OK, You Hate Congress, But Are You Still Voting For Your Own Congress Member?

In a recent show, Morning Edition reporter Andrea Seabrook talked to Cincinnati voters about Congress.

None had anything good to say.  Here's how it begins:

ANDREA SEABROOK, BYLINE: These days, when I stop people in the street, there's this thing that happens all the time.
I'm a reporter with NPR in Washington. Anyone interested in talking about Congress?
BILL BELLMAN: Congress - there's nothing good to say.
SEABROOK: People's instant reaction to the mention of Congress is: Ugh, what a mess; there's nothing good to say.

Here's the audio.





She asked all these people how they felt about Congress, but SHE DIDN'T ASK:


 "Are you going to reelect your own Congress Member?"



That seems to be the key problem.  All the other guys are bad, but we like our own Congress Member.

Let's remember that the people in Congress got more votes than the other candidates, so the people to blame for Congress are those who voted for the winning candidates and those who didn't vote at all.  

I've been voting against my Congress Member for 30 years, so, while you might say I've been ineffective, at least I'm not part of the group that's responsible for re-electing Don Young.  But people like me need to work harder to retire the problem Congress Members.

Of course, you can pull all the dandelions you want, but more still pop up.  Getting rid of bad Congress Members and reelecting new bad ones isn't the answer. We need to plant Congress with representatives who promise NOT to take pledges that restrict their votes and promise to work constructively with ALL the other Congress Members for the public, regardless of threatened political consequences.  Better yet, there should be negative political consequences for being a hack and good ones for being a mensch. 

Not all incumbents are problems.  When they campaign, make them demonstrate how they worked with others, how they bucked the party when its dictates weren't for the good of the public, how they advanced, rather than blocked, needed legislation and confirmation of appointed officials, and how they did NOT play brinksmanship with the US budget and our country's credit rating.  

Hold all candidates to reasoned cooperation. (Ask them how many members of the other party they had over to their home for dinner this session.) Hold them to voting for the long term benefit of the United States (and the world) and not to voting based on how they think it might affect the next election cycle. (Did they vote against needed legislation or to add toxic amendments so the other side had to vote no?)   Their only pledge should be to vote for the needs of the public, not of their party, not of the lobbyists and their clients. 

Do your homework.  Check out your representative and senators.  Here are some websites that give you information.  Check different perpsectives:


Vote Smart
The Washington Post's The US Congress Votes Database
Don't know who your congress person is?  Who's My Rep?     My Senator?
Big Marine Fish's Friend or Enemy of Fish?
C-Span's Researching Your Members of Congress
Congress Link's How Influential Is Your Member of Congress?
The American Conservative Union's Congressional Ratings
National Journal's Vote Rating 2010
ACLU's Congressional Scorecard
The Hill has Lists of Ratings from Different Groups for Each Lawmaker

Then ask your representative to explain his votes.

When you find a good candidate, you need to give her some money and some time.  

Or, if there are no good candidates, run yourself. 

Budget Reduction Act - High Stakes Poker?

I'm still trying to figure out this deficit reduction exercise.  The Budget Committee has a few more days to create and pass their plan.    There needs to be seven (of 12) votes to pass anything.   That would result in a bill that would go to the House and Senate for an up or down vote.  No amendments.  No filibusters.  Simple majority passes or rejects it.

Was this committee a set-up?  If so, who set it up?  The Democrats or the Republicans?  At first glance, it looks like the Republican got dealt all the aces.

The point is to try to balance the budget (at least to greatly reduce the deficit) in a reasonable time period.  The Democrats are willing to include cuts, but also want to increase revenues (taxes mainly).  The Republicans only want cuts.  Most have signed a No Taxes pledge and that's where they've been sticking.  

The deal starts with cuts.  There are no taxes or other revenue increases.  And if they fail, there are automatic cuts, no taxes.  So, as I see it, the Democrats have already given up most of the concessions the Republicans want.  (Well, they want the Democrats to give up more.)  But the Republicans haven't given up anything serious.  OK, some don't want cuts in the military and there would be some big ones if the committee fails.  But it's cuts.  If they want to keep the military whole, they'll have to agree to some revenue increases.

But if they don't agree,  automatic cuts (and no revenue increases) begin.

After looking at a number of websites that explain the Act, I decided to borrow part of this summary from the blog of Keith Hennessey, a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution [a conservative think tank] at Stanford University, and a Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Stanford Law School.

• If this new Joint Committee legislative process fails to result in a law, then there will be no tax increases and there will be triggered $1.2 T of across-the-board spending cuts in discretionary spending, Medicare, farm subsidies, and a few smaller entitlements. These triggered spending cuts would hit defense more deeply than other types of spending.
  
