Here's the reason that Spitzer and Parker shouldn't be on the air....to pretend that they are fair and balanced is just a joke....in fact to allow Elliot Spitzer to do anything after his behavior while in office is a disgrace...and for Parker she has changed her "opinion" significantly after being on CNN....maybe that's part of the reason that noone watches CNN any more!
Friday, November 12, 2010
More Waste while Trying to Prevent Waste!
Obama and Government Beaurocrats just don't get it....
Obama panel probes stimulus waste -- at Ritz Carlton
By: Byron York Chief Political Correspondent
11/11/10 10:10 AM EST
Members of a key panel created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus bill, have scheduled a meeting on November 22 to consider ways to prevent "fraud, waste, and abuse of Recovery Act funds." The meeting will be held at the super-luxe Ritz Carlton Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.
The group is the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, a sub-committee of the larger Recovery Accountability and Transparency board (sometimes known as the RAT board). The stimulus bill set up the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, or RIAP, to make recommendations to identify and prevent waste of the bill's $814 billion in stimulus spending.
"The purpose of the November 22, 2010 meeting is to allow the RIAP to have an open dialogue, with input from the public, on issues relating to fraud, waste, and abuse of Recovery Act funds," says a notice in the Federal Register. Specifically, participants in the meeting will discuss various techniques to detect and prevent fraud, waste, and abuse, as well as larger issues of transparency and public awareness. Portions of the meeting will be open to the public, while other parts will be closed.
The Ritz-Carlton is located "in the midst of the picturesque Camelback Corridor, the city's premier shopping, dining and financial district," according the hotel's website. Hungry waste-and-abuse hunters can dine in the "casual elegance, relaxed atmosphere and uniquely inviting ambiance of the European-inspired bistro 24." Or they can enjoy Afternoon Tea in the "uniquely warm and inviting" Lobby Lounge. And at any time, waste-and-abuse watchdogs who also enjoy golf will be "just minutes from some of the best courses in the world," including the Tournament Players Club, the Arizona Biltmore, and several others.
And of course, there's one other element to the story: The board is holding a meeting in Arizona, home of the immigration law that President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have condemned and are challenging in court, and a state that is also the target of boycotts by a number of left-leaning groups and local governments around the country.
According to the Federal Register notice, members of the public who want to attend are instructed to send their comments to panel@ratb.gov and write "November 22, 2010 RIAP public comment" in the subject line.
Obama panel probes stimulus waste -- at Ritz Carlton
By: Byron York Chief Political Correspondent
11/11/10 10:10 AM EST
Members of a key panel created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus bill, have scheduled a meeting on November 22 to consider ways to prevent "fraud, waste, and abuse of Recovery Act funds." The meeting will be held at the super-luxe Ritz Carlton Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.
The group is the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, a sub-committee of the larger Recovery Accountability and Transparency board (sometimes known as the RAT board). The stimulus bill set up the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, or RIAP, to make recommendations to identify and prevent waste of the bill's $814 billion in stimulus spending.
"The purpose of the November 22, 2010 meeting is to allow the RIAP to have an open dialogue, with input from the public, on issues relating to fraud, waste, and abuse of Recovery Act funds," says a notice in the Federal Register. Specifically, participants in the meeting will discuss various techniques to detect and prevent fraud, waste, and abuse, as well as larger issues of transparency and public awareness. Portions of the meeting will be open to the public, while other parts will be closed.
The Ritz-Carlton is located "in the midst of the picturesque Camelback Corridor, the city's premier shopping, dining and financial district," according the hotel's website. Hungry waste-and-abuse hunters can dine in the "casual elegance, relaxed atmosphere and uniquely inviting ambiance of the European-inspired bistro 24." Or they can enjoy Afternoon Tea in the "uniquely warm and inviting" Lobby Lounge. And at any time, waste-and-abuse watchdogs who also enjoy golf will be "just minutes from some of the best courses in the world," including the Tournament Players Club, the Arizona Biltmore, and several others.
And of course, there's one other element to the story: The board is holding a meeting in Arizona, home of the immigration law that President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have condemned and are challenging in court, and a state that is also the target of boycotts by a number of left-leaning groups and local governments around the country.
According to the Federal Register notice, members of the public who want to attend are instructed to send their comments to panel@ratb.gov and write "November 22, 2010 RIAP public comment" in the subject line.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
The Truth About Earmarks.....And Why They Need to be Done Away With!
Here's a good piece on earmarks....It cuts through a lot of the political rhetoric out there today....we need to push Congress to eliminate these Earmarks as well as eliminating the "slush funds" created by the Executive Branch and the Administration. This type of spending should simply not be allowed!!! Written by Tom Coburn, US Senator from Oklahoma.
Earmark Myths and Realities
November 10, 2010 4:39 P.M. By Sen. Tom Coburn
As Senate Republicans prepare to vote on an earmark moratorium, I would encourage my colleagues to consider four myths and four realities of the debate.
