’s intended to mean. How is a metal projectile, launched with the specific purpose of killing (or at least severely maiming) and traveling at incredibly high rates of speed ever viewed as friendly?
More recently we’ve heard the term: unlawful combatants. I was curious about just what exactly that one described, and as it turns out, it seems to be a new label for what we used to call prisoners of war and criminals. Some would argue that only soldiers can be prisoners of war, but the case can be made that the U.S. has made a formal declaration of war on terrorists and in so doing gave them status as prisoners of that war. But beyond that semantic debate, the term itself, unlawful combatants, seems somewhat redundant and at the very least just plain silly. Are there lawful combatants out there? This term would seem to suggest there are. How about unlawful non-combatants? Do they exist, and if so how should we treat them if we meet one on the street?
And that brings me to Earmarks. I’ve heard this one an awful lot lately and decided to Google [a noun and a verb] it for some clarity. What I found was this little buzz-word is a cute sounding, elusive moniker for Pork. Remember Pork? For years candidates have promised to ‘trim the Pork’, ‘cut the Pork’ and ‘end the Pork’ in Congressional spending, and it appears at long last they’ve finally put ‘a stop to Pork’… by calling it earmarks.
Image source http://zeigermann.com/cartoonist/2005/07/22.html
PBNV.com 
One Response to “Earmarks: the other, other white meat”
By Shawn Bannon | Reply to article
Nice, enjoyable piece. Based on some of the phrasing here, I’d guess you’ve been reading George Carlin lately.
A couple of distinctions worth noting:
The confusion over pork/earmarks is actually not a result of political correctness. Pork and earmarks are not necessarily the same. The term “pork” refers to any government spending legislated by politicians to gain favor with their constituents. So, an entire bill can be characterized as pork, or pork can be a small part of a much larger bill. Whether or not certain spending is pork is largely in the eye of the beholder. The term, “earmarks” refers to a specific manner by which money for what may or may not be pork is set aside in a spending bill, usually without much competition or debate. In other words, the Congress passes a highway bill that may have a lot of worthwhile projects, but legislators earmark 20 percent of the funds for special projects — pork projects — in their districts. So, in this case the earmarks are pork while the overall bill itself is said to contain a lot of pork. But there are often earmarks that are not pork; they simply clarify what the money in a spending bill is intended to provide. All of this simply means that not all pork is the result of earmarking, and not all earmarks are pork.
The issue of earmarks is a hot topic right now because earmarks can be made by legislators throughout the process and often receive little attention during review and debate. The process of earmarking, as it exists today, does not lend itself to transparency of government and makes it too easy for corrupt politicians to reward their high-paying contributors. So, there is discussion underway in the wake of the Abramoff scandal about the process and what steps should be taken to shine light into this dark corner of the legislative process.
I think you’ve got it backwards on the estate/death tax issue. The politically correct crowd would prefer “estate tax.” But opponents of the tax, looking to call it as they see it, coined the term death tax, which — as unpleasant as the term is — better reflects the reality. If I create a fortune by the time I’m 50, I have an estate, but I don’t pay an “estate tax” until I die. So, if I squander my fortune before I die at 90, my estate is never taxed. If, however, I still hold a significant sum of assets when I die, my holdings are taxed upon my death. This is basically the government coming upon a dead body in an alley and rummaging through the pockets or taking the jewelry. There is a very legitimate argument to be made for the termination of this tax based on the principle that the assets that make up an estate have already been taxed once or many times over by the government. Without going into further detail on that issue here, my point is simply that “estate tax” was the PC attempt, not “death tax.”
Lastly, there is a real distinction between prisoners of war and unlawful enemy combatants. The term “prisoner of war” is very clearly defined by the Geneva Conventions. Iraqi soldiers wearing Iraqi uniforms and fighting under the Iraqi flag at the start of the war in Iraq in 2003 would have been prisoners of war had they been captured by U.S. forces. And as such, the U.S. would have been bound as a signatory of the Geneva Conventions to treat those POWs in a very specific way. Because there are no provisions in the Geneva Conventions for groups of insurgents or the terrorists who fight for an ideology instead of a recognized state, they cannot be called prisoners of war. “Unlawful” signifies that they fight without the backing of a recognized state. And “enemy combatant” is the term for any fighter who takes up arms against the U.S. military. Iraqi soldiers at the start of the war would technically have been lawful enemy combatants. The insurgents our troops are fighting in Iraq today and the militant fanatics they’re fighting elsewhere are unlawful enemy combatants.
Reply to this specific comment