All posts in Disfunctional Congress

by Admin on April 20, 2012 in 1st Amendment, CPUSA, Creeping Communism, Disfunctional Congress, Nancy Pelosi with No comments

Eh, at least Nancy Pelosi isn’t trying to hide it that she wants to alter the First Amendment, that cherished declaration of the right to free speech:

“We have a clear agenda in this regard: [DISCLOSE], reform the system reducing the [role] of money in campaigns, and amend the Constitution to rid it of this ability for special interests to use secret, unlimited, huge amounts of money flowing to campaigns,” Pelosi said at her Thursday press briefing. “I think one of the presenters [at a Democratic forum on amending the Constitution] yesterday said that the Supreme Court had unleashed a predator that was oozing slime into the political system, and that, indeed, is not an exaggeration,” said Pelosi. “Our Founders had an idea. It was called democracy. It said elections are determined by the people, the voice and the vote of the people, not by the bankrolls of the privileged few. This Supreme Court decision flies in the face of our Founders’ vision and we want to reverse it.”

The Supreme Court “decision” to which she refers is the SCOTUS majority opinion inCitizens United. It ought to go without saying, but amending the First Amendment to allow Congress to regulate corporate political speech would significantly abridge the freedom of the press. Why? As CNSNews.com’s Terence Jeffrey writes, “Television networks, newspapers, publishing houses, movie studios and think tanks, as well as political action committees, are usually organized as, or elements of, corporations.” Oh well, say Pelosi and other Democrats behind this three-pronged effort to rid the country of the Citizens United decision once and for all. Maryland Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards perhaps summed up the liberal position on this most clearly: “I mean, in my view, a corporation is not a person. It is not an individual. The rights that it has are those that are granted by the state, granted by the, by the Congress.” Ms. Edwards misses a crucial point: The functions of government (what you might call the “rights” of government not in the original, inalienable sense, but in the sense of being the appropriate purview of government) are those that are granted by the people, with whom all power ultimately resides. If corporations as such don’t have natural rights (and I’d agree that they don’t, but the individuals that comprise them still do, including the right to pool their money for the purpose of political speech), then Congress certainly doesn’t have any rights of its own, either, including the right to regulate corporate political speech. Fortunately, it seems highly unlikely that the people would grant Congress that ability through the amendment process — but trust Pelosi to continue to push for it.

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Pelosi: We have a clear agenda to amend the First Amendment

by Admin on April 20, 2012 in CPUSA, Creeping Communism, Disfunctional Congress, Nancy Pelosi with 1 Comment

Eh, at least Nancy Pelosi isn’t trying to hide it that she wants to alter the First Amendment, that cherished declaration of the right to free speech:

“We have a clear agenda in this regard: [DISCLOSE], reform the system reducing the [role] of money in campaigns, and amend the Constitution to rid it of this ability for special interests to use secret, unlimited, huge amounts of money flowing to campaigns,” Pelosi said at her Thursday press briefing.

“I think one of the presenters [at a Democratic forum on amending the Constitution] yesterday said that the Supreme Court had unleashed a predator that was oozing slime into the political system, and that, indeed, is not an exaggeration,” said Pelosi. “Our Founders had an idea. It was called democracy. It said elections are determined by the people, the voice and the vote of the people, not by the bankrolls of the privileged few. This Supreme Court decision flies in the face of our Founders’ vision and we want to reverse it.”

The Supreme Court “decision” to which she refers is the SCOTUS majority opinion inCitizens United.

It ought to go without saying, but amending the First Amendment to allow Congress to regulate corporate political speech would significantly abridge the freedom of the press. Why? As CNSNews.com’s Terence Jeffrey writes, “Television networks, newspapers, publishing houses, movie studios and think tanks, as well as political action committees, are usually organized as, or elements of, corporations.”

Oh well, say Pelosi and other Democrats behind this three-pronged effort to rid the country of the Citizens United decision once and for all. Maryland Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards perhaps summed up the liberal position on this most clearly: “I mean, in my view, a corporation is not a person. It is not an individual. The rights that it has are those that are granted by the state, granted by the, by the Congress.”

