HouseCastle and Pitts also voted against flood insurance not quite three years ago here (and interesting that Castle would vote against flood insurance given that he has also sought funding for coastline repair here – wonder if this is some kind of a “tit for tat,” as it were? “You don’t fund what I want, I don’t fund what you want” on a similar issue, I mean).
National flood insurance. Voting 329-90, the House sent the Senate a bill (HR 5114) to renew National Flood Insurance at an authorized cost of $476 million over 10 years. The renewal, covering five years, would increase premiums and deductibles, raise residential and commercial coverage limits, delay purchase requirements in areas newly added to flood maps, and provide $50 million annually in grants for programs to educate homeowners and renters about the program.
A yes vote was to pass the bill.
Voting yes: John Adler (D., N.J.), Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.), Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.), Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.), Joe Sestak (D., Pa.), and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).
Voting no: Michael N. Castle (R., Del.) and Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.).
And as we all know, Joe Pitts doesn’t need a reason to vote No against anything (and to do something about that, click here).
Federal telecommuting. Voting 290-131, the House passed a deficit-neutral bill (HR 1722) to greatly increase the number of civil servants allowed by their agencies to work from home or remote telecommuting centers at least one day each week. The bill would require all agencies to establish "telework" programs, put a senior manager in charge, expand employee participation, and set up an appeals process for those denied participation. The vote sent the bill to a House-Senate conference committee.The following should be noted from here in response to PA-16’s waste of space…
A yes vote was to pass the bill.
Voting yes: Adler, Andrews, Brady, Castle, Dent, Fattah, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Murphy, Schwartz, Sestak, and Smith.
Voting no: Pitts.
The potential savings of the (telecommuting) program were not presented by CBO. Using assumptions from a 2006 study commissioned by the U.S. General Services Administration (conducted by Booz Allen), we used our Telework Savings Calculator to quantify the potential governments savings if those eligible federal employees who wanted to work from home did so just one day every other week (half the level required in H.R. 1722):PA-16, please vote Pitts out of office this fall. You can’t imagine how much you would help yourselves.
Agencies would:
- Increase productivity by over $2.3 billion each year - equivalent to 26,000 man years of work
- Save $850 million in annual real estate, electricity, and related costs
- Save $2.3 billion in annual absenteeism
- Save $3.1 billion in annual employee turnover
Adding to a drumbeat of concern about the nation’s dismal college-completion rates, the College Board warned Thursday that the growing gap between the United States and other countries threatens to undermine American economic competitiveness.The importance and urgency of this issue cannot be overstated as far as I’m concerned. The reason I’m highlighting it, though, is to point out the idiocy of arguments like this one in response (along with J.D. Mullane and more of Murray’s ideological “fellow travelers”).
The United States used to lead the world in the number of 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees. Now it ranks 12th among 36 developed nations.
“The growing education deficit is no less a threat to our nation’s long-term well-being than the current fiscal crisis,” Gaston Caperton, the president of the College Board, warned at a meeting on Capitol Hill of education leaders and policy makers, where he released a report detailing the problem and recommending how to fix it. “To improve our college completion rates, we must think ‘P-16’ and improve education from preschool through higher education.”
Not to say there's a media conspiracy, but at least to note that hundreds of journalists have gotten together, on an online listserv called JournoList, to promote liberalism and liberal politicians at the expense of traditional journalism.Yes, it was a "wise decision," because it was basically hacked by Tucker Carlson and his pals to get Dave Weigel canned from the WaPo because he refused to fellate the subjects of his fine coverage.
My guess is that this and other revelations about JournoList will deepen the distrust of the national press. True, participants in the online clubhouse appear to hail chiefly from the media's self-identified left wing. But its founder, Ezra Klein, is a prominent writer for the Washington Post. Mr. Klein shut down JournoList last month—a wise decision.
And Barnes wouldn't know "traditional journalism" if it bit him in his...style guide (asuming he has one).
Continuing...
This week, Mr. Carlson produced a series of JournoList emails from April 2008, when Barack Obama's presidential bid was in serious jeopardy. Videos of the antiwhite, anti-American sermons of his Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, had surfaced, first on ABC and then other networks.Oh yes, it’s so awful when presidents employ media “strategies,” isn’t it?
JournoList contributors discussed strategies to aid Mr. Obama by deflecting the controversy.
Try reading this and then let me know how quickly we can retire that wingnut talking point, OK (and gee, I'm sure our author gave a certain bit of "strategy" here to a certain Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History).
Continuing…
(The contributors) went public with a letter criticizing an ABC interview of Mr. Obama that dwelled on his association with Mr. Wright. Then, Spencer Ackerman of The Washington Independent proposed attacking Mr. Obama's critics as racists. He wrote:Guess what, though? Maybe I wouldn’t have gone as far as Spencer Ackerman and called the wingnuts racists, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s what they are…I didn’t like Wright saying “God damn America” either, but try listening to the rest of the speech that led up to that (of course, that would deprive Barnes and co. of a really important wingnutosphere talking point).
"If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them—Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares—and call them racists. . . . This makes them 'sputter' with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction."
And as emptywheel tells us here…
Spencer Ackerman and his friends on Journolist saw a wrong being committed in a craven political dirty play and discussed a way to right the wrong. If Daily Caller (and Barnes) thinks that is controversial and worthy of a featured expose, they must be awfully hard up over there.And neither Barnes nor anyone else of his political persuasion should talk about religion and double standards here; try reading this post from Max Blumenthal about Sarah Palin and “pastor” Thomas Muthee and think about how fast the 2008 election would have been decided in favor of her and McCain if Obama were the politician in the story instead.
The subject attack by the right on Jeremiah Wright during the 2008 election, just as Ackerman and his fellow journalists discussed, was indeed a malicious and dishonest smear.
During a seven-minute telephone call, White House officials said, the president shared some of his own personal experiences, and urged Ms. Sherrod to “continue her hard work on behalf of those in need.”I have a question in response; what the hell did “the left” do to get Shirley Sherrod fired?
Later, in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Mr. Obama weighed in publicly for the first time. “He jumped the gun,” the president said, referring to Mr. Vilsack, “partly because we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles.”
That, however, is unlikely to be the end of it for Mr. Obama, who has struggled since the beginning of his presidency with whether, when and how to deal with volatile matters of race. No matter how hard his White House tries to keep the issue from defining his presidency, it keeps popping back up, fueled in part by high expectations from the left for the first black president, and in part by tactical opposition politics on the right.
Did “the left” doctor the video of her NAACP speech to make it sound as if she was attacking white people? No, the person responsible for that was the festering human stain known as Andrew Breitbart.
Did “the left” overreact and fire her without giving her a chance to defend herself? No, that was the fault of her clueless boss, Tom Vilsack of the USDA.
Did “the left” hire Vilsack for the job as head of the USDA to begin with? No, Mr. President, that was your responsibility.
Has “the left” made it absolutely clear to the employees of your administration that you must take a deep breath, as it were, first and make every effort to examine and weigh any and all circumstances concerning a controversial media moment when it appears that a person or an agency of government under your purview has been maligned? I don’t know the answer to that question, but if it isn’t “yes,” then Mr. President, you have some serious work to do.
It really pains me to imagine that the prior ruling Bushco regime probably would have handled an episode like this better than you, but I think that’s true, if for no other reason to hold that middle digit on high to the whole world as they were wont to do (and in the face of much more disastrous circumstances than this one, it should be noted).
Yes, we face a hostile, attack-media environment here, Mr. President. But stop conflating the pit bulls with the people who are trying to support you.
Or else you may find yourself in a position where you, or Democratic candidates, will need some of those “blogs” to help get re-elected. And we’ll remember the way you maligned us for a wrong for which we are not to blame.
Update 7/26/10: And in a related story, as they say, hat tip to Atrios for this.
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