Joe's Getting His Earmarks Boxed

Joe Sestak has an earmark problem. It seems the congressman put in for a $350,000 grant for the non-profit Thomas Paine Foundation to study wind-farm technology. The problem is the Thomas Paine Foundation is virtually defunct and has been for 6 years.

So who would get the $350,000. A local guy named Drew Devitt who runs a for-profit company in Aston called New Way Energy applied for the earmark. (That's Drew over there.) The company is all about developing off-shore wind technology. Devitt is the sole officer of the Thomas Paine Foundation, which seems now to only exist as a conduit for asking for taxpayer money from the government.

Not good. Sestak's people are suggesting they were misled by Devitt, Devitt claims otherwise. But at the very least, Sestak's office is left looking incompetent at best. The whole thing reeks of subterfuge and manipulation.

So eager did Sestak want to look like he was supportive of cutting edge green technology and a local "non-profit" supposedly engaged in it, that he didn't do any due diligence when it came to checking out who was requesting the money.

Democrats recently enacted a moratorium on earmarks going to for-profit businesses, as if all non-profits are somehow socially and ethically superior to for-profit companies.

Sestak has been both sanctimonious and hypocritical when it comes to earmarks. He has denounced them and then given them out to supposedly worthy recipients. He has said he wouldn't take campaign money from earmark recipients and then accepted it. His earmark recipients know when they are welcome to donate to his campaign and when they are not. He has set up rules, time frames and windows when he will take their money and when they are supposed to hold off. The Daily News' John Baer is not impressed with Sestak's earmark stance and actions.

This is worse that Job-gate because it makes Sestak look not only like a politician who doesn't worry about shading or hiding the truth, it also makes him and his office look incompetent and hypocritical.

UPDATE: Also suspect and ignorant is Sestak's not checking out the Thomas Paine Foundation and it's connection to the militantly atheistic Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia.

The FSGP was founded in 1993 by a woman named Margaret Downey and is still a going concern. Back then Margaret was comparing the local chapter of the Boy Scouts of America to Nazis for not allowing her to be a adult volunteer. She claimed it was because she and her 12 year-old-son were atheists and so were being discriminated against for their religious views. The Boy Scouts however denied the charge and won in court when Ms. Downey sued them. She did however, get the desired publicity for her "cause" and launched herself a career as an oppressed atheist. Most of the "mainstream" media ate it up. Me, not so much.