Political Cage Match: Professor versus Puffed-Up Congressman

Posted: November 25, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Congress, corruption, education, Environment, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska)

Last Friday historian Douglas Brinkley testified before the House Natural Resources Committee on the topic of preserving the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Republicans, of course, have been trying for years to open it up to oil drilling. Brinkley, whose latest book is The Quiet World: Saving Alaska’s Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960, argued that preserving one of the last truly wild places in the U.S. should trump helping the oil companies make more money.

Alaska Rep. Don Young (who had skipped most of the testimony) broke into Brinkley’s presentation, calling the historian by the wrong name and saying his testimony was “garbage.” Then the two had a hilarious shouting match. IMO, Brinkley came out the winner, but judge for yourself:

Young: If you ever want want to see an exercise in futility … That side has already made up its mind and this side has already made up its mind. I call it garbage, Dr. Rice, it comes from the mouth –

Brinkley: It’s Dr. Brinkley. Rice is a university – I know you went to Yuba [a community college] and you couldn’t graduate.

Young: Well, okay, I can call you anything I want if you sit in that chair. You just be quiet! You be quiet!

Brinkley: You don’t own me. I pay your salary.

Young: I don’t own you, but I can tell you right now—

Brinkley: I work for the private sector, you work for the taxpayer.

Next, committee chairman Doc Hastings interrupted and lectured Brinkley. But Young was still “pissed right now.”

Finally, Brinkley said he was surprised to

hear a congressman today say there’s nothing in his district. It’s boring. It’s flat. It’s not exciting. I don’t know a representative who doesn’t love their district. Every state in America’s landscape is beautiful if you love it. But some people love money more than their homeland or where they live, and I’m afraid that that’s why this fight has to keep coming up 50 years later, we’re still trying to tell people the Arctic refuge is real. It belongs to the American people.

On Friday evening, Brinkley appeared on The Ed Show on MSNBC to discuss his experience with Rep. Young.

A week later, the Congressional cage match is still causing controversy. At the Minnesota Post, Don Shelby, a friend of Brinkley’s wrote a column about the dust up.

Brinkley told me he knew that Congressman Young, at another hearing, had waved a walrus penis bone at Mollie Beattie, the incoming chief of the Fish and Wildlife Service. Brinkley may have read the Rolling Stone article about Young that quotes the congressman as saying, “Environmentalists are a self-centered bunch of waffle-stomping, Harvard-graduating, intellectual idiots.” The quote continues, “[They] are not Americans, never have been Americans and never will be Americans.” ….

Brinkley should not have been surprised that Congressman Young showed up late and missed the bulk of the historian’s testimony. Young is often cited as the congressman missing more votes than any other member of the House. Brinkley would have known that Young was the co-sponsor, with discredited Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, of the bill to pay for the infamous “bridge to nowhere.”

Brinkley told me: “Everyone knows that Young is just a menacing blowhard. He has a history of being rude, he browbeats and he’s snotty toward anyone who cares about the environment.”

I asked Brinkley if he was surprised that Committee Chair Doc Hastings took Young’s side and continued lecturing the historian. “No,” said Brinkley. “They are tied together at the hip. They are both oil company factotums. They are a tag team.”

Young claims that Brinkley is just milking the incident to sell books. Brinkley told a Houston TV station

that his students applauded when he walked into class. “I have received now hundreds and hundreds of emails from people all over, I’ve not received one negative one,” he said. “I’ve had my entire Rice University and including Texas conservatives cheering me on for standing up to his bullying tactics.”

I’m not usually much of a fan of Brinkley’s, but I have to applaud him on this one. I don’t care if he’s doing it to sell books. Greedy, incompetent politicians like Don Young need to be revealed for what they are: pigs at the trough.

The Audacity of No Shame: Gingrich/Santorum Edition

Posted: November 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: worker rights | Tags: , , , , , | 41 Comments

There are policies  supported by today’s Republicans that go beyond long standing American Values. Is this really still the party of Abraham Lincoln?  Last night at Harvard’s Kennedy School, Newt Gingrich said that child work laws “entrap” poor children into poverty.  He went beyond  this to suggest “that the best way of handle failing schools is to fire the janitors, hire the local students and let them get paid for upkeep”.

