Rambo's View

California's Dianne Feinstein is an industrious gal. Her latest pork -- let's call it Rambo's View -- deserves to be the poster child for everything wrong with today's greedy earmark process.

The senator's $4 billion handout (yes, you read that right) to wealthy West L.A. (yes, you read that right, too) is the ultimate example of how powerful members use earmarks to put their own parochial interests above national ones -- in this case the needs of veterans. ...

The pork here revolves around the West Los Angeles Medical Center ... Donated to the government in 1888, the center is 387 sprawling, prime real-estate acres in the middle of tony West L.A. ... It is surrounded by the mansions and playgrounds of the city's elite, including the Bel Air Country Club and the Beverly Hills estates of Sylvester Stallone, Barry Bonds and Tim McGraw (to name a few).

Huge portions of the facility are also a veritable ghost town. It isn't just that 387 acres is an enormous space, and far larger than any one veteran's community in today's America might ever need. ... Of 91 buildings on campus, 21 are today partially or wholly vacant. ...

Which is why, when the Department of Veteran's Affairs set up a process in 2002 to study its infrastructure and rationalize its facilities, it designated the West L.A. center as one of 18 sites that might be downsized ... The VA has yet to make any decisions, but according to government estimates, even a modest reuse of the property -- say leasing out excess acreage -- could result in an extraordinary $4 billion for better care for veterans everywhere. ...

It turns out the well-to-do in West L.A. consider the veteran's center grounds their own little rolling, personal park, and they want it to stay that way -- thank you very much. ...

Ms. Feinstein, California Congressman Henry Waxman and other luminaries have united to publicly bash the VA's plans, and instead demand the "preservation" of the ground for local use. Some Hollywood luminaries who live in Mr. Stallone's neck of the woods have also complained that any changes would impede views from their 15,000-square-foot manses.

Ms. Feinstein, who in the last election received some of her largest donations from the rich area, has been only too happy to come to its defense. ... She then slipped in an earmark provision that would bar the VA from disposing or leasing any of the ground. Thus a potential $4 billion worth of help and aid for our nation's veterans goes bye-bye in the name of preserving a view for those Hollywood actors who play veterans in the movies.

The earmark warrior, South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, offered an amendment this week to strip Ms. Feinstein's earmark. California Sen. Barbara Boxer rose in righteous indignation on the Senate floor, and fizzed that she would never dream of leveling such a direct "attack" against South Carolina.

Democrats have already reneged, and reneged again, on campaign pledges to clean up the earmark swamp, and in any event aren't likely to rally against a powerful member of their own party.

Entire Article