{"id":2591,"date":"2006-10-11T22:31:28","date_gmt":"2006-10-11T22:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=2591"},"modified":"2006-10-11T22:31:28","modified_gmt":"2006-10-11T22:31:28","slug":"bringing_it_hom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=2591","title":{"rendered":"Bringing it Home: Earmarks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.emailthis.clickability.com\/et\/emailThis?clickMap=viewThis&amp;etMailToID=1253902553\">John Wilke<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Charles Taylor, wealthy businessman and banker, owns at least 14,000 acres of prime land in western North Carolina. He&#8217;s also the local congressman. So when he steers federal dollars to his district, sometimes he helps himself, too.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, Mr. Taylor added $11.4 million to a big federal transportation bill to widen U.S. Highway 19, the main road through Maggie Valley, a rural resort town in the Great Smoky Mountains. His companies own thousands of acres near the highway there and had already developed a subdivision called Maggie Valley Leisure Estates.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Taylor also got $3.8 million in federal funds for a park now being built in downtown Asheville with fountains, tree-shaded terraces and an open-air stage. It&#8217;s directly in front of the Blue Ridge Savings Bank, flagship of his financial empire. He is among the richest congressmen with assets of at least $72 million, records show.<\/p>\n<p>The Republican lawmaker is one of at least a half-dozen House members whose public actions in directing special-interest spending known as earmarks have also benefited their private interests or those of business partners, according to congressional, corporate and real-estate records. Among them is a senior Democrat, Rep. Alan Mollohan of West Virginia.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>More on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.madisonblogs.com\/cgi-bin\/mt\/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&amp;search=earmarks\">earmarks<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Wilke: Charles Taylor, wealthy businessman and banker, owns at least 14,000 acres of prime land in western North Carolina. He&#8217;s also the local congressman. So when he steers federal dollars to his district, sometimes he helps himself, too. Last year, Mr. Taylor added $11.4 million to a big federal transportation bill to widen U.S. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}