April 12, 2009

The Amazing Pelosi Military Earmarks

Richard Henry Lee

Nancy Pelosi has a $1.5 million earmark titled “Reducing Chronic Disease in Military Personnel” which seems to do nothing to help the military, but instead appears to reward a major Democratic contributor.

This earmark would go to the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute based in upscale Sausalito, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. The founder of this institute, Dr. Dean Ornish, gave $28,500 annually to the Democratic Congressional Campaign in 2007, 2008, and 2009 and $25,000 in 2006. In addition, Dr. Ornish gave $14,250 to the Obama Victory fund on August 12, 2008 (which is an apparent violation of the campaign spending limits of $2300). In the past year, Ornish has given a total of $84,750 to Democrats.

The institute specializes in changes to diet to promote good health, and Dr. Ornish has written several books about healthy eating.

In reviewing the work of the institute at their website, one finds no specific mention of helping the military. But Dr. Ornish does include smoking marijuana as a means to good health since it seems to increase the number of brain cells. Given this, perhaps Pelosi needs to add cannabis to the Democratic House Leadership budget.

Another “military” earmark would provide $3,000,000 to the J. David Gladstone Institutes for “Military Personnel HIV Prevention”. But once again, this appears to have nothing to do with helping the military, but instead funds a San Francisco based AIDS/HIV research group. San Francisco has had a longstanding high incidence of HIV/AIDS.

While these programs may have some justification on their own merits, it is contemptible for Speaker Pelosi to hide this local pork under the guise of helping the military.