Category Archives: Congress

June 22, 2011 · 9:05 pm

Georgia’s Harsh Immigration Law Costs Millions in Unharvested Crops

God forbid, a White Person pick a crop in Georgia!  That’s unheard of!  What were the Republicans in the Georgia Legislature thinking?

Oh, I should know by now not to use the words “thinking” and “Republican” in the same sentence…

Still, It’s really scary to see the results when the GOP actually gets to put their plans in action…

People really should realize by now that “Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Republican.”

That is, if they want a job and a home tomorrow and don’t want to eat cat food in their old age…

Or now, if they want food in the Grocery Store….

From Megan McArdle in The Atlantic:

Jay Bookman provides some unsurprising news about Georgia’s illegal immigration crackdown: there are unintended, negative consequences.

After enacting House Bill 87, a law designed to drive illegal immigrants out of Georgia, state officials appear shocked to discover that HB 87 is, well, driving a lot of illegal immigrants out of Georgia…

Thanks to the resulting labor shortage, Georgia farmers have been forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry….

The results of that investigation have now been released. According to survey of 230 Georgia farmers conducted by Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, farmers expect to need more than 11,000 workers at some point over the rest of the season, a number that probably underestimates the real need, since not every farmer in the state responded to the survey.

The economics here aren’t particularly complicated, and I’m sure they won’t be new to the sophisticated readers of the Atlantic, but they are useful to look at and consider explicitly when thinking about issues like this.

It goes like this. If you’re not going to let illegal immigrants do the jobs they are currently being hired to do, then farmers will have to raise wages to replace them. Since farmers are taking a risk in hiring immigrant workers, you can bet they were getting a significant deal on wage costs relative to “market wages”. I put market wages here in quotations, because it’s quite possible that the wages required to get workers to do the job are so high that it’s no longer profitable for farmers to plant the crops in the first place.

via Georgia’s Harsh Immigration Law Costs Millions in Unharvested Crops – Megan McArdle – Business – The Atlantic.

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June 22, 2011 · 7:12 pm

Sarah Palin Baffles and Frustrates Fans By Quitting Bus Tour

Two Points:

1.  She never finishes anything she starts.  She reminds me of my Mother….

2.  She has no interest in doing anything unless someone is paying attention to her and will do anything to get people to pay attention to her.    Also, just like my Mother…

Oh…My….God….

It’s all coming together now….

From Salon.com:

Sarah Palin quit her cross-country bus tour (or PAC-funded family vacation) about one region into the country. Everyone is so used to her quitting things that no one really noticed. Life went on. Jon Huntsman ran for president. Rick Perry preemptively denied gay rumors.

But Scott Conroy at RealClearPolitics wondered what happened to the tour that was supposed to be heading through the Midwest and Southwest at some point in this rapidly ending month. It seems like Sarah Palin just went home to Alaska, to eat salmon or something.

“As Palin enjoys her sojourn to the 49th state, she has not reconnected with key early-state figures like Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and she may have jeopardized whatever political momentum she gained from her recent reemergence in the 2012 discussion. Her political action committee’s website still greets visitors with a stale banner, announcing the nationwide bus tour beginning “[t]his Sunday, May 29th.”

Just give it another month, and she’ll come up with some other scheme to briefly convince everyone that she’s running for president again. She feeds on the attention! (And the PAC donations.) That documentary about how she used to not be so awful before she got famous is going to show in Iowa soon. That’ll definitely mean something.

Palin is probably just putting off the decision to run for president until it’s too late for her to run for president, because, like so many of us, she is undisciplined and lazy. There’s no grand plan, here: just indecision and procrastination

via Sarah Palin baffles and frustrates fans by quitting bus tour – War Room – Salon.com.

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June 21, 2011 · 5:37 pm

PIMCO Founder To Deficit-Obsessed Congress: Get Back To Reality

It’s probably too late to talk any sense into the GOP Congress and the Democratic enablers, but this just might make a difference…

I’ve been saying all along, they are doing exactly the opposite of what needs to be done to drive an economic recovery.  You have to spend to create jobs, which will increase purchasing power to drive demand for consumer goods and increase tax revenues.

You worry about deficits once the economy has recovered. And the deficit will be a much smaller problem as increased revenues from taxes-income and sales- will ease the burden on state, local and federal governments.

Then you repeal the Bush tax cuts, end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, remove the cap on Social Security withholding taxes and it’s all fixed.

Why don’t they just listen to me?  And Paul Krugman. And now, Bill Gross…

From TalkingPointsMemo:

 

One of the most influential investors in the world of finance has a message for lawmakers — particularly conservative lawmakers — on Capitol Hill: rejoin the real world.

In a prospectus for clients, Bill Gross, a co-founder of investment management giant PIMCO, says members’ of Congress incessant focus on deficit — and in particular, the manner in which they obsess about deficits — is foolhardy, and a recipe for disaster. What the country needs, Gross said, is real stimulus now, and a measured return toward fiscal balance in the years ahead.

More:   PIMCO Founder To Deficit-Obsessed Congress: Get Back To Reality | TPMDC.

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June 16, 2011 · 10:02 am

Anthony Weiner Tells Friends He Will Resign

WienerGate is about to end…

I have very mixed feelings about this tacky little episode.

First of all, Congressman Weiner broke no laws.  Unlike Republicans David Vitter and John Ensign who continued to serve in the Senate with their colleagues support.

Weiner did initially lie to the press and his constituents.  But polls show the people he represents forgave him and wanted him to remain in office.

It’s his Democratic colleagues, who unlike the GOP, did not stand by him and pushed him to resign.  They basically forced him out.

Maybe it’s for the best.  This just keeps going on and on as a distraction.

Maybe now Congress can focus on something besides penises.

Still, Weiner was a strong, Progressive voice in Congress.  Maybe too strong.  That’s why his colleagues were so fast to turn on him.  He made waves.  He kicked ass and took names.  I’ll miss him.

When this whole thing began, I still say he should have said it was no one’s business but his and his wife’s and left it at that.  He should just have refused to discuss this as it is/was a personal matter.

But the tabloid press loves a good penis story…

On with the show….

From the NY Times:

Representative Anthony D. Weiner has told friends that he plans to resign his seat after coming under growing pressure from his Democratic colleagues to leave the House, said a person told of Mr. Weiner’s plans.

His decision follows of revelations of his lewd online exchanges with women, said a person told of Mr. Weiner’s plans.

The news comes as Democratic leaders prepared to hold a meeting on Thursday to discuss whether to strip the 46-year-old Congressman of his committee assignments, a blow which would severely damage his effectiveness.

Mr. Weiner, a Democrat, came to the conclusion that he could no longer serve after having long discussions with his wife,  Huma Abedin, when she returned home on Tuesday after traveling abroad with her boss, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

via Anthony D. Weiner Tells Friends He Will Resign – NYTimes.com.

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June 15, 2011 · 10:18 pm

Michele Bachmann’s Irrational Fears: Lesbians, Her Constituents, Former Nuns and, Perhaps, Her Sister…

I really hope people realize this woman is a nut case….

But I don’t take anything for granted anymore.

I seriously have to question her mental stability if she behaves like this with her constituents…

Can you imagine if, horror of horrors, she actually was President and had to deal with difficult or complex matters on the World Stage?

In comparison, she almost makes Sarah Palin look sane.

Almost….

Sarah Palin may be a tacky, money-mad, egomaniacal opportunist, but she’s merely ignorant and power crazy, not certifiably crazy…

What is the world coming to when I have to consider the faint possibility that either of these two might be the nominee of a major political party for the job of President of the United States?

Or,  god forbid, President…

I’m glad I started drinking again….