“This is something that no liberal wants to deal with,” Gingrich said. “Core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization against children in the poorest neighborhoods, crippling them by putting them in schools that fail has done more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy. It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid.

“You say to somebody, you shouldn’t go to work before you’re what, 14, 16 years of age, fine. You’re totally poor. You’re in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing. I’ve tried for years to have a very simple model,” he said. “Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”

He added, “You go out and talk to people, as I do, you go out and talk to people who are really successful in one generation. They all started their first job between nine and 14 years of age. They all were either selling newspapers, going door to door, they were doing something, they were washing cars.”

“They all learned how to make money at a very early age,” he said. “What do we say to poor kids in poor neighborhoods? Don’t do it. Remember all that stuff about don’t get a hamburger flipping job? The worst possible advice you could give to poor children. Get any job that teaches you to show up on Monday. Get any job that teaches you to stay all day even if you are in a fight with your girlfriend. The whole process of making work worthwhile is central.”

The former House Speaker acknowledged that it was an unconventional pitch, saying, “You’re going to see from me extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America and give people a chance to rise very rapidly.”

I do believe that it’s just a matter of time when we see them suggest the return of forced labor and poor farms.  Earlier today, I found this video from Santorum suggesting the Christian thing to do was to allow people without jobs and food to suffer.  I wasn’t raised Catholic, but my understanding of that particular brand of Christianity is that outreach and care for the poor has been a central part of the church’s core mission for years.  Michelle Bachmann has already suggested letting the unemployed starve.

“Our nation needs to stop doing for people what they can and should do for themselves. Self reliance means, if anyone will not work, neither should he eat.”

Is the new Republican pogrome one that forces the poor to sell the children which is basically what happens in undeveloped nations all over the world?

Are they suggesting we return to a time of indentured servitude and child slavery?  It seems that way to me.  Labor reforms of the 20th century included laws regulating the use of children as workers.   These have essentially been core US values since the very dawn of the 20th century.  The attempts to let children be children instead of the property of their parents and others to be used as slaves was enshrined in national law via Labor Standards Act in 1938.  The movement to end enslavement of children in the US began as early as the 19th century in 1832 New England.

The New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics and Other Workingmen resolve that “Children should not be allowed to labor in the factories from morning till night, without any time for healthy recreation and mental culture,” for it “endangers their . . . well-being and health”

The mental, emotional, and physical development of children is such that they are endangered in many working environments.  They don’t have the physical or mental maturity to make all kinds of basic decisions and they certain don’t have the physical or emotional power to stand up to exploitative adults.   You can see this in  the exploitation of children by pedophiles in positions of power of children like priests, doctors, coaches, scout leaders, and teachers..  Children are the least among us to be able to stand up to bad situations and bad people.  That’s exactly why our laws protect them.  However, the pro-slavery argument of “states’ rights” has resurrected itself in a new brand of neoconfederacy.

Newly elected extremist Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has argued that child labor laws are actually unconstitutional.  This is the Tea Party candidate that took down Bob Bennett. It is easy to see the anti-labor regulation ideology of the Koch Brothers and others in the rhetoric.  They clearly want to remove 20th century labor laws.

“Congress decided it wanted to prohibit that practice, so it passed a law. No more child labor. The Supreme Court heard a challenge to that law, and the Supreme Court decided a case in 1918 called Hammer v. Dagenhardt,” Lee said. “In that case, the Supreme Court acknowledged something very interesting — that, as reprehensible as child labor is, and as much as it ought to be abandoned — that’s something that has to be done by state legislators, not by Members of Congress.”

Lee’s reasoning was that labor and manufacturing are “by their very nature, local activities” and not “interstate commercial transactions.” He added: “This may sound harsh, but it was designed to be that way. It was designed to be a little bit harsh.”

The key Congressional law that addresses child labor is the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which placed a series of restrictions against the employment of people under 18 in the public and private sectors.

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law in the 1941 United States v. Darby Lumber decision, overturning Hammer, on the basis of the constitutional authority of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. It has hardly run into controversies since.

Lee said he was not opposed to laws regulating child labor, but merely insisted they be controlled by state governments, not Congress. The issue of states rights is particularly popular in Utah, widely known as America’s most conservative state.

The slippery return to slavery and women and children as property is again cloaked in the mantel of “state’s rights”. There’s been a Maine bill already seeking to overturn child labor laws.   There are ongoing efforts in other states to also dismantle laws protecting children from exploitation.  Missouri seems to have jumped on the child labor bandwagon also.

Maine State Rep. David Burns is the latest of many Republican lawmakers concerned that employers aren’t allowed to do enough to exploit child workers:

LD 1346 suggests several significant changes to Maine’s child labor law, most notably a 180-day period during which workers under age 20 would earn $5.25 an hour.

The state’s current minimum wage is $7.50 an hour.

Rep. David Burns, R-Whiting, is sponsoring the bill, which also would eliminate the maximum number of hours a minor over 16 can work during school days.

Burns’ bill is particularly insidious, because it directly encourages employers to hire children or teenagers instead of adult workers. Because workers under 20 could be paid less than adults under this GOP proposal, minimum wage workers throughout Maine would likely receive a pink slip as their twentieth birthday present so that their boss could replace them with someone younger and cheaper.

And Burns is just one of many prominent Republicans who believe that America’s robust protections against the exploitation of children are wrongheaded:

It’s easy to image what kind of jobs children could be forced to do under this new Republican form of child servitude.  Farm labor comes to my mind.  Since Alabama has moved to vacate their migrant worker population, can forcing the unemployed, children, and prisoners to toil in farms for less than minimum wage be far behind?  What kind of country would undo the legal protection of its most vulnerable citizens?  These candidates repulse me.  How disingenuous is it of Newt to suggest that you can move quickly out of poverty by farming your child out as free/cheap labor?

Late Night: A Few Good Smackdowns

Posted: August 2, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: education, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 20 Comments

Barney Frank explains to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell why he couldn’t vote for the Obama-McConnell-Boehner bill. Barney comes on at about the 5:27 mark. The first five minutes are interesting too, but you can skip over them if you want to. I couldn’t find a video with just the Barney interview.

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Barney really lives up to his surname, doesn’t he? He just lays it all out with no bullsh&t. Iraq and Afghanistan exempted from budget cuts? No guarantee of equal cuts in Defense and Medicare/Medicaid? Medicare cuts will keep seniors from getting medical care and result in hospital jobs being lost. He also makes a good point about the possibility of invoking the 14th amendment. And there’s more. Please watch it.

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Another good guy, Bernie Sanders, angrily explains why he won’t vote for the “grotesque” bill either. Please, Bernie, run for President!

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Via Gawker, here’s a great video of Matt Damon, with his mom standing next to him, explaining to a libertarian “MBA type” from Reason Magazine that some people don’t work just to get money. Some people are actually dedicated to their work despite shitty salaries and long hours. Like teachers. Damon and his mom, who is a teacher, were participating in the Save Our Schools Million Teacher March this past weekend.

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Please discuss, or use this as an open thread.

Why Did Republicans Shut Down the FAA?

Posted: July 26, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Republican politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, unemployment, worker rights | Tags: , , , , , , | 27 Comments

Somehow I missed this story on Saturday, what with all the other horrors that have been in the news lately. House Republicans have shut down the Federal Aviation Administration, costing taxpayers millions in uncollected taxes and putting 4,000 people out of work immediately, with 90,000 jobs in jeopardy.


From the AFL-CIO Now Blog

…House Republicans refused to pass a funding authorization bill, money for airport improvements has dried up and construction workers at many airports have been sent home.

Republicans grounded the FAA because they want to take away Democratic union elections for of aviation and rail workers.

