Tag Archives: House of Representatives

This Editorial Would Have Made a Good Blog Post

Posted on by

Editorials in the New York Times tend to be rather restrained, befitting the dignified nature of the place (the Times still refers to Vladimir Putin as Mr. Putin and Nancy Pelosi as Ms. Pelosi, for example). But in an editorial called “Center Ring at the Republican Circus”, they’ve finally had enough, adopting a level of scorn and sarcasm befitting angry bloggers everywhere. Good for them!

Quote:

The hottest competition in Washington this week is among House Republicans vying for a seat on the Benghazi kangaroo court, also known as the Select House Committee to Inflate a Tragedy Into a Scandal. Half the House has asked to “serve” on the committee, which is understandable since it’s the perfect opportunity to avoid any real work while waving frantically to right-wing voters stomping their feet in the grandstand.

They won’t pass a serious jobs bill, or raise the minimum wage, or reform immigration, but House Republicans think they can earn their pay for the rest of the year by exposing nonexistent malfeasance on the part of the Obama administration. On Thursday, they voted to create a committee to spend such sums as may be necessary to conduct an investigation of the 2012 attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The day before, they voted to hold in contempt Lois Lerner, the former Internal Revenue Service official whom they would love to blame for the administration’s crackdown on conservative groups, if only they could prove there was a crackdown, which they can’t, because there wasn’t.

Both actions stem from the same impulse: a need to rouse the most fervent anti-Obama wing of the party and keep it angry enough to deliver its donations and votes to Republicans in the November elections. For a while it seemed as if the Affordable Care Act would perform that role, but Republicans ran into a problem when the country began to realize that it was not destroying American civilization but in fact helping millions of people.

The entire editorial is here.

Nuts to You, Creep!

Posted on by

John Boehner represents the 8th congressional district of Ohio. It’s made up of suburbs and farmland and sits along the border with Indiana. The biggest city in the 8th district is Hamilton, with a population of 62,000. Republicans have represented Boehner’s district since 1939. He got elected in 1990 after he challenged the incumbent congressman, who had been convicted of paying a 16-year old girl $40 for sex. Boehner has been elected without significant opposition since then, twice with no opposition at all. 

This creep, who is now Speaker of the House, has decided to shut down much of the federal government in a vain attempt to interfere with implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Senate Democrats have been asking for negotiations on the 2014 budget for six months, but Boehner and his Republican colleagues decided it would make more sense to become extortionists. Go back and renegotiate Obamacare, you Democrats, or else we’ll send 800,000 Federal workers home, force another million to work without pay, close various government facilities and suspend programs like the Special Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children!

There’s common agreement that there are some relatively moderate Republicans who would join Democrats in voting to keep the government open, if Boehner allowed that simple vote to take place. But he hasn’t done that yet. He’s apparently terrified that he’s going to lose the support of the craziest Republicans and not be Speaker of the House anymore. He might even lose his seat in Congress to some Tea Party clown next time the Republicans in the 8th district go to the polls.

If Republicans who don’t represent places like the 8th district of Ohio were allowed to “vote their conscience” (something members of the House might want to do sometimes), this stupid shutdown wouldn’t be happening.

There are two good things about it, however. The Republicans look bad and might even lose some seats next year. And the Democrats are holding firm. If I were Senator Harry Reid or President Obama, my answer to Boehner would be a simple “Fuck you!”, or, a bit more politely, what General McAuliffe told the Germans when they demanded our surrender at the Battle of the Bulge: “Nuts!”

P.S. — For some history regarding the Republican concept of “negotiation”:

The Republican position has been clear for three years: they will refuse to negotiate if negotiation could mean having to give something up. But they will loudly demand a negotiation over something that is not open to compromise, namely a settled law from 2009…

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/the-g-o-p-definition-of-negotiation/?hp

Democracy by the Numbers

Posted on by

For several years, I’ve occasionally driven back and forth between Vermont and upstate New York. The difference between the two states is always noticeable.

On the Vermont side of the border, everything seems neat and tidy and pleasant. There are billboards that say even the gas stations are nice in Vermont (I don’t remember seeing vases of plastic flowers in gas station restrooms in other states.)

The New York side of the border, however, which is equally rural, always looks shabby and rundown. The atmosphere in towns like Whitehall and Fort Ann is depressing. Every time I drive through there I wonder what the people do for a living.

So it was good to see confirmation of my assessment, and a possible explanation, in the New York Times: 

“In the four years after the financial crisis struck, a great wave of federal stimulus money washed over Rutland County (Vermont). It helped pay for bridges, roads, preschool programs, a community health center, buses and fire trucks, water mains and tanks… Just down Route 4, at the New York border, the landscape abruptly turns from spiffy to scruffy. Washington County, N.Y., which is home to about 60,000 people — just as Rutland is — saw only a quarter as much money.”

The Times suggests that the key difference between these adjoining regions is that Vermont, as a small state, has the same number of U.S. senators as New York, a very large state:

“Vermont’s 625,000 residents have two United States senators, and so do New York’s 19 million. That means that a Vermonter has 30 times the voting power in the Senate of a New Yorker just over the state line — the biggest inequality between two adjacent states.”

There are surely other reasons for the obvious discrepancy between Vermont and upstate New York, but it’s very likely that different levels of political representation are an important factor. States like Vermont and Wyoming (population 580,000) have the same number of senators as New York and California (population 38 million). That affects where the money goes.

Small states are even over-represented in the House. The representative from Wyoming has 580,000 constituents. The average representative from California has 720,000. Throw in the effect of gerrymandering in the House, which recently helped Republicans win 53% of the seats while receiving 48% of the popular vote, and it shouldn’t be surprising that Congress doesn’t reflect the will of the people.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/03/11/us/politics/democracy-tested.html?pagewanted=all