Tag: Congress

Background on Boehner Before He Bids Bye-Bye

On By kingsjesterIn Politics7 Comments

boehnercryingHouse Republicans held what was billed as a procedural meeting yesterday afternoon, a meeting that proved as serene as lions lying around in the afternoon sun on the Serengeti.

Yahoo News reports

The caucus-wide meeting–the first such gathering since Boehner angered many conservatives by supporting a bill that allowed taxes to increase–could have gone much differently given the intense events of the past 48 hours. Boehner, for one, could have addressed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s very public rant against him for not holding a vote to offer federal relief aid to victims of Superstorm Sandy.

Instead, the discussion focused on the amendments, and Boehner did not bring up the fiscal cliff drama, several lawmakers said.

But while members harboring ill feelings toward party leadership remained silent, not all wounds are healed. For instance, unconfirmed rumors prior to the meeting had hinted at a battle to unseat Boehner as speaker. And while most members said they hadn’t heard anything of the sort and the speaker’s office officially denies any such efforts, Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, who voted against the fiscal cliff deal, did leave the meeting saying he didn’t plan to support Boehner for the position.

“I haven’t made a decision on what to do yet, but as of now, I still haven’t seen the changes I want to see,” Amash told reporters when he left the meeting. “He’s got until tomorrow.”

The body will vote Thursday on Boehner’s future.

Here is some information you may not have known about the Speaker of the House, courtesy of sourcewatch.org

In 1981 Boehner served on the board of trustees of Union Township, Butler County, Ohio. In 1984, he served as president of the township board of trustees.

Boehner served as an Ohio state representative from 1985 to 1990. In 1990, when U.S. Rep. Donald “Buz” Lukens (R-Ohio) was caught in a sex scandal involving a minor, Boehner challenged Lukens in the Republican primary and defeated the incumbent, while also upsetting the district’s former representative, Tom Kindness, who Boehner declared had abandoned his district to become a lobbyist. Boehner went on to victory in the 1990 general election and began serving in the U.S. House of Representatives the 102nd Congress.

He was a member of the Gang of Seven, a group of seven freshmen Republicans who assailed the Democratic leadership with accusations of corruption and arrogance over the misuse of the House Bank. According to a 1992 San Francisco Chronicle article the Gang “set the match to the bank scandal that has now engulfed the House, blackened its leadership and sparked a ‘spontaneous political combustion’ that many analysts say will fuel a record turnover in Congress.” (San Francisco Chronicle, 3/30/02)

Boehner told the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “I came as a reformer. But when people in charge don’t want to reform – the only way…is revolution.” (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 2/15/93)

The banking scandal involved 355 members, Democrats and Republicans, writing 8,331 overdrafts to the bank. The Gang pounced on the issue and forced the Democrats into a corner and eventually led to the tidal wave Republican Revolution of 1994.

Boehner came to Congress as one of the most pro-business, anti-government members in 1990. He advocated a flat tax and abolition of whole government agencies including the Department of Education and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Boehner quickly rose to the fourth highest position in the Republican leadership – Republican Conference Chairman – after chairing Newt Gingrich’s 1994 run for the Minority Leader post.

Boehner was on of the principal architects of the Contract With America. He also championed the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act.

When Newt Gingrich resigned his post as Speaker in the wake of the GOPs loss of seats in the 1998 election Boehner’s leadership post was challenged by J.C. Watts, the only black Republican congressman. Boehner lost to Watts 121-93.

In 2001 Boehner was named the Chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee where he would oversee numerous agencies that he planned on abolishing in the early 1990s. Boehner worked diligently to pass [[President Bush]]’s No Child Left Behind Act, reaching across the aisle as a conference committee chairman to work with Democrat George Miller (D).

Boehner has also been a strong supporter of school vouchers for private and religious schools and helped to push through the school voucher program for the District of Columbia.

Boehner has repeatedly tried to get a pension reform bill, favored by business leaders, passed by Congress. It has passed the House multiple times, but has consistently failed in the Senate.

Boehner was elected House Majority Leader on February 2, 2006, following Tom DeLay’s departure because of a criminal indictment.

There was brief controversy on the first ballot for Majority Leader. The first count showed more votes cast than Republicans present at the Conference meeting.[22] However, this turned out to be due to a misunderstanding on whether or not Congressman Luis Fortuño was allowed to vote on leadership.

Boehner campaigned as a reform candidate who could help the House Republicans cleanse and recover from the political damage caused by charges of ethics violations, corruption and money laundering leveled against prominent conservatives such as DeLay and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, in spite of his own ties to Abramoff.

He bested fellow candidates Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri and Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona, even though he was considered an underdog candidate to House Majority Whip Blunt. It was the most contested election among House Republicans since 1998. Boehner received 122 votes compared to 109 by Blunt in a run-off vote. Rep. Shadegg dropped out of the race after a loss in the first round of voting and his supporters backed Boehner.

Blunt kept his previous position as Majority Whip, the No. 3 leadership position in the House. Boehner has a strong pro-business reputation but the social conservatives in the GOP are questioning his commitment to their values. According to the Washington Post “From illegal immigration to sanctions on China to an overhaul of the pension system, Boehner, as chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, took ardently pro-business positions that were contrary to those of many in his party. Religious conservatives — examining his voting record — see him as a policymaker driven by small-government economic concerns, not theirs….. [He opposes] a tough illegal immigration bill that passed in December [2005] with overwhelming Republican support over Boehner’s opposition. One provision in the bill would mandate that every business verify the legality of every employee through the federal terrorism watch list and a database of Social Security numbers. For the bill’s authors, the measure is central to choking off illegal immigrants’ employment opportunities. To business groups and Boehner, it is unworkable.” Feb 12, 2006

Boehner has since backtracked on his reform platform, stalling on lobbying and ethics reform proposals put forward by Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-CA). Boehner stated on “Fox New Sunday” that Congress may be overreacting to the current lobbying scandal and voiced his opposition to a proposed congressional travel ban and a ban of earmark projects. The Washington Post writes that Boehner’s ascension to the Majority Leader post “make[s] it less likely that the more far-reaching proposals to restructure lobbying will become law.”  Boehner called the travel ban proposal “childish” in another interview.

Boehner is one of the top recipients of private travel, ranking 7th out of 638 members and former members at American Radio Works Power Trips. His trip totals cost $157,603.85.

After being humiliated by Obama and his Administration during the whole Fiscal Cliff Fiasco, Boehner has told his Republican colleagues that he will have no more one-one-one meetings with President Obama.

A little late now, isn’t it, John?

Perhaps the Republicans will elect a Conservative Speaker of the House, for a change.

And, perhaps Madonna will become a Southern Gospel Music Singer.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Fiscal Cliff: A Study in Crisis Management

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

chickenlittleThe definition of the term “Crisis Management” is just as it sounds: the ability of a leader to react appropriately to a crisis situation. Regarding America’s looming plunge over the Fiscal Cliff, however,   Political One-Upmanship is ruling the day, as the President Obama and Congress pose for the cameras, and, in less-than-good-faith, negotiate a deal regarding the biggest tax hike in U.S. History.

ABCNews.go.com has the story:

Political brinkmanship appears to have created a last minute chance for the White House and Congress to agree on a plan to avoid sending the country over the fiscal cliff.

President Obama emerged from an Oval Office meeting with Congressional leaders this evening to say “we had a constructive meeting today” and that he was “moderately optimistic” that they could devise a federal budget proposal ahead of a Jan. 1 deadline that would otherwise automatically trigger a wide range of tax increases and spending cuts. Economists fear that such a combination could throw the country back into a recession.

He said Senate Majority Leader Harry, a Democrat, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, were trying to quickly fashion a deal.

“Sens. Reid and McConnell are discussing a potential agreement where we can get a bipartisan bill out of the Senate and over to the House in a timely fashion so that we meet the Dec. 31 deadline,” Obama said in a hastily-arranged statement. “But given how things have been working in this town we always have to wait and see to see whether it actually happens.”

Admitting the weekend could ultimately prove fruitless, the president said as a backup plan he had instructed Reid to deliver the Democratic proposal to the Senate floor for a straight up-or-down vote. That would boost taxes for couples making more than $250,000.

“I believe such a proposal could pass both houses with bipartisan majorities as long as those leaders allow it to actually come to a vote,” Obama said. “If members of the House or the Senate want to vote no, they can, but we should let everybody vote. That’s the way this is supposed to work. If you can get a majority in the House and you can get a majority in the Senate, then we should be able to pass a bill.”

The president lamented that a deal is coming down to the final hours.

“The American people are watching what we do… (their) patience is already thin,” the president said. “It’s deja vu all over again.”

He added later that for Americans the repeated last second efforts to dodge economic crises “is mind boggling to them. It has to stop.”

Translation: You Redneck Congresscritters representing the Bitter Clingers better do it my way or I’ll throw a Hissy Fit!

And, as Grover Norquist reminds us: that ain’t exactly the best solution.

As the “fiscal cliff” of tax hikes and spending cuts draws closer, anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist repeated his call on CNBC’s “Closing Bell”for spending cuts instead of tax increases to deal with the country’s fiscal problems.

“If you put tax increases on the table, there’s never any spending restraint,” Norquist said, citing examples where taxes went up under previous administrations but spending continued unfettered.

“All Obama has done for the last four years is clamor for higher taxes to spend more money,” the president of Americans for Tax Reform told CNBC. “The only time we’ve beat him back on spending at all was during the debt-ceiling crisis.”

Norquist said Obama was “willing to save $1 trillion by not occupying Iraq for the next decade. He wanted to count that like not continuing the War of 1812 was his budget cut.”

He added that raising taxes isn’t a compromise because the problem is spending.

He also called on the Senate to pass a budget, which it has failed to do for years. “Then we could compare it to the Republican budget and perhaps we could compromise on how much spending we need to bring down,” Norquist said.

When we get past the cliff, any hike in the debt ceiling should be accompanied by similar cuts in spending, Norquist said.

“[Speaker John] Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell have made clear if the president wants a dollar of debt-ceiling increase, we need to cut spending a dollar. That goes for $1 trillion,” Norquist said. “That kind of spending restraint is exactly the kind of thing we need to do in the future for any debt-ceiling increase —period.”

Just as there are different general Management styles, there are different styles of Crisis Management: altruistic and self-serving.

What Obama and our Congresscritters are attempting to do, is come up with some sort of last-minute whoop-te-do stop-gap measure, in a feverish attempt to stave off the consequences of being bad stewards of our money.

With President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) leading the way.

The whole situation reminds me of a Director, whom I reported to, when I was working as a Media Specialist at one of the country’s largest and most prestigious hospitals. This lady, (an Ed.D.) would wait until the Ninth Hour, as the deadline for a major project for her superiors approached, and then she would turn the office upside-down, in a scene reminiscent of the pie fight scene in the Tony Curtis/Peter Falk Classic, “The Great Race”.

The conference room table would be stacked with all her paperwork, while our two Admins flew wildly around, attempting to organize her mess,  like their hair was on fire and their rear ends were catching.  Meanwhile, my manager would be conspicuously gone from the general vicinity all day, leaving the rest of us at the mercy of the dear lady.

The president, like my former director, seems to be relishing the power he holds during the chaos of these Ninth-Hour Negotiations.

Which just proves the old chestnut:

If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs…then you obviously don’t have a clue as to what is going on.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama: Using Newtown for Political Extortion

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

obamaobliviousPresident Barack Hussein Obama has become downright shameful in his attempts to use an unspeakable tragedy to further his own political plans and schemes.  And, his ego won’t let him take “no” for an answer.

Last night on Fox News Special Report, Dr. Charles Krauthammer said:

I think the president invoking the massacre of children to essentially say the Republicans need to accept his terms of surrender in the negotiations is not just a non sequitur, I think it’s sacrilege. And it’s of a piece with the whole tone of his news conference and this is the way he conducts them generally, which is he is excessively self-righteous. He talks about the other side of being unprincipled, not interested in the national interest, slaves of ideology which he says makes no sense. And as you mention, invested in opposing him to the point they are willing to let the country suffer.

So it’s a combination of self-righteousness and narcissism. It’s just a very unpleasant tone and there is no reason he can’t either avoid that or give some credit to the other side for sincerity in just seeing a different way to approach the crisis the country has. I think that would be respectful but it’s a lot to ask of Obama and he never delivers on that.