Congress could have passed temporary spending authority for the FAA, as it has 20 times in the past without controversy. But like their tactics on debt ceiling negotiations, Republicans are demanding their way at any cost.

Not only is the FAA shutdown costing jobs, but it’s costing the federal government $200 million a week in uncollected airline ticket fees. That lost revenue is added to the national debt Republicans claim they are so concerned about. On top of that, instead of reducing ticket prices, the airlines are pocketing the fees.

The shutdown is putting construction projects on hold all over the country. In the San Francisco bay area, for example,

About 60 employees of Devcon Construction were set to show up at Oakland International Airport on Monday to continue working on the airport’s brand-new air traffic control tower.

That is, until they were told not to, until further notice. “We were informed Friday to stop all construction activity,” said Dan Anello, a project manager at the Milpitas-based company.

That was when, the House, in its infinite wisdom, refused to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration’s operating authority, resulting in the partial shutdown of the agency, the halting of funds for dozens of similar projects nationwide, and further additions to the nation’s unemployment rolls.

If you Google, you’ll find lots of similar stories. According to the Washington Post, the shutdown is not going to end anytime soon.

Though planes continued to fly unhindered nationwide, a dispute about service to a handful of tiny airports crippled Federal Aviation Administration operations for the third day Monday, costing the agency an estimated $30 million a day.

With House Republicans and Senate Democrats apparently in locked positions, and compromise an elusive pursuit on Capitol Hill this month, no one was ready to predict when funding might be restored to the federal agency.

“Don’t hold your breath,” advised one Senate staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

the $30 million per day is from lost tax revenues.

The Christian Science Monitor confirms that the dispute involves Republican efforts to hinder union organizing.

Democrats said the real issue is that Republicans are insisting Democrats accept a host of controversial provisions added to a long-term FAA spending bill approved by the House in April. Among their key differences is a GOP proposal sought by industry that would make it more difficult for airline workers to unionize.

The Senate passed its own long-term funding bill in February without the labor provision. Democrats insist the House must drop the provision. They’ve also accused Republicans of tying the elimination of rural air subsidies to their extension bill as a means to prod Democrats to make concessions on the labor issue.

The transformation of the U.S. into a third world country through the Shock Doctrine is certainly moving rapidly these days. The shocks are coming so quickly you barely have time to catch your breath before the next one hits.

Thursday Reads

Posted: July 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Democratic Politics, Federal Budget and Budget deficit, morning reads, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, Social Security, the internet, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, unemployment, voodoo economics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 41 Comments

Good Morning!! I’m going to start out with some interesting poll results that came out yesterday.

According to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, a lot of ordinary Republicans are unhappy with their GOP representatives in Washington, DC. From the WaPo:

While Republicans in Congress have remained united in their opposition to any tax increases, the poll finds GOP majorities favoring some of the specific changes advocated by the president, including higher income tax rates for the wealthiest Americans.

There is also broad dissatisfaction with Obama’s unwillingness to reach across the aisle: Nearly six in 10 of those polled say the president has not been open enough to compromise. Among independents, 79 percent say Republicans aren’t willing enough to make a deal, while 62 percent say the same of Obama.

Republicans may also be losing the war of perception about who stands with whom in the debates over the deficit and the economy. A majority view the president as more committed to protecting the interests of the middle class and small businesses, while large majorities see Republicans as defending the economic interests of big corporations and Wall Street financial institutions.

ABC’s The Note reports that based on the same poll,

Against a backdrop of broad concern about the impact of default, 80 percent of Americans in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll say they’re dissatisfied or even angry with the way the federal government is working, up 11 points in a single month. It last was this high in 1992, during the economic downturn that cost the first President Bush a second term.

The times today are nearly as tough: The ABC News Frustration Index has risen to 72 on its scale of 0 to 100, its highest since just before the 2010 midterm elections and well into the political danger zone. The index combines dissatisfaction with the government, anti-incumbent sentiment and ratings of the president and the economy alike.

But unlike 1992 – or 2010 – the opposition party’s taking even more heat than the president. While President Obama for the first time has fallen under 40 percent approval for handling the economy, the Republicans in Congress do even worse, 28 percent approval. On handling the deficit, it’s a weak 38 percent approval for Obama, but a weaker 27 percent for the GOP. And on handling taxes, Obama has 45 percent approval, the GOP, 31 percent.

It’s good to know that some Americans are getting angry. I wish they’d get out the pitchforks and make some noise about it in the streets.

A couple of GOP governors are dropping in the polls too. Media star Chris Christie is turning off his NJ constituents.

Gov. Chris Christie’s popularity has declined significantly over the first half of 2011 and he would have a very difficult time winning reelection if voters in New Jersey went to the polls today, according to a survey by Public Policy Polling.

While Republican activists outside New Jersey want Christie to seek the party’s 2012 presidential nomination, only 43 percent of Garden State voters approve of the job the governor is doing to 53 percent who disapprove.

The figures represent a 13 point decline from when Public Policy Polling last surveyed voters in January, when Christie’s standing was 48 percent approval and 45 percent disapproval.

Christie’s numbers are steady with Republicans but independents have really turned on him, going from approving by a 55 percent to 39 percent margin to disapproving by a 54 percent to 40 percent margin. And his crossover popularity with Democrats is on the decline as well. Where 23 percent approved of him in January, now only 16 percent do.

Christie has been making huge cuts in government services. I guess austerity isn’t as popular with the grass roots as it is with the power elites.

Gov. John Kasich of Ohio is even more unpopular than Christie.

The latest poll released Wednesday by Connecticut’s Quinnipiac University showed that only 35 percent of registered voters approve of the job the Republican governor has done in his first six months. Exactly half say they disapprove, up 1 percentage point since May, with the remainder undecided.

“Even after the state budget has been approved as he promised without raising taxes, and even though the Quinnipiac University poll finds that 63 percent say they favor such an approach, Gov. Kasich’s name remains mud in the eyes of the Ohio electorate,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

The same poll shows that even some of those who approve of the governor’s performance are prepared to reject his signature law restricting the collective bargaining power of government employees at the ballot on Nov. 8. Fifty-six percent of voters say it should be repealed, up 2 percentage points since May.

Republicans always overreach, don’t they? It looks like the 2010 win may have been just a flash in the pan.

Michele Bachmann is surging in the polls against Mitt Romney.

The Minnesota congresswoman returned to Iowa early Wednesday morning as polls show her gaining ground nationally as a top alternative to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the early front-runner for the GOP nomination. Since formally entering the race last month, she has eclipsed other Republicans in the field, including fellow Minnesotan Tim Pawlenty, who has been actively campaigning all year.

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll offered a statistical glimpse at their diverging fortunes. In the poll, 16% of the registered Republicans picked Ms. Bachmann as their top choice, putting her second behind Mr. Romney, who remains the first choice of 30% of the Republicans polled. In the same survey, 2% of registered Republicans chose the former Minnesota governor as their top pick, down from 6% in April.

Meanwhile, Bachmann is still being hassled about her migraine headaches. Karl Rove is calling for her to release her medical records. Boy those Republican power brokers are really scared of Bachmann, aren’t they?

A doctor who has examined Bachmann says the headaches aren’t a big deal.

A letter dated Wednesday from a congressional doctor whose office has examined Republican Michele Bachmann described the presidential candidate’s migraines as occurring “infrequently” and controlled by prescription medication.

Bachmann’s campaign distributed the letter from Dr. Brian Monahan, the attending physician in Congress. Bachmann has been evaluated by that office during her three terms in Washington.

Former NH Senator Judd Gregg thinks the Republicans in the House will push the debt limit battle to the brink. In fact, he thinks it will take Social Security checks not going out to get them to agree to raising the debt ceiling.

“My gut tells me that we’ll need a weekend of drama — maybe a weekend of the government not paying its bills — politicians need drama to make something happen. As soon as social security checks don’t go out, the politics will change. I suspect it’ll take artificial drama to get closure past the House.”