Ms. Edwards misses a crucial point: The functions of government (what you might call the “rights” of government not in the original, inalienable sense, but in the sense of being the appropriate purview of government) are those that are granted by the people, with whom all power ultimately resides. If corporations as such don’t have natural rights (and I’d agree that they don’t, but the individuals that comprise them still do, including the right to pool their money for the purpose of political speech), then Congress certainly doesn’t have any rights of its own, either, including the right to regulate corporate political speech.

Fortunately, it seems highly unlikely that the people would grant Congress that ability through the amendment process — but trust Pelosi to continue to push for it.

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JIB JAB FOR COLORADO POLITICS: Eric Weissmann Releases Video Hitting Jared Polis On Insider Trading

by Admin on April 2, 2012 in Colorado, Crony Capitalism, Disfunctional Congress, Economy with No comments

by: ColoradoPeakPolitics

With videos as well done as this one, the insider trading allegations could become a defining attribute of the race. The charges are based, in part, on a book by investigative reporter Peter Schweizer.

Schweizer, author of the book “Throw Them All Out,” detailed how Polis was making substantial equity investments in Bridgehealth, a medical tourism company, while supporting the passage of Obamacare. Medical tourism will naturally benefit if the U.S. sees the rationing of care other countries have when healthcare is nationalized.

“Don’t worry Grandma, I know we can’t get you a knee replacement here, but you can get it in India AND see the Taj Mahal!”

Outside the world of Congress, personally financially benefiting from insider information is called “insider trading”…but in Congress there is no such prohibition.

Eric Weissmann realizes this race will be an uphill battle, and since YouTube is the second-largest search engine after Google, getting his messaging into that space is critical. If Weissmann continues to use this kind of thoughtful approach to his entire campaign, Jared Polis should be more than a little nervous about his reelection prospects.

 

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House to Obama: Where did the additional $111 billion in ObamaCare costs come from?

by Admin on March 3, 2012 in Creeping Communism, Creeping Sharia, Disfunctional Congress, Islam, Islamization of America, Islamo-Fascism, Marxism, Obamacare with No comments

Via: Hot Air

ObamaCare hasn’t even been implemented yet, and its subsidy costs have already risen 30% with no explanation.  In the latest budget from the White House, the estimated cost for assistance to middle-class families in the insurance exchanges between 2014 and 2021 was $478 billion — an increase from last year’s budget of $367 billion.  House Republicans want an explanation:

Cost estimates for a key part of President Obama’s health care overhaul law have ballooned by $111 billion from last year’s budget, and a senior Republican lawmaker on Friday demanded an explanation.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., wants to know by Monday why the estimated ten-year cost of helping millions of middle-class Americans buy health insurance has jumped by about 30 percent. …

At issue are subsidies that will be provided under the health care law to help middle class people buy private coverage in new state insurance markets that will open for business in 2014.

Keep reading…

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Mitch McConnell Blocks Conservative Effort Against Obamacare

by Admin on February 29, 2012 in Disfunctional Congress, Mitch McConnell, RINO's with No comments

Via: Red State

English: Official photo of United States Senat...

Mitch McConnell

On Thursday, the Senate will consider Senator Roy Blunt’s amendment to the Senate version of the highway bill. It is the only amendment the Senate GOP will offer up.

On its surface, it is a good amendment. It will allow religious employers to opt out of the new Obamacare mandate on contraception and abortifacient drugs. But strategically, it is another lame effort by Senator Mitch McConnell to let Senate Democrats in swing states absolve themselves of any blame for what Barack Obama has done.

