Young: From neocons to hypocons

WACO, Texas — She was for the "bridge to nowhere" before she was against it.

Anyone can change his or her mind about rotten policy. Indeed, if the past seven years of rotten policy are a guide, changes of mind could have greatly served the nation.

Still, when Sarah Palin wows voters with the tail end of that "nowhere" tale, leaving out the ears and whiskers at the front end, the "reformer" comes across as less than reformed.

She says she's a crusader against earmarks. Actually she vigorously lobbied for earmarks, before adjusting the throttle.

It's true that Alaska's take from the federal trough moderated in her two years as governor. But a Palin aide told the Anchorage Daily News, it was in part because "Alaska's coffers were overflowing with revenue from oil profits and it was almost unseemly for the state to press so aggressively for federal money."

Unseemly, like a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to Gravina Island, population 50.

If pork is the big game you hunt, no state bags as much per capita as Alaska. Indeed, no state is even close.

But you know what? Considering what else the federal government spends, all the rhetoric about earmarks is the thin soup of scoundrels.

Earmarks represented $18.3 billion in the 2008 federal budget. That's two months' occupation in Iraq.

Regarding fiscal outrages, we are seeing a surge in rhetoric that's not matched by reality.

It's not cool anymore to be neocons, the guys who'd remake the world by military might. But you can be a hypocon — a fiscal hypocrite parading as a conservative — and still wow a crowd.

And, wow.

When George W. Bush became president on Jan. 20, 2001, he inherited a budget surplus, and a Republican Congress to sculpt a legacy of fiscal conservatism.

His presidency will close with a deficit of $403 billion. The national debt he inherited was $5.7 trillion. It's $9.6 trillion now. That's our children's inheritance.

And so, what was a prevailing theme of the GOP National Convention? Sound fiscal stewardship, of course.

John McCain, for his now-glaring inconsistencies — against the Bush tax cuts before he was for them — deserved credit for expressing alarm about the blank check treatment the White House was given on Iraq.

By and large our incursion into and occupation of Iraq have been funded off the books, and therefor not reflected in the soaring Bush deficits. Any word from the hypocons?

Where is the outrage from "fiscal conservatives" about ghastly profiteering made by contractors in Iraq — the "cost-plus" budgeting — basically a mega-billion dollar honor system. Where is the outrage when sky-high salaries draw people out of the military to work for the Blackwater Security and its unaccountable cousins?

Site halliburtonwatch.org reports that Halliburton subsidiary KBR pays $5 to $16 a day in wages to third world laborers in Iraq, but bills U.S. taxpayers between $50 and $80 a day for each laborer.

For a stunning portrayal of the outrages behind contracted war, get the DVD "Iraq for Sale."

That is, if you are really interested in fiscal outrages. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy the speeches.

John Young writes for the Waco Tribune-Herald.