On May 10, 41 of my freshman colleagues and I sent a letter to the President that states the new members of Congress are committed to having a fact-based conversation immediately over reforming spending on entitlement programs and addressing the debt crisis now before it is insurmountable. The letter calls on the President to join House freshmen efforts to stop the political rhetoric, work to advance America’s interests, and end this cycle of debt, deficits and indecision.I’m sure that entire paragraph was poll-tested by Frank Luntz to make sure it elicited the proper response from those 30 percent “dead enders” who will do anything they’re told by their Repug handlers. However, it doesn’t take a genius to see what is going on here; namely, that the Repugs know what kind of a mess they’ve created for themselves by going all-in on the Paul Ryan Medicare scheme and are trying to drag Obama and the Democrats down with them (here…an update is here).
Though still a House freshman, Kinzinger has shown himself to be seasoned when it comes to “weasel word” prevarications, as noted in this post from Politifact in which we learn as follows (from the election in which he defeated Dem congresswoman Deborah Halvorson last year)…
A Kinzinger spokesman sent us to a web page posted by the Illinois Department of Employment Security. This page provided a new statistic -- the actual number of unemployed Illinois residents, measured every month from January 1976 until the present.And as noted here, Kinzinger also benefitted from another Breitbart smear alleging that Halvorson was linked a guy named Bill Preston who portrayed Kinzinger and Lonesome Rhodes Beck with Hitler moustaches; Preston said later that he was unaffiliated with the Halvorson campaign…of course, that was after the brouhaha had run its course (and this tells us of criticism over Kinzinger’s military record).
According to these statistics, there were 449,300 unemployed people in Illinois in January 1993, and that number had grown to 671,400 by August 2010. That's 222,100 more unemployed people today than when Halvorson started. So using that measurement, it appeared Kinzinger was correct.
Why the difference? The expanding labor force. Since January 1993, the Illinois labor force has grown by 598,800 people, as people have moved into the state and as Illinois children have grown old enough to begin working. So that makes it possible for there to be more unemployed people even as the state has experienced a net gain of jobs.
So does this mean the statement should be rated True? Not necessarily.
The numbers cited by the Kinzinger camp refer to the increasing number of unemployed people in Illinois. But that doesn't exactly mean that hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost. Instead, it could mean that the state has failed to create hundreds of thousands of jobs to keep pace with population growth and new entrants into the work force. That's a similar point, but it's not exactly the same thing.
Kinzinger leads off his Hill piece by saying “At present, America’s entitlement programs are towards their last years of solvency.”
A lie is a terrible way to make a first impression, Congressman.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The head of the Philadelphia archdiocese's panel on priest sex-abuse is blasting the cardinal's response to the pedophilia crisis, and pulling back the curtain on the panel's long-secret operations.I know there really is no excuse for a Catholic to miss Sunday mass, when you get right down to it, and I don’t absolve myself on that either. However, no one should have any illusions as to the disgust of “the flock” guided by “the shepherd” over stuff like this.
Cardinal Justin Rigali and his bishops "failed miserably at being open and transparent," review board chairwoman Ana Maria Catanzaro wrote this week in the lay Catholic magazine Commonweal.
"What will it take for bishops to accept that their attitude of superiority and privilege only harms their image and the church's?" Catanzaro wrote in an article titled "The Fog of Scandal."
A grand jury this year criticized the panel and church officials for leaving dozens of problem priests in ministry.
But Catanzaro said the lay board never saw most of them because the archdiocese prescreened which cases they reviewed.
"She should feel very, very used," said Nicholas Cafardi, a Duquesne University law professor who once served as counsel to the Pittsburgh archdiocese. "They're being asked to give credibility to a process that is supposed to involve them but didn't."
However, I wanted to note here that a group of Catholics recently made news for what I consider to be a better example of imitating His behavior, as it were (here)…
Washington D.C., May 12, 2011 / 07:34 pm (CNA).- Ahead of House Speaker John Boehner’s May 14 commencement address at the Catholic University of America, over 75 professors from Catholic universities have written a letter criticizing the Ohio Republican’s budget proposal.And of course, the letter met with the predictable outcry from self-appointed Catholic “spokesman” Bill Donahue, who said the letter was “not representative of Catholic sentiment.”
…
The letter from academics said Boehner’s voting record is at variance from the ancient Christian teaching that those in power are “morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor.”
“Your record in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in Congress,” they charged.
The letter said the 2012 budget Boehner supported is “particularly cruel” to pregnant women and children, as it cuts $500 million from the Women Infants and Children nutrition program. The letter also criticized the budget’s cuts to Medicaid and Medicare and its “$3 trillion in new tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.”
I would ask in response that you keep in mind that Donahue does not serve as a spokesperson for the Church in any official capacity whatsoever (and, the last I checked, he was trying to whip up more “culture war” BS, as noted here).
Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and the Chairman of the powerful House Oversight Committee, expressed more confidence in his committee’s investigation into President Obama’s Department of Justice policies surrounding Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious, comparing it to the Iran-Contra scandal.Even for Issa, this statement is preposterous (I realize he’s just doing his part as a member of the right-wing echo chamber, but that still doesn’t make it right).
Issa told radio host Rick Amato that it is “not unprecedented” for government agencies, like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), to refuse to honor Congressional subpoenas.
“This looks an awful lot like Iran Contra,” Issa said. “When a government agency makes a mistake they stall, delay and cover up. That’s what’s happening here.”
As reported by an actual news organization that is somewhat reputable here, the intent of “Project Gunrunner” was “to stop the flow of weapons from the US to Mexico's drug cartels.” However, in the process of doing so, approximately 2,500 guns ended up in circulation, including 575 AK-47 type semi-automatic rifles; one of these weapons may have been used to kill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry (not 100 percent sure of the timeline here, I’ll admit…my sympathies to his family and friends).
From what I read, “Project Gunrunner” was a pretty stupid idea. However, do you want to know what is more stupid, as far as I’m concerned? The fact that the assault weapons ban was allowed to lapse in 2004 under the thoroughly misguided watch of Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History. And stupider still is the fact that no common-sense gun legislation is even being contemplated by this Congress, including the bills from Carolyn Maloney or Peter King (and Issa is every bit to blame for that as anyone else on Capitol Hill).
God knows how many people have been killed on both sides of the border as a result (and once again, I’d like an NRA member to explain to me why a hunter would need an assault rifle or even a 30-round clip).
Stupidest of all, though, is to compare the idiocy of “Project Gunrunner” to the Iran-Contra scandal, in which a doddering former president allowed a renegade foreign policy apparatus to illegally sell arms to an outlaw regime to fuel a South American insurgency (if and when it turns out that Obama has signed off on “Gunrunner,” something I seriously doubt, let me know, OK?).
Update 8/22/11: Looks like right-wing propagandist Christine Flowers is about three months behind on her talking points here...
SHOULD Home Depot’s board report each year on the company’s political policies and spending? In a groundbreaking vote at the company’s June 2 annual meeting, Home Depot’s shareholders will have the chance to vote on a nonbinding resolution of support for the company’s policies on, and future plans for, political contributions.For anyone unfamiliar with Bogle and Vanguard, I should note that he is all about shareholder participation in money management decisions as well as charging low (relative to the mutual fund biz) fees to attract customers. He has also argued that so-called “index” funds (with securities that comprise common “indices” of funds such as the S&P 500) will outperform actively managed mutual funds over time, and the last I checked, he was still right.
The vote was made possible because the Securities and Exchange Commission rightly decided in March to allow proxy proposals that require public companies to permit their shareholders to weigh in on their political spending.
This means that, notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s decision last year that laws limiting corporate political contributions violate constitutional free speech principles, the game is far from over. Shareholders — not self-interested corporate managers — should, and can, decide policies on corporate political contributions.
What makes this strengthening of shareholder rights particularly important is that over the past 50 years control of corporate America has shifted from individual stockholders to institutional stockholders. But these institutional investors have been unwilling to challenge political activities by corporate boards, even when those activities are not in their shareholders’ interests.
I think this Op-Ed is important since he is calling for institutional shareholders to make the companies in which they have an ownership stake do the right thing when it comes to declaring their political contributions (Bogle plainly does not agree with the ruling by The Supremes in the Citizens United case). And absent the passing and signing into law of legislation such as the DISCLOSE Act, this may be the next arena, if you will, in which we should engage those who would consolidate the corporate voice at the expense of our own once and for all.
No comments:
Post a Comment