See, the highway bill probably is not going to pass. So Senator Blunt’s amendment won’t actually pass. But Senate Democrats can vote for it and then claim in their 2012 election that they too oppose the President, but alas their measure failed. At the same time, no outside groups want a vote right now. If there is a vote this week and the bill ultimately dies, the issue goes away in the press and Christian groups are only now whipping up opposition to the HHS regulation. Roy Blunt’s amendment comes too soon and takes off the table an issue social conservatives care about just as Republican leaders are whispering that the issue hurts them (coincidence?).

Official photo of U.S. Senator .

Consider the alternative. There is another amendment Senator McConnell expressly refuses to bring up this week as an alternative — an amendment by Senator Jim DeMint for full repeal of Obamacare.

“Wait,” you say, “It’d never pass.” True. But neither with Roy Blunt’s. The difference is that Roy Blunt’s gives the Democrats cover to say they oppose the President without actually opposing the President and Jim DeMint’s amendment puts many swing state Democrats in the awkward position of either reminding voters of their support of Obamacare or suddenly flipping their support to try to save their political skin.

Oh, and as a bonus, with more polling out showing a majority of Americans still oppose the individual mandate, it is a great reminder of who is on the right side of history.

But then Mitch McConnell has a history of being a bad strategist while claiming to be the Darth Vader of Senate strategists. Of course, Darth Vader did lose the Death Star twice to a rag tag group of rebels, so I guess it kind of fits.

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DID THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ‘BUY’ VOTES TO PASS UNPOPULAR LEGISLATION?

by Admin on February 21, 2012 in Corruption, Crony Capitalism, Disfunctional Congress with No comments

The White House has allegedly been using “administrative earmarks” to “buy” votes from Democrats in Congress, according to a new report from The Heritage Foundation.

“An examination of ‘administrative earmarks’ around the time of congressional votes on key pieces of President Obama’s agenda suggests the White House used its power to fund local projects as a means to ‘buy’ votes for major legislative efforts,” writes the Heritage Foundation’s Lachlan Markay.

How do “administrative earmarks” work? Simply put, it’s when the federal government shifts funds from its discretionary budget to specific projects. However, this is less “transparent than legislative earmarking,” since, according to the Congressional Research Service, “[t]here is no source that defines and comprehensively identifies Administrative earmarks.”

Did the Obama Administration Buy Votes to Pass Unpopular Legislation?See, Nancy? One day, this will all be yours . . .

And, according to the Heritage Foundation, the Obama administration has been doubling down on the practice.

“[An] analysis of grants from agencies during the early years of the Obama administration shows that the districts of moderate Democrats, whose support was so crucial for Obama during the 111th Congress, received large sums right around the passage of three key pieces of legislation,” Lachlan Markay writes.

Care to guess which three pieces of legislation required a little “encouragement” via federal grants? If you guessed “Obamacare,” Dodd-Frank, and the cap-and-trade bill, you’re a winner.

“During the run-up to votes in the House of Representatives for each of those pieces of legislation, the rate of administrative earmarking spiked,” Heritage reports.

Below is a chart that clearly identifies the exponential rise in the number of grants requested by 12 federal agencies, as documented at Grants.gov.

Did the Obama Administration Buy Votes to Pass Unpopular Legislation?

Image Courtesy: Heritage Foundation

Notice the correlation?

“Even more troubling,” Markay writes, “during the same time periods, significant grant money went to the districts of numerous Democratic representatives who looked to face tough battles for re-election.”

Keep reading…

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Bad Idea: McCain And Lindsey Graham Call For Arming Syrian Rebel Forces…

by Admin on February 20, 2012 in Disfunctional Congress, McLame, RINO's with 1 Comment

Via: Zip. Our own intelligence agencies have warned al-Qaeda is operating among the rebels and these two clowns want to send them weapons?

(The Hill) — Two prominent Republican U.S. senators urged that the United States arm opposition forces in Syria Sunday as the government of Bashar al-Assad continued a bloody crackdown on the protests that have engulfed the nation.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who both serve on the Senate Armed Services committee, argued that arming rebel fighters in the country could help beat back a Syrian government with close ties to Iran.