From Michelle Goldberg at TheDailyBeast.com:

In April 2005, Pamela Arnold wanted to talk to her state senator, Michele Bachmann, who was then running for Congress. A 46-year-old who worked at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Arnold lived with her partner, the famed Arctic explorer Ann Bancroft, on a farm in Scandia, Minnesota. Bachmann was then leading the fight against gay marriage in the state. She’d recently been in the news for hiding in the bushes to observe a gay-rights rally at the Capitol. So when members of the Scandia gay community decided to attend one of Bachmann’s constituent forums, Arnold, wanting to make herself visible to her representative, joined them.

A few dozen people showed up at the town hall for the April 9 event, and Bachmann greeted them warmly. But when, during the question and answer session, the topic turned to same-sex marriage, Bachmann ended the meeting 20 minutes early and rushed to the bathroom. Hoping to speak to her, Arnold and another middle-aged woman, a former nun, followed her. As Bachmann washed her hands and Arnold looked on, the ex-nun tried to talk to her about theology. Suddenly, after less than a minute, Bachmann let out a shriek. “Help!” she screamed. “Help! I’m being held against my will!”

Arnold, who is just over 5 feet tall, was stunned, and hurried to open the door. Bachmann bolted out and fled, crying, to an SUV outside. Then she called the police, saying, according to the police report, that she was “absolutely terrified and has never been that terrorized before as she had no idea what those two women were going to do to her.” The Washington County attorney, however, declined to press charges, writing in a memo, “It seems clear from the statements given by both women that they simply wanted to discuss certain issues further with Ms. Bachmann.”

Lots of politicians talk about a sinister homosexual agenda. Bachmann, who has made opposition to gay rights a cornerstone of her career, seems genuinely to believe in one. Her conviction trumps even her once close relationship with her lesbian stepsister. “What an amazing imagination,” marvels Arnold. “Her ideology is so powerful that she can construct a reality just on a moment’s notice.”

via Michele Bachmann’s Unrivaled Extremism: Gay Rights to Religion – The Daily Beast.

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June 15, 2011 · 8:36 pm

Congressman To Introduce Bill To Protect Male Circumcision Rights

Today’s Penis Post…

Can’t go a week without Congress worrying about them….

These guys just can’t seem to leave them alone…

Don’t get me wrong, I support the Religious reasons for circumcision and think San Francisco should have stayed out of this…

I just don’t think this is a subject for legislation on either side of the issue….

Surely, they have other things to do?

If not, I can make a few suggestions….

From HuffingtonPost.com:

A new bill aims to cut short a proposed ban on circumcision in San Francisco.

US. Representative Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) will introduce the Religious and Parental Rights Defense Act of 2011 to prevent S.F. and other municipalities from banning male circumcision, which is religious obligation for Jewish males and is a common Muslim and Christian practice.

Sherman, who is Jewish, currently has one co-sponsor on the bill, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim elected to Congress, JTA reports.

“The Religious and Parental Rights Defense Act of 2011 ensures that Jewish and Muslim families will continue to be able to enjoy the free exercise of their religious beliefs,” Sherman said in a statement, adding that proponents of a ban have an obligation to provide compelling medical evidence against male circumcision. In fact, he said, the medical literature shows the opposite.

Announcement of the bill comes as the San Francisco “intactivist” effort heats up. Voters won’t be able to weigh in until November, but the anti-circumcision movement is already gaining support.

Matt Hess, president of San Diego-based group MGM Bill (MGM stands for “Male Genital Mutilation”), recently raised claims of anti-Semitism after the release of a second issue of his comic, “Foreskin Man,” which featured a sinister Orthodox Jewish villain by the name of Monster Mohel.

The San Francisco effort would ban circumcision for males under the age of 18, carrying a fine of $1,000 and up to one year in prison.

via Congressman To Introduce Bill To Protect Male Circumcision Rights.

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June 15, 2011 · 10:43 am

The G.O.P. Presidential Debate

Every time I look at the current field of Republican Presidential Candidates, all I can think about is the old Cher song “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.”