Myths of the earmark debate:
1. Eliminating earmarks does not actually save any money
This argument has serious logical inconsistencies. The fact is earmarks do spend real money. If they didn’t spend money, why defend them? Stopping an activity that spends money does result in less spending. It’s that simple. For instance, Congress spent $16.1 billion on pork in Fiscal Year 2010. If Congress does not do earmarks in 2011, we could save $16.1 billion. In no way is Congress locked into to shifting that $16.1 billion to other programs unless it wants to.
2. Earmarks represent a very tiny portion of the federal budget and eliminating them would do little to reduce the deficit
It’s true that earmarks themselves represent a tiny portion of the budget, but a small rudder can help steer a big ship, which is why I’ve long described earmarks as the gateway drug to spending addiction in Washington. No one can deny that earmarks like the Cornhusker Kickback have been used to push through extremely costly and onerous bills. Plus, senators know that as the number of earmarks has exploded so has overall spending. In the past decade, the size of government has doubled while Congress approved more than 90,000 earmarks.
Earmarks were rare until recently. In 1987, President Reagan vetoed a spending bill because it contained 121 earmarks. Eliminating earmarks will not balance the budget overnight, but it is an important step toward getting spending under control.
3. Earmarking is about whose discretion it is to make spending decisions. Do elected members of Congress decide how taxes are spent, or do unelected bureaucrats and Obama administration officials?
It’s true that this is a debate about discretion, but some in Congress are confused about discretion among whom. This is not a struggle between the executive branch and Congress but between the American people and Washington. Do the American people have the right to spend their own money and keep local decisions at the local level or does the federal government know best? Earmarks are a Washington-knows-best solution. An earmark ban would tell the American people that Congress gets it. After all, it’s their money, not ours.
An earmark moratorium would not result in Congress giving up one iota of its spending power. In any event, Republicans should be fighting over how to cut government spending, not how to divide it up.
4. The Constitution gives Congress the responsibility and authority to earmark
Nowhere does the Constitution give Congress the authority to do earmarks. The concept of earmarking appears nowhere in the enumerated powers or anywhere else in the Constitution. The so-called “constitutional” argument earmarks is from the same school of constitutional interpretation that led Elena Kagan to admit that Congress had the authority to tell the American people to eat their fruits and vegetables every day. That school, which says Congress can do whatever it wants, gave us an expansive Commerce Clause, Obamacare, and a widespread belief among members of Congress that the “power of the purse” is the power to pork.
Earmark defenders are fond of quoting Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution which says, “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.” They also refer to James Madison’s power of the purse commentary in Federalist 58. Madison said the “power of the purse may, in fact, be the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people.”
Yet, earmark proponents ignore the rest of the Constitution and our founders’ clear intent to limit the power of Congress. If the founders wanted Congress to earmark funds to specific recipients, micromanage American society, and ride roughshod over state and local government they would have given Congress that authority in the enumerated powers. They clearly did not.
Our founders anticipated earmark-style power grabs from Congress and spoke against such excess for the ages. James Madison, the father of the Constitution said, “With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”
Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to James Madison, spoke directly against federally-funded local projects. “[I]t will be the source of eternal scramble among the members, who can get the most money wasted in their State; and they will always get the most who are the meanest.” Jefferson understood that earmarks and coercion would go hand in hand.
Also, if earmarks were a noble constitutional tradition, how did we thrive for 200 years without an earmark favor factory in Congress?
Finally, for those worried about ceding constitutional authority to the executive branch, I would respectfully remind them that the president has zero authority to spend money outside of the authority Congress gives him. The way to hold the executive branch accountable is to spend less and conduct more aggressive oversight. Earmarks are a convoluted way for Congress to try to regain authority they have already ceded to the executive branch through bad legislation. The fact is there is nothing an earmark can do that can’t be done more equitably and openly through a competitive grant process.
Beyond these myths, I would encourage members to consider the following realities.
1. Earmarks are a major distraction
Again, earmarks not only do nothing to hold the executive branch accountable — by out-porking the president — but take Congress’ focus away from the massive amount of waste and inefficiency within federal agencies. In typical years, the number of earmark requests outnumbers oversight hearings held by the Appropriations Committee by a factor of 1,000 to 1. Instead of processing tens of thousands of earmark requests the Senate should increase the number of oversight hearings from a few dozen to hundreds. The amount of time and attention that is devoted to the earmark chase is a scandal waiting to be exposed.
2. This debate is over among the American people and the House GOP
If any policy mandate can be derived from the election it is to spend less money. Eliminating earmarks is the first step on that path. The House GOP has accepted that mandate. The Senate GOP now has to decide whether to ignore not only the American people but their colleagues in the House. The last thing Senate Republicans should be doing is legislative gymnastics to get around the House GOP earmark ban.
3. Earmarking is bad policy
In recent years the conventional wisdom that earmarks create jobs has been turned on its head. The Obama administration’s stimulus bill itself, which is arguably a collