A veto that will haunt Rudy

Today, Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani accused Democrats of favoring a paternalistic “nanny government.”

Giuliani, on a two-day campaign swing, is telling voters he favors less government and lower taxes - and Democrats want the opposite. 
 
“That’s what makes America great, not this nanny government that Democrats want to give us, where government controls your entire life,” he said.

While it’s nice to hear Rudy speak out against the Nanny State, there are a few issues in his past that are, for me, troubling.

1. Oct. 2001: Rudy endorses the imperious Michael Bloomberg. 

2. July 2007: Giuliani tells a crowd at a town-hall style meeting in New Hampshire that he iss opposed to legalizing marijuana for medical purposes because advocates really just want to make the drug available to everyone. “I believe the effort to try and make marijuana available for medical uses is really a way to legalize it. There’s no reason for it,” he said.

3. 1995: Rudy signs a bill to ban cigarettes in all New York restaurants with more than 35 seats  — long before the national smoking ban craze begins.

4. May 2001: The unconscionable veto of NYC’s Ferret Legalization Bill. Here are the specifics from Modern Ferret Magazine. (Notice the caption under former NYC Commissioner of Health, Dr. Neal Cohen, who is ”decidedly anti-ferret”). 

Are all politics local?

It’s one thing for local progressive municipalities to pass resolutions of impeachment (meaningless) and quite another for state representatives to involve themselves on the foreign policy front (none of their business). My Denver Post column takes a look at local representatives stepping out of their element to pander to voters with selective and convenient outrage on foreign policy.

Yes, Iran, a mullah-infested sinkhole of religious fanaticism, has me shaking in my boots. But I have no interest in watching Colorado Republicans conjuring up ineffectual divestment plans to fix the problem. That’s not why barely any of them were elected to the state House.

On the Democratic side, we have the obscure Colorado Speaker of the House headed off to give communist China’s leaders an earful on Sudan. One Colorado newspaper carried the headline ”House speaker to risk arrest in China.”  Oh my. How brave.

UPDATE:

David Sirota comes after me here.

I respond here.

Bias at Publishers Weekly?

Nanny State recently received a short review from the trade publication Publishers Weekly. It was unfriendly. I came away with the feeling that the reviewer hadn’t actually read the book. (I won’t bore you with the specifics.) But then again, who knows, perhaps the review was deserved.

As this is my first book, though, I decided to investigate other Publisher Weekly reviews on Amazon.com. Did a negative review effect sales? Did the reviewer typically betray a ideological position as this one had? This curiosity led to non-scientific stroll around Amazon.com and a discovery. One that Tammy Bruce had already noted. (Update: And Dr. Helen.) I work in mainstream media. Though I’m not someone who buys into the widespread liberal media meme, the one-sidedness of the PW reviews was inescapable. After all, a provocative or combative political book can be well written and worth reading even if you disagree with the central thesis. I’ve reviewed books for almost a decade. I know this can happen.

Yet…

Michelle Malkin’s book Unhinged, PW says, “overextends her analytical prowess by offering shallow, shoddy critiques.”

Libertarian television personality John Stossel, in his book Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity, offers us “frequently tendentious challenges to conventional wisdom.” His libertarian convictions “lead inexorably to blanket denunciations of “monster government” and sermons on the wisdom of the market.”  ”The author’s complacent glosses … are especially glib and one-sided.” 

Tammy Bruce’s The New American Revolution is, “Mostly a stage upon which to beat her stridently individualist chest.” Her thesis, we’re told, is “buried beneath mountains of dismissible rhetoric.”

Radio personality Laura Ingraham’s Shut Up and Sing is “vociferous but ill-supported right wing screed…” 

Mona Charen’s Do-Gooders is “largely a cherry-picking exercise rather than a more thoughtful attempt to evaluate the core assumptions and values that guide liberal policy makers.” 

Peter Schweizer’s Do As I Say (Not As I Do) is “egregiously hyperbolic” and, in the end, “reads less like a critique of liberal philosophy than a catalogue of ammunition for ad hominem bloggers.”

Culture Warrior by Bill O’Reilly is more “resentful and self-pitying than feisty.”

On David Horowitz’s The Professors, PW states that, ” Horowitz, it would appear” doesn’t want ”professors who disagree with his personal political opinions to continue teaching. (I read this book, and though I disagree with Horowitz’s recommendations, the author says nothing of the sort.)

Thomas DiLorenzo’s excellent How Capitalism Saved America is “rather than a work of history, it’s a work of ideology cross-dressing as history.”

With all this negativity towards bias and historical cross-dressing, would PW have a similar take on liberal screeds?

I was surprised to find that American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America, a truly angry and irrational book, received a starred review from PW.

Frank Rich’s well-written but “blistering” The Greatest Story Ever Sold also received starred review.

Al Franken’s The Truth (with jokes) received a starred review.

Keith Olbermann’s shrill and over-the-top The Worst Person In the World is  “smart” and a collection that “makes a fine book for flipping.”

Arianna Huffington’s Pigs at the Trough (in which Arianna accuses U.S. drug companies of allowing the African AIDS epidemic to rage in the interests of corporate profits)  is a “powerful book, brimming with wit and sulphurous satire that connects the dots among politicians, lobbyists and corporations, and demonstrates their destructive effect on the well-being of average Americans.”

The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder is “a sharp-edged polemic questioning the wisdom of how we elect our leaders.”

Conspiracy theorist Greg Palast’s book Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans–Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild is “well-reasoned and the outrage “makes a convincing case.”  

This goes on and on. Another trend I noticed with Publisher Weekly reviews is that right-wing books are meant only for other regressive conservatives.

Malkins’s Unhinged is for “Right-wingers looking for affirmation …” 

Mark Levin’s Men in Black is for “likeminded critics are certain to be galvanized by this spirited “clarion call…” 

Stossel’s fans “will eat up this new book, but other readers may wince when the author’s ideology overshadows the facts.”

DiLorenzo’s book will “prove bracing for those similarly minded.” 

The arguments in Diana West’s new book, The Death of the Grown-up, are “compelling only to those already in her corner. ”

And my book is one in which “fellow libertarians may enjoy getting carried away by the flood of Harsanyi’s outrage.” 

Perhaps I’ve missed the conservative book with a starred review? Or even one that deserves widespread consideration?

Walt’s bad habits

Today, Walt Disney became the first major Hollywood studio to cave to the forces of mollycoddling do-gooderism and officially banned smoking in its films. Having seen about every kids’ flick released the past three years, I don’t remember much Disney-land smoking to begin with, but I suppose there can be some rationalization behind the move. (Walt, pictured to the right, though, did enjoy his Camels.) Yet, it’s company’s intention to “discourage” smoking in adult films distributed by its Touchstone and Miramax labels and run PSAs before films that caught my attention.  

Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger also said in a letter to U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, whose committee last month held hearings on the effects of movie images on children, that the studio would place anti-smoking public service announcements on DVDs of any future films that feature cigarette smoking.  

He said the company would encourage theater owners to show screen anti-smoking public service announcements, or PSAs, before such films. 

Didn’t we learn just last week that kids were less likely to see smoking as harmful after viewing of television ads browbeating them not to light up? Why would Disney contribute to the 400,000 yearly casulties of tobacco by buying into this counterproductive effort?

How is this going to work? Will Miramax edit out smoking from, say, Reservoir Dogs in future DVD releases but keep the violent ear-carving scene? It’s gonna be a tough edit as Mr. Blonde, I believe, is puffing on a Marlboro when he pours gasoline on that doomed police office.

The Cigar Nannies

David Hogberg has a piece in the OpinionJournal regarding last week’s decision by members of the Senate Finance Committee to increase funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program by $35 billion over five years.

How will they come up with the money? A luxury tax on cigars. Hogberg, correctly, contends that Senators have learned nothing from history.

And if members of Congress never considered that the luxury tax would discourage rich people from buying luxury items in the U.S., then they surely never considered that such an effect might not be so good for the Joe Six-Packs who worked in the industries producing luxury items. A Joint Economic Committee study later found that 330 jobs in the jewelry industry and 7,600 jobs in the yacht industry were lost thanks to the luxury tax. Perhaps the greatest irony was that in 1991 the federal government paid out over $7 million more in unemployment benefits to those workers than it collected in luxury tax revenues.

In reality, luxury taxes are another form of a sin tax – but even better. It’s a sin tax that targets those dreadful wealthy folks. And having attentively watched the Democratic debate the other day, I learned that rich Americans are sucking this planet dry.

Why do Americans need to smoke cigars, anyway? Those things are filthy and irritating and unhealthy and symbolize all the ostentatious rottenness of capitalistic access. 

Yep. That’s why. 

The problem is luxury taxes never hurt the rich, they only rob the poor and middle class of choices. As Jonah Goldberg pointed out,“If this absurd tax goes through, poor people  won’t be able to afford cigars while rich people will have no problem carrying this additional freight. It will be inconvenient to be sure, but Rush Limbaugh and Bill Clinton will still be able to buy whatever cigars they like.”

How inconvenient? The current tax on cigars is a maximum 4.8 cents a cigar. The new proposed luxury tax on cigars is 53.13%, up to a maximum tax of $10 a cigar. If your cigars is worth $20, you’d be facing a 20,733 percent.

Holy overreaction…

As a father of two girls, I suspect I would be beyond livid if my daughters were being slapped on the rump by some unruly 13-year-old thugs. (Though it would also be my job to teach them how to deal with situation — violently.)

This story from Oregon, however, illustrates the utter idiocy of one-size fits all policy for children. Do rowdy ass-slapping boys deserve suspensions or even expulsions from school? Perhaps. But does the crime necessitate a police officer reading 13-year-old boys their Miranda rights, placing them in handcuffs and sending them to jail for five days?

The two boys tore down the hall of Patton Middle School after lunch, swatting the bottoms of girls as they ran — what some kids later said was a common form of greeting.

But bottom-slapping is against policy in McMinnville Public Schools. So a teacher’s aide sent the gawky seventh-graders to the office, where the vice principal and a police officer stationed at the school soon interrogated them.

These boys now face the prospect of 10 years in juvenile detention and an inclusion on the sex-offender registry. In other words, this is a crime they may never escape.

Right v. Privilege

Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal editorial board has a piece called The Nanny-State Diaries up. In it he discusses a recent trip to Colorado (where he attended the Independence Institute’s fifth annual “Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms” party) and some rather amazing comments made by presidential hopeful John Edwards.

The buzzword on the left nowadays is “tolerance” for those with different lifestyles — like cross-dressers — but almost everything that these folks want to do, liberals won’t tolerate. One smoker lamented that if “gays were discriminated against today the way smokers are, there would be an uproar.” Gun owners have reason to be fearful too. In a recent blog interview on Moveon.org, John Edwards of North Carolina proclaimed that health care, child care, a livable wage and a clean environment are “rights,” but owning a gun is a “privilege.” The men and women who gathered in Kiowa would like to send him a copy of the Constitution.

I assume, without any poll data, that Edwards’ thoughts on guns are widespread among the left. At first I was – for some strange reason – skeptical that a presidential candidate would actually forward something so ludicrous. The man is a lawyer, after all. But he did. Too bad I missed this originally. Here’s the relevant part of the q & a transcript on right v. privilege.

Question: A college education?

Edwards: Right.

Q: Health care?

E: Right.

Q: A livable wage?

E: Right.

Q: Owning a handgun?

E: Privilege.

…

Q: Access to the Internet?

E: That should be a right.

So the one right Edwards was asked about that is actually guaranteed to us by the Bill of Rights he calls a privilege. But internet access “should be a right”?

They forgot to ask Edwards about food and video-game access. Rights, I’m sure.

Man, these guys are in trouble.

Smoking ads

So according to a new University of Georgia study anti-smoking ad campaigns have the opposite effect on teenagers, backfiring because they actually “encourage the rebellious nature of youth.” 

The study is the latest in a string of research showing that anti-smoking campaigns often have ad little to no impact on teens. In 2002, a study commissioned by an anti-smoking foundation found tobacco manufacturer Philip Morris’ youth anti-smoking campaign was making students more likely to smoke.

How long before anti-smoking crusaders blame Big Tobacco for running such ads in the first place?

Already in the sales bin

Nanny State, two months from its release date, can already be found used on Half.com. “Never been read”! … meaning, the words are as fresh and significant as if the book were brand new.

I also greatly appreciate the succinct review: “perfect.”

jimmybudget (388) 100%

new SOFTCOVER advance reader copy/ never been read/ perfect

Wine is good for the art

My Denver Post column today takes on Colorado’s ban on complimentary wine at art gallery walks. The ordinance prohibits for-profit businesses that open their doors to the public from offering their guests any alcoholic beverages.

I call on local legislators to return normalcy.

What we need is a stand-up legislator to propose a workable solution so that I can get back to enjoying art the only way I know how.

Slightly inebriated.

One-minute showers?

Mark Wasserman of Northbrook, Illinois, emails to tell us about some curious water restrictions — geographically speaking. 

Check out what Lake County Illinois, which sits bestride the largest body of fresh water on the entire planet (that would be Lake Michigan) is up to: the water police. They have implemented a permanent ban on watering between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. (7 days a week), and any watering is only allowed on odd/even numbered days (based on your house address). Washing your car, irrigating the peonies, or topping off your swimming pool on the wrong day of the week are now crimes.

One has to wonder what’s next. A law mandating 1 minute showers? A cap on the number of toilet flushes per day? Again, bear in mind that this is Lake County Illinois – not Phoenix Arizona or Bakersfield California. There simply is no need for such a draconian ordinance.

Note — according to Wikipedia: “Geologically and hydrologically, Michigan and Huron are the same body of water (sometimes called Lake Michigan-Huron), but are geographically distinct. Counted together, it is the largest fresh water body in the world by surface area.”

Tancredo on pork — not exactly fiscally conservative

Today, Tom Tancredo responds to my column on earmarks. 

Tancredo’s defense of funding for local projects
Re: “Congress keeps its pets quiet,” July 9 David Harsanyi column.

David Harsanyi pointed out that I am attempting to obtain more than $200 million in federal funding for “pet projects” this year. What he neglected to mention is that some $180 million of that money would fund just three projects: completion of the voter-approved T-REX project ($80 million), work on the voter-approved West Corridor light-rail line ($40 million) and a new Denver-area Veterans Affairs hospital ($60 million).

I was also quite puzzled by Harsanyi’s implication that I somehow object to making this information (which is posted on my website) available to the public. After all, for the last several years I have often attempted to publicize it whenever I’ve helped to obtain funding for a local transportation, defense or conservation initiative. And while The Post rarely found such items newsworthy enough to report on in the past, we should all be pleased that this appears to be changing.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, Littleton

I’m quite puzzled myself. First of all, there was no implication in the column that Tancredo objected to releasing his earmark requests — other than he had never released them before. And though I “neglected to mention” that $180 million of the over $200 million he asked for were to fund just three local projects, I’m not sure that fact makes his case for pork any stronger. If folks in Maryland are going to fund local Denver transportation then what stops Colorado money from funding Byrd Country or Bridges to Nowhere?

(Cross-posted with Gang of Four.)

Edgar Friendly

A poster on the Powerline forum, discussing my book, offers up a great quote by Denis Leary (as Edgar Friendly) in the nanny-state fable Demolition Man. The movie, outside of a couple of great Leary lines, is God-awful. In other words, I’ve seen it a few dozen times.

“See … according to Cocteau’s plan, I’m the enemy, ’cause I like to think, I like to read. I’m into freedom of speech, and freedom of choice. I’m the kinda guy that likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, “Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecue ribs with the side-order of gravy fries?” I want high cholesterol! I wanna eat bacon, and butter, and buckets of cheese, okay?! I wanna smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section! I wanna run naked through the street, with green Jell-O all over my body, reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly may feel the need to, okay, pal?”

Mork would disapprove

Boulder, Colorado, has always held some peculiar utopianistic ideas about health and safety – not to mention free speech. For instance, in Boulder County homeowners might soon be “discouraged” from building large houses (in some places anything over 1,000 sq feet) on their property. Some locals say Boulder is 25 square miles surrounded by reality.

But it was just a matter of time before the Nanny State snatched something consequential from Boulderites: Swings.

It’s not quite a diabolical plot to deprive rope-swing enthusiasts of summer fun and liberty, but the numbering certainly is ironic, said Boulder resident Kevin Hotaling.

City ordinance 6-6-6 states no foreign objects - such as rope swings - can be attached to trees without approval from the city manager.

The Boulder Parks and Recreation keep cutting down swings and citizens keep putting them back up, frustrating the city. “The last thing I want people to think is Boulder doesn’t want people to have fun,” explained Helen Gavin, a risk management expert for the city. “It’s a public-safety problem.”

More likely, the city is nervous about some litigious new-ager suing.

UPDATE: A couple of readers have asked “why Mork?” The exterior shots of the house Mork & Mindy lived in were in Boulder.

Is Moore a Sicko?

Presidential candidate Mike Hukabee – who enacted plenty of intrusive polices as Arkansas Governor – makes a valid point about personal responsibility and the health care. He suggests that “Sicko” director Michael Moore is the one of the reasons we have skyrocketing costs. OK, he calls Moore fat in his own gentle way.

“Frankly, Michael Moore is an example of why the health care system costs so much in this country. He clearly is one of the reasons that we have a very expensive system. I know that from my own personal experience,” said Huckabee, who lost more than 110 pounds and became an avid runner after he was diagnosed with diabetes.

Meghan O’Hara, producer of “Sicko,” retorts with boilerplate progressive rhetoric – Rolodex says … big oil … big pharma … big food … nope, ah .. here we go: “Looks like Mike Huckabee is auditioning for some insurance company dough, since he’s raised just about no money and sparked zero interest since jumping into the race.”

Though, I must admit, O’Hara did make a rather strong point about the French. I wish Hukabee would answer: “I wonder what the good governor would say to the French, who drink more, smoke more, eat more cheese and still live longer than us despite paying less for health care?”

The answer I suspect has nothing to do with good health care.

(h/t David Bernstein at Volokh Conspiracy)

Another fat tax?

So now a ”fat tax” on salty, sugary and fatty foods could save 3,200 lives  in Britain each year, according to a new study published by Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Researchers at Oxford University. Researchers contend that charging a 17.5 percent levy on unhealthy foods would cut consumer demand, consequently reducing the number of heart attacks and strokes. Researchers employed a mathematical formula to figure this out.

US News and World Report first broached the idea of a sin tax in its 1996 “smart ideas to fix the world” issue and proponents have pushed the idea since. Yet, there is ample of evidence to suggest that it doesn’t work — even if you believe that punishing a citizen for eating one food over another is justified. 

The researchers hardly sound convinced.

However, they said their research only gave a rough guide to the number of lives that could be saved and said more work was needed to get an exact picture of how taxes could improve public health.

That sounds perilously close to making up your mind before you have all the facts. 

A recent study by three economics professors, Cheap Donuts and Expensive Broccoli: The Effect of Relative Prices on Obesity, estimates that a 100% tax on unhealthful foods would reduce average BMI by only 1 percent. The same tax could reduce the incidence of being overweight and the incidence of obesity by 2 percent and 1 percent respectively.

Smoking — the area most advocates like to hold up as a success on this front – has seen usage dropping for years before any sin tax was initiated. Furthermore, if the tax becomes too prohibitive, as it has in certain areas, a black market will soon surface. We’ve seen this underground economy growing across the nation and online.

Finally, sin taxes are inherently unfair – after all, not only unhealthy people eat unhealthy foods.  And they are also unfair to lower-income Americans, who studies show would feel the brunt of any sin tax.
 
I cover the topic of sin taxes extensively in my book.

Watering down the truth

Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel today that top Bush administration officials repeatedly “tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports” because of political considerations.

The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm.

While the Bush Administration may very well have suppressed health reports for political motives, one of the studies Carmona points to deserves some serious skepticism. The so-called “landmark” study the NYT story refers to claimed that brief exposure to passive smoke could cause immediate harm. The fact is, there is tenuous evidence to support the contention that exposure to second-hand smoke causes harm over decades much less immediately. It doesn’t mean that passive smoke is good for you, it means the science isn’t in yet.

What’s worse, is that the Surgeon Generals’ press release at the time misrepresented the science of the report itself, claiming ”Even brief exposure to secondhand smoke has immediate adverse effects on the cardiovascular system and increases risk for heart disease and lung cancer …” The indefatigable Jacob Sullum and Michael Siegel debunked those claims at the time. I deal with the issue in the smoking chapter of my book.

And as Reason magazine’s Radley Balko points out, this is also the man who eagerly spread the outlandish CDC claim that obesity kills 400,000 Americans yearly.

Update: Tom Firey of the Cato Institute has a worthwhile post on Carmona’s own ideologically driven tenure.

Carmona is correct that politicians should not interfere with the scientific analysis of the surgeon general — the surgeon general should follow an empirical question wherever the science leads. And he may even state his personal opinion — couched as such — on the value judgments that ensue from the science. But the surgeon general should not supplant the politicians in making public policy decisions, nor supplant private individuals in making personal health decisions.

Judging from his testimony, Carmona is as guilty as the Bush Administration.

Staying morally inconsistent

John Stossel has an outstanding column up touching on an interview with Michael Moore. It focuses on a misconception that less government means a less compassionate society. Moore says to Stossel, “I gotta believe that, even though I know you’re very much for the individual determining his own destiny, you also have a heart.”

Moore thinks respecting others’ freedom means refusing to help the less fortunate. But where’s the connection? All it means is that the libertarian refuses to sanction the use of physical force (which is what government is) to help others. Peaceful methods — like voluntary charity — are the only morally consistent methods. I give about a quarter of my income to charities because I’ve seen that private charity helps the needy far better than government does.

The problem is Moore, and many others, don’t trust that individuals will make the correct choices in matters of compassion. And by “correct,” I mean, the choices he wants us to make. 

But building public policy around the notion of “having a heart” or “doing the right thing” is silly. (These platitudes are similar to the nanny state “for the children” arguments.) Lately, though, we have legislators calling budgets “moral documents” and Al Gore framing the politicized global warming question as a “moral issue.” The word moral is typically used, by both sides, to try and shut down the opposition. To be moral is to do the right thing. Now, obviously, there is government coercion on many levels — a fact, most of us have accepted. But the reasoning for it has become breathtakingly hypocritical. If we’re not interested in having James Dobson define our collective morality, then why would we be interested in Michael Moore, Al Gore or Jim Wallis doing it?

Do you have a food addiction?

Yale University is convening a conference of nearly 40 experts on nutrition, obesity, and addiction tonight to discuss the “controversial topic” of food addiction.

Among the topics of discussion for the meeting: MRI research and other work that shows strong similarities in ways drugs and certain foods affect the brain; the relationship between eating and reward systems in the brain; psychological similarities between food cravings and cravings for drugs, and the implications of this work for government policy, clinical intervention, and the law.

Well, it’s about time. I believe I may have a serious food addiction myself. After all, an addiction is defined as a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity. I eat all the time. Even three or four times, some days.

Professor Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, one of the leading food nannies in the nation, says that “Everything changes if food is found to have addictive properties, especially the legal and legislative landscape around marketing foods to children.”

Warning: Withdrawal from a food addiction can produce some harmful side effects – starvation and death, for instance.

“About as fiscally conservative as Liberace”

Somewhat off the topic, my Denver Post column takes on earmarks — specifically Colorado pork.

You see, when it comes to waste and secrecy, there is extraordinary bipartisan cooperation in Washington.

Take the Army Corps of Engineers’ budget. When the Energy and Water spending bill was approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee recently, it contained earmarks that the agency didn’t even request.

One such earmark, for $2 million, was put there by the duo of Allard and Salazar for recreational lakes.

It will surprise no one that Republicans are as bad, or worse, than Democrats in their requests. Congressman and presidential candidate Tom Tancredo, for instance, is asking for about $226 million for local pet projects.