• The additional deficit reduction could include tax increases, but only if:
• 7 of 12 Members of a new Joint Committee of Congress agree to raise taxes, including at least one Republican Member of the Committee;
• and a majority of the House and Senate vote for the Committee’s recommendations;
• and the President signs the bill into law.

 So, was this some slick deal the Republicans pulled on the President?  After all, the default is big spending cuts and no taxes, just what the Republicans want.

Or did Obama pull one over on the Republicans?  I'm not sure, but there are some signs that this might fail in Obama's favor.  The cuts don't automatically begin until 2013, and Congress can pass legislation between now and then to stop or change the automatic cuts.

And while the Republicans can argue that the Democrats refused to compromise, anyone looking at this can see that it's full of the cuts the Republicans wanted and that there are NO taxes or other revenue increases that Democrats want.  That is, no Republican compromises.

And a lot of folks are saying the automatic cuts, during a recession would be a disaster.

Here's today's (Nov. 20, 2011) Wall Street Journal:

However, in the wake of the committee's expected failure, the additional spending cuts—including $600 billion from the Pentagon—don't take effect until 2013.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he didn't believe Congress would allow those cuts to take effect in the defense budget because of the dire warnings of its detrimental effects.

However, President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) have opposed attempts to mitigate or tamper with the spending-cuts mechanism, which once had been considered a powerful incentive for the panel to reach a compromise.

But the one-year time lapse before the enforcement mechanism kick in reduced the sense of urgency and eased pressure on the panel.

So, if the intent of the drastic cuts that are automatically triggered if the committee doesn't create and pass a bill (or the Congress doesn't pass it or the President doesn't sign it), was to force the committee to pass something, it doesn't seem to be working.

And now with an election coming up in less than a year, how is the electorate going to evaluate who caused the problem?  The Democrats who wanted to raise revenue, but were willing - from the git go - to cut some of their cherished programs?  Or the Republicans who started with the Democrats taking huge cuts, but were never willing to make any revenue increasing compromises until the very end, when they offered a very symbolic revenue compromise, but with conditions that seemed to canceled out the benefits.  Here's a New York Times report on the Republican proposal.

And CBS News reports that 64% of Americans support tax increases on the rich to lower the deficit.  Perhaps it's beginning to be clear that the Republicans are less interested in decreasing the deficit than they are interested in keeping their rich supporters rich and untaxed, and in chipping away at government so their rich friends can do whatever they want - whether it's increasing credit card fees or extracting resources - without pesky governmental regulations intended to keep the environment clean and workers getting a livable wage and not getting injured or killed on the job without any health insurance or pension.

Maybe even the police monitoring the Occupy demonstrators are recognizing that their jobs and pensions are vulnerable too, that they are part of the 99%.  Maybe this whole exercise was simply to expose the protectors of the 'job creators' for what they are.  And perhaps Obama couldn't lose this game.  If they got Republicans to raise taxes in the committee, that would have been good in general.  If they couldn't, then it would give the public one more example of the Republicans' "heads I win, tales you lose" strategy. 

Only time will tell.  Perhaps the Republicans haven't learned from the housing crisis where consumers were lured in with deals that were too good to be true, only to have the rug pulled out from under them.   Perhaps this committee - already stacked with cuts and no taxes - looked too good to resist.  They thought they couldn't lose.  But maybe they have.

Or maybe not.  We'll see.

Sullivan's Reelection Campaign Starts With Snow Plows

There's an old adage in local politics - mayors win or lose on how well the fill potholes and deal with stray animals.  In colder climates, add clearing snow to the list.

We've had four or five snow falls in rapid succession since the end of October and I have never seen the snow plows out on our street as often and as quickly as these last two weeks.  Is this just good government or does this have something to do with Municipal elections coming up next April?  Summer street sweeping has also been much faster than in previous years.  While I disagree with our mayor on most important issues, I have to give him credit for clearing the streets quickly after it snows.

Here's a map as of 7:33am this morning of what's been cleared.  The Muni has Plan A and Plan B for clearing snow.  The city neighborhoods are divided into three different groups.  In Plan A, Group 1 gets plowed on Day 1, 2 on Day 2, and 3 on Day 3.  In Plan B it is reversed.  In the past, the website didn't tell you which plan was currently in effect.  Now it does.  They even have a map posted for clearing sidewalks and trails now!  It shows which are Muni routes and which State DOT routes.

They came by last night.  This morning I was greeted by another surprise.  You could see pavement!  I don't remember the last time our street was cleared down to pavement.  There have been times toward the spring when they'd scrape the ice off as much as possible, but this early in the season?  I don't remember it happening.  (My memory and what actually happened don't necessarily coincide.)

Now, if there is a break in the snow for a week or more, maybe they'll come can clear out the snow berms that are growing.

Cain and Lin in 2012

OK, in 2008 the Republicans nominated McCain and Palin.

So, as Herman Cain is stepping into the Republican primary spotlight, does this mean the Republicans think the last candidate's name was good, but a bit too long?

If they nominate Cain, should they also nominate a vice president that reduces the 2008 candidate's name by the first two letters? Someone named Lin?

This could lead to some interesting possibilities.  Let me offer some prospects.

The only Governor Lin (since Palin was a governor at the time, let's start there) I could find is Governor Junq-tzer Lin of Taiwan. This, at first, seems like insurmountable odds, but given that so many Republicans think that Obama is a Kenyan citizen, I really don't see the problem. They can tell their followers his Taiwan birth certificate is a fake and he was really born in San Francisco. Or better yet, that Taiwan is the 51st US state. That, of course, won't go down well with China. But they could show this is the chance for the US and China to reach unprecedented cooperation. I'm sure the people who come up with all the Republican talking points can work this out.

It's hard to find American politicians with the last name of Lin. So we should consider others, who, like Cain himself, is not a politician.

There's Sherry Lin, an investor.  She should fit right in.  She could pull in the female and Asian vote.  Though she has degrees from Columbia and Northwestern which may pose a problem for anti-elitists. 


 Maya Lin, also could appeal the female and Asian vote.  The sculptor who designed the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial offers name recognition that Sherry Lin doesn't have.  And she was born in Ohio, an important state in the next election.  An artist as VP doesn't sound too Republican. Maybe she can be in charge of a jobs program that would build long monuments to freedom, perhaps a modern version of the Statue of Liberty, along the Mexican and Canadian borders. 

True 'Lins' are hard to come by in the US, so what about settling for a spelling variation, like Lynn?

There's Alaska's Republican State Rep. Bob Lynn.  That allows the Republicans to try again with an Alaskan VP candidate, gives them a proud veteran of the Air Force, a blogger, and a musician who played the alto sax six times in the Rose Bowl Parade as a member of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Boys Band. Lots of pluses here.

Kansas' State Senator Julia Lynn has blond hair, is a Republican, and supported  a conference report that prohibits any individual or group health insurance policy from covering elective abortions, which I'm sure helped her get her 100 rating from the Americans for Prosperity - Kansas Chapter.

Wait, here's a perfect one:  Former Tennessee Representative Susan Lynn.  She now works for ALEC - the Koch brothers supported group that writes model legislation for state representatives who want to dismantle government.  And she's a civil libertarian - she sponsored legislation that  

"would prevent Tennesseans from being coerced or required by either the private sector or the government to have an RFID chip inserted into their body. Similar legislation passed the Georgia Senate last week, it is being voted upon in Virginia and it has already passed in several other states."

Republicans might like the state being restricted there, but it seems an unfair intrusion into the rights of businesses to do whatever they want.  But an earlier quote Lynn made cited by Tennessee reporter Jeff Woods clears this up.  There's a reason for her passion here:

As the bill's sponsor, Rep. Susan Lynn, explained to Pith when her proposal first came up a couple of years ago, "In the Christian religion, and I'm a Christian, in the book of Revelation, there was a reference to, you know, the Mark of the Beast. Some people interpret that to be one of these microchips." Lynn concedes "it's hard to say" whether microchips are actually Satan's stamp. "Other people think it could be some type of tattoo," she explains.

Straying a bit further, they may want to allow someone with the first name of Lynn. I offer:

 Gov. Lynn Frazier of North Dakota. The biggest negative here is that he's been dead since 1947, but if you believe that, you probably believe that global warming is real and caused by humans. Another possible negative is that he founded the Bank of North Dakota, the only state run bank. Did I mention that he was the first US governor to be recalled? And he wasn't really a Republican, but ran in their primary as a Non-Partisan League candidate, whatever that means. Maybe that could be used as a cover to show the Republicans want want to work across party lines like they are trying to do with Obama, but he just blocks all their proposals. And Lynn (Frazier) was elected to the US Senate after he was recalled. Given the popularity of zombies, today, I think there's real possibility here.


And a first name that actually preserves the Lin spelling:

Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.  This may be a stretch.  I don't even know if anyone calls him Lin.  But an advantage is that he's only been governor since January 2011, which would mean he'd have about as much experience as governor as Palin had when she was nominated.


As you can see, the possibilities here for the Republicans are endless.  Cain and Lin in 2012