Back on May 24th, Dr. K remarked that Obama’s narcissism would not allow him to replace VP Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the remainder of his Re-election Campaign.

In an article, written in response to this statement, posted on AmericanThinker.com, June 9, 2010, titled “Narcissist in Chief?”, Eileen F. Toplansky wrote:

…His contempt for America is staggering. His haughtiness towards the American electorate and his puffery with dictators in a bid for their admiration is breathtaking.

Furthermore, the president intimates that we are not capable of understanding and clarifying issues — Joe the Plumber could not possibly be accurate when he correctly asked if Obama’s ideas were, in fact, socialist. What does a guy who works with a wrench know about such things?

Obama accepts the notion that he is the messiah — that he and he alone can fix this country and, for that matter, the world. If ever there was an exaggerated achievement without commensurate accomplishment, the Nobel Peace Prize given to Obama would be it. He expects to be recognized as superior even when he has achieved nothing positive to show it. He ignores the evidence about global warming and man’s alleged interference because this simply does not comply with his demands — details be damned.

There are no substantive examples of his school achievements. His portfolio is razor-thin, and there is evidence that he did not author his own books, yet he rides on the crest of all-consuming power and privilege.

Author Rob Saar states that “people with narcissistic personalities tend … to deprecate and treat with contempt those from whom they do not expect anything (often their former idols). Their relations with others are often exploitative … Beneath a surface that is often charming and engaging, one senses coldness and ruthlessness.”

How often have we been privy to that allegedly cool demeanor of Obama’s turning into a dismissive disdain for anyone who does not agree with him and/or stands in his way? He distanced himself from his pastor of over twenty years because that relationship hurt his ends. He has knifed companies in the back that once financially supported him. He seems obsessed as he constantly bashes former President Bush and rails, yet again, against the oil companies and others. All of these entities receive derision and abuse from this man.

He can do no wrong in his own eyes, as he views “others as objects to be manipulated.” Arrogantly he dismissed a reporter’s question at a press conference that was supposed to be about the Daniel Pearl Freedom of Press Act!

He exploits all issues, making everything into a crisis, and yet when he accomplishes nothing to ameliorate the difficulty, he turns and blames it on everyone else.

Hence, his political leveraging of the horrible massacre of innocent children in Newtown, Connecticut into an attempt to force the House Republicans into bowing down, kissing his…ummm…feet, and acquiescing to his monumentally Marxist Fiscal Cliff Proposal, while simultaneously, using the same tragedy in an attempt to confiscate law-abiding citizens’ guns.

In October of 2008, on a campaign stop outside of Toledo, Ohio, Obama spoke to a plumber named Joe Wurzelbacher, who was concerned that, if elected president, Obama was going to raise taxes on small business owners, just like him. Obama told Joe:

…it’s not that I want to punish your success – I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you – that they’ve got a chance at success too.”

…I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

So, why do I say that Obama’s Fiscal Cliff Campaign and his renewed push for Gun Control Confiscation are tied together?

Almost a century ago, Marxist Revolutionary Vladimir Illyich Lenin wrote:

One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers (Communist) and the disarming of the bourgeoisie (the middle class).

The arming of the workers…

In February of 2012, the IRS ordered 60 Remington Model 870 police 12 gauge pump action shotguns for the Criminal Investigation Unit.

…In March DHS ordered 750 million rounds of hollow point ammunition. It then turned around and ordered an additional 750 million rounds of miscellaneous bullets including some that are capable of penetrating walls.

(August, 2012) The Social Security Administration (SSA) confirms that it is purchasing 174 thousand rounds of hollow point bullets to be delivered to 41 locations in major cities across the U.S.

The disarming of the Middle Class…

From the New York Times:

President Obama declared on Wednesday that he would make gun control a “central issue” as he opens his second term, promising to submit broad new firearm proposals to Congress no later than January and to employ the full power of his office to overcome deep-seated political resistance.

Now, boys and girls, I’m not one given to tin-foil hat conspiracy theories. However, if all this information I’ve compiled in today’s Blog doesn’t make you stop and take notice, then, I suggest you go back to watching The Kardashians.

The rest of us will remain vigilant.

It’s that “enemies, foreign and domestic” thingy that has us Americans, who are paying attention, a little worried.

Until He Comes, 

KJ