“Boehner understands that a shutdown is bad for his caucus and that there’s something viable short of a shutdown but right now… it’s a 50-50 chance that we go into a few days of disruption.”

Gregg said lawmakers don’t really care about the nation’s credit rating:

“Policy-makers only worry about a ratings downgrade at the margins. They don’t really care. The ratings agencies put themselves in a corner that’s foolish. I’ve always found them to be incredibly naive about the political process. To be so definitive is foolish.”

“For the ratings agencies to make this drop-dead date, it’s stupid and naive because we’ll straighten it out, but our process doesn’t allow it to do it overnight.”

Gregg says all this will means the Republicans get most of the blame for the mess. They didn’t learn anything from what happened to Gingrich, did they?

Gregg is probably right about the gang of six plan, since that is basically what the Republicans already rejected. And Brian Beutler reports that they are rejecting it again.

As time goes on, and conservative interest groups and members of Congress rip into it, support among Republicans for the Gang of Six plan to reduce deficits will begin to wane. In fact, that’s already happening.

In a publicly released memo meant to undermine support for the Gang of Six plan in its current form, House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) laments, “it increases revenues while failing to seriously address exploding federal spending on health care, which is the primary driver of our debt. There are also serious concerns that the proposal’s substance on spending falls far short of what is needed to achieve the savings it claims.”

And check this out from Politico:

A few wealthy donors have called Cantor to tell him they wouldn’t mind if their taxes are raised. During two closed meetings this week — one with vote-counting lawmakers, and another with the entire conference — Cantor told colleagues that some well-heeled givers have told them they’re willing to pay more taxes. Cantor, according to an aide, has responded that House Republicans aren’t standing up for the wealthy, but rather for the middle class, who want to see their taxes stay low.

Yeah sure, Eric. You’re standing up for the middle class. ROFLOL!

With unemployment so high, all we need is more impediments to getting hired. According to the NYT, even obscure blog comments could come into play as companies evaluate job candidates.

A year-old start-up, Social Intelligence, scrapes the Internet for everything prospective employees may have said or done online in the past seven years.

Then it assembles a dossier with examples of professional honors and charitable work, along with negative information that meets specific criteria: online evidence of racist remarks; references to drugs; sexually explicit photos, text messages or videos; flagrant displays of weapons or bombs and clearly identifiable violent activity.

[….]

Less than a third of the data surfaced by Mr. Drucker’s firm comes from such major social platforms as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. He said much of the negative information about job candidates comes from deep Web searches that find comments on blogs and posts on smaller social sites, like Tumblr, the blogging site, as well as Yahoo user groups, e-commerce sites, bulletin boards and even Craigslist.

….it is photos and videos that seem to get most people in trouble. “Sexually explicit photos and videos are beyond comprehension,” Mr. Drucker said. “We also see flagrant displays of weapons. And we see a lot of illegal activity. Lots and lots of pictures of drug use.”

I’ll end with this nightmarish story from the LA Times: Witness tells of horror as 3 swept over Vernal Fall in Yosemite

Bibee, a 28-year-old carpenter who grew up in Angels Camp, northwest of the park, had brought Amanda Lee, a visitor from Missouri, to the top of Vernal Fall on Tuesday — her first visit to Yosemite, but the latest of many for him.

They were standing behind a metal barricade, peering at the cascade….Bibee saw a man cross over the barricade. He was leaning over the 317-foot waterfall, holding a young girl, who was screaming in terror. People begged them to get back. “I’m yelling at him, ‘You SOB, get over here!'” Bibee said. Eventually, the two returned to safety.

But then Bibee noticed that three other people had also crossed over, and were “taking pictures and being stupid.”

The three people, members of a church group, fell into the water and went over the falls. All are presumed dead. Why would people go past a barricade and warning signs to stand on the edge of a raging waterfall? But it’s not the first time. The article says twelve people have gone over the falls previously–all were killed.

That’s it for me. What are you reading and blogging about today?

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