No one is really paying much attention right now, but this really is a pathetic group of candidates.

But then, the GOP has become a pretty sorry excuse for a Political Party with its focus on bigotry, ignorance and lies….

From the New York Times Editorial Page:

 

Monday’s Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire — full of historical error, economic obfuscation, avoidance of hard truths and even outright bigotry — was a feast for connoisseurs of political dysfunction. Desperate to avoid being outflanked on the right, the seven candidates tried so hard to outdo each other in finding fault with President Obama that they seemed to forget that they are competing for the same party nomination. By evening’s end, they had melted into an indistinguishable mass of privatizing, tax-cutting opponents of Shariah law.

For the moment, the candidates are appealing to a Republican Party whose core is so contorted in fury at Mr. Obama that it barely resembles the one that nominated George W. Bush in 2000. Mr. Bush may have prosecuted the war on terror to excess, but he always reminded the country that it was not at war with Islam. This batch of Republicans has dispensed with such niceties. Herman Cain repeated his earlier statement that he would not be comfortable with a Muslim in his cabinet. Some, he explained, “are trying to kill us.”

None of the other candidates took him to task for this. Mitt Romney, a Mormon who has himself been the subject of religious slurs, at least mentioned the nation’s founding principle of religious tolerance and respect but missed an opportunity to include Muslims. Newt Gingrich tumbled over the historical cliff with the idea, announcing some kind of loyalty oath to serve in his administration, similar to that used in dealing with Nazis and Communists. At least no one brandished a list of known Muslims serving in Mr. Obama’s State Department.

via The G.O.P. Presidential Debate – NYTimes.com.

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June 14, 2011 · 11:03 pm

Key Dem Senator: Obama ‘snookered’ by GOP into Talking Deficit Over Jobs

I could not agree more….

This says everything I’ve been thinking….

It’s always a pleasant surprise to see some DC Democrats talking a little sense…

God knows, the GOP never will….

From RawStory.com:

Urging the administration to enact new measures to lower the unemployment rate, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) said President Barack Obama got “snookered” by Republicans into prioritizing deficits over jobs.

“I am concerned about the Obama administration’s approach on this,” Harkin, the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told The Hill in an interview published Friday. “It always has been about jobs. I think the administration kind of got snookered talking about the deficit and the debt after the last election.”

Amidst growing economic anxieties, Harkin joined Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) in calling for additional stimulus spending in the form of a major infrastructure package.

“The last election was about jobs and the economy, and now we’re in a position where we really do need some economic pump-priming by the federal government,” Harkin told the paper.

Job creation in May was the lowest since last September as the unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent. The Obama administration has — under intense pressure from Republicans — shifted its focus from job creation to deficit reduction this year, against the vocal objections of progressive economics and polls that say the public is far more concerned about jobs than the debt.

via Key Dem Senator: Obama ‘snookered’ by GOP into talking deficit over jobs | The Raw Story.

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June 12, 2011 · 6:05 pm

Daily Kos: The Politics of Personal Destruction: Anthony Weiner and Us

The best article I’ve seen yet about the Weiner Scandal…

I am thoroughly tired of all the noise about this….Let’s move on.

From DailyKos:

Anthony Weiner’s personal life is not our business. Those now feeling betrayed because “he lied to us” need ask themselves why they felt justified in wanting to know about his personal life in the first place. Certainly, Weiner handled the story as poorly as can be imagined, but there too what matters is not the facts of his personal behavior but that his personal behavior became a story. As the story continues to play out it becomes even more clear that Weiner’s best response to the initial reports would have been to tell reporters that his personal life is personal, and that other than his wife nobody has any right to ask or know anything about it. Even had the allegations been false, his best response would have been to tell reporters that his personal life is personal, and that other than his wife nobody has any right to ask or know anything about it. More than a decade after the national disgrace that was the impeachment of a president for lying about his personal behavior, the politics of personal destruction continues to thrive on both sides of the aisle, by supporters of both sides of the aisle. Indeed, even as Weiner’s stereotypical public confession was still echoing around the shrill mass media, some progressives already were excitedly promoting allegations about the personal behavior of a leading Republican, as if two wallows in the mire make one clean.

We cannot change the behavior of public officials. We cannot make any immediate impact on the behavior of the corporatist media. We cannot stop right-wing assholes from being assholes. We can change our own behavior. The mud must stop here. It seems easy to feel happy when right-wing demagogues are hoist on their own political petards, but it shouldn’t be. Every time it happens, innocent people get hurt. Relatives. Friends. Spouses. Children. Some claim that it’s the hypocrisy that matters, but it isn’t. Right-wing attempts to suppress and repress the personal behavior of all manner of innocents are not wrong because they are hypocritical, they are wrong because they are about suppression and repression, and often also about bigotry. The hypocrisy argument is a distraction. Right-wing bigots and scolds are no worse for being proved hypocrites. Right-wing bigots and scolds who are not hypocrites are no better than their hypocritical brethren. Revelations about the personal behavior of various right-wing hypocrites have had no impact on the repressive, suppressive and bigoted right-wing political agenda. Revelations about the personal behavior of various right-wing hypocrites have in no way advanced the causes of equality and justice and individual freedom. It’s better to face and take the bigotry and repression and suppression head on, for what it is, and not get side-tracked by the personal behavior of individual bigots or agents of repression and suppression. When no laws are being broken, the privacy of the personal behavior of consenting adults should be sacrosanct. Even for Republicans. Even for assholes. Even for bigots.

via Daily Kos: The politics of personal destruction: Anthony Weiner and us.

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June 9, 2011 · 8:50 pm

Anthony Weiner Scandal: In Congressman’s District, A Chorus Of Support

I kind of thought this would roll off his back in New York….New Yorkers aren’t easily shocked by sexual affairs without sex.

And remember, Anthony Weiner wasn’t a  Republican”Family Values”  hypocrite having an affair like Republican Senators David Vitter and John Ensign were…

Weiner just might survive this if he listens to his Constituents and not to the press and the DC insiders.

The question is:  Does he really want to?  Especially  now that his fast-track political career will be stalled for the foreseeable future.

What he really wanted was to be mayor of New York and the Democratic Establishment has lined up against him- even if his constituents haven’t.  Is he content to stay a Congressman for several terms? Or does he resign and try to change careers to the Media, like Eliot Spitzer.

Time will tell….

Thursday (and for anyone not keeping track, it’s exactly two weeks into the saga known as Weinergate), a 64-year-old woman named Ann Oniszko stood in the lobby of one of the buildings of the Queens Community House and expressed undiminished admiration for her congressman. Wearing a specially-made gold pendant, her first name molded into a Star of David, she said, “I hope this doesn’t kill his political career. People just have little bad habits.”

“They just have to use technology better,” said Steve Pullano, the director of the teen program at the center.

“I just hope he salvages and builds himself up again,” said Onizsko.

Even as Weiner’s fellow Congressional Democrats have called for his resignation, the residents of New York’s Ninth District appear to stand behind their congressman in solid formation.

According to a recent poll by Marist and NY1, 56 percent of those interviewed said that Weiner shouldn’t resign, while only 33 percent said he should (12 percent said they hadn’t made up their minds).

In the Queens and Brooklyn neighborhoods that make up Weiner’s jigsaw-puzzle district, the congressman has long enjoyed the kind of poll numbers generally reserved for authoritarian rulers. He won 60 percent of votes in the last election, actually a significant drop-off from the previous election, in which his constituents chose him by a ratio of 93 votes to six.

Even now, he doesn’t seem much in danger of losing local support, and nowhere is that support more evident than at the Queens Community House, a sprawling network of project buildings and community-service centers based in the Queens neighborhood Kew Gardens.

via Anthony Weiner Scandal: In Congressman’s District, A Chorus Of Cheers.

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