Talented scribes must be hard to come by. On alternating days, The Tennessean runs a guy whose most stellar journalistic achievement is setting the record for number of quote lines per column inch (that would be Dwight Lewis - it’s funny until you realize he gets paid for original thought), a former-contributor-now-columnist who most recently contrived that American politics are as corrupt as Indian politics (laughable on its face) and Iraqis are apparently suffering more now than under Saddam Hussein, and finally we have Larry Daughtrey, who penned this brilliant gemlet (not gimlet, gemlet) this past Sunday

Some of them editorial writers, good-government types and purist-but-clueless Republicans are all in a dither about the latest budgetary strategies in our General Assembly.

The legislature is getting ready to spend, oh, about $28 billion and, in the process, raise taxes while running the biggest surplus in history. Nobody except the same purist-but-clueless Republicans will squawk about that.

Eh, what does that even mean?

Having blessed the Tennessee public with that rather cryptic introduction, Daughtrey plows on, hooked on metaphors like Mama Cass to ham sandwiches (see…it’s okay to try a simile every now and again), proceeding to tell us why government waste is a good thing. Why? Well, it shows times are good!

In the old days, when governors dictated legislative votes, the executive branch controlled who got the pork as a method of discipline. Later, Naifeh did the same thing, like Santa winnowing out the good from the bad. At least this year, it looks like a democratic process: Whoever wants some gets some.

Spoilsports will claim that the money really is an incumbent re-election fund. That’s OK with me. I’d rather pay for it than the lobbyists. It may take a while, but if they are taking public money rather than special-interest money, they may remember who they work for.

Whoever wants some gets some…sounds like a perfect recipe for a brood of spoiled legislative brats. As well, I assume Daughtrey meant to say “Democratic” instead of “democratic” (perhaps we can pin that one on the editor).

Having spent an entire column mixing metaphors and calling Republicans clueless, it seems rather ironic that our senior columnist would conclude that legislative pork will eventually supplant lobbyist influence. According to Larry, there’s no better way to decrease the power of lobbyists than to give government more money to spend. Sheesh.

Puzzling as well is the contention that an incumbent protection racket is at any level a good thing. It takes a lot of ham sandwiches to conclude that invulnerable incumbents will result in better government. Mr. Daughtrey would do well to audit a rudimentary civics class or two before sitting down to write his next due piece.