“Breaking Syria apart from Iran could be as important to containing a nuclear Iran as sanctions,” Graham said at a press conference in Kabul, according to the New York Times. “If the Syrian regime is replaced with another form of government that doesn’t tie its future to the Iranians, the world is a better place.”

Graham and McCain were in Afghanistan as part of a larger tour through the Middle East. The former GOP presidential candidate said that Syrian rebels needed help to defend themselves.

“I believe there are ways to get weapons to the opposition without direct United States involvement,” McCain said. “The Iranians and the Russians are providing Bashar Assad with weapons. People that are being massacred deserve to have the ability to defend themselves.”

“So I am not only not opposed, but I am in favor of weapons being obtained by the opposition,” McCain added.

Keep reading…

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THE VOTE PUMP

by Admin on January 29, 2012 in Disfunctional Congress, Fiscal Responsible Government, Progressivism, Taxation, The Constitution with No comments

Barack Obama will have ONE BILLION DOLLARS to spend on his re-election in 2012. Bill calls that chump change. Find out how the Big Government statists spent 22,000 times that amount on buying votes in 2011 alone!

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Geithner Raids Federal Pension Funds – Déjà Vu from Last May

by Admin on January 17, 2012 in Corruption, Disfunctional Congress, Federal Budget, Federal Reserve, Obama Propaganda, Tyrrany with No comments

By David DeGerolamo, Tea Party Nation

Tim Geithner once again is raiding the federal pension funds since the debt ceiling has been breached. Don’t worry about federal retirees not getting their pension check: the government is required to pay them whether money is in the pension fund or not. In other words, the federal pension fund is just another slush fund and its assets are available to be spent as necessary without any penalties. If an “evil corporation” did this, their officers would be put in prison after a well publicized trial.
Remember last may when Geithner blackmailed Congress using this same trick?

US RAIDS CIVIL SERVICE PENSION FUND AS IT HITS $14.3 TRILLION DEBT …

Deutsch: Offizielles porträt des US-Finanzmini...

Timothy Geithner, Us Treasury Secretary

The US has suspended payments into a civil service pension fund to free up almost $150bn as the major debtor nation approaches its legal borrowing limit.
Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, announced the move in a letter on Monday to Congressional leaders as he explained that the move extends the government’s breathing space to August 2 to avoid an unprecedented default on its borrowings.

How did that work out for us?After eight months and another $1 trillion later, we are once again going down the same path. Remember the spending cuts Boehner wanted in order to agree to the August debt ceiling increase? John Boehner is more concerned about election results than doing his job and the people continue to pay the price for his incompetence.
David DeGerolamo

TREASURY DIPS INTO PENSION FUNDS TO AVOID DEBT LIMIT- REUTERS

The Treasury on Tuesday started dipping into federal pension funds in order to give the Obama administration more credit to pay government bills.
Treasury started suspending reinvestments in a federal pension fund known as the G-Fund in order to avoid hitting the country’s $15.194 trillion debt limit.
“I will be unable to invest fully” the federal employees retirement system fund, beginning Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote Wednesday on the Obama administration’s request to increase the debt limit by $1.2 trillion.

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Obama Admin Doles Out $1.6 Million In Taxpayer Cash To “Restore Chicano Murals”…

by Admin on January 16, 2012 in Disfunctional Congress, Fiscal Responsible Government, Obama Propaganda with 1 Comment

SAN DIEGO – Artists revealed restored cultural paintings in Chicano Park Friday.

A $1.6 million grant from the federal government provided the funding for restoration of 18 murals in the historic park in Barrio Logan.

“As a young artist I remember coming to San Diego and thinking ‘gosh I wish I could have a mural up at Chicano park,’” painter Mario Chacon said.

The bright art pieces have brought people to Chicano Park since the 1970’s, but time has taken it’s toll.

The artists working on the restoration said each painting has significant symbolism.

“What was placed at the top of the mural was a banner proclaiming the battle cry of the day,” Chcon said. “The idea being that the community would build a green zone, a recreational area from here to the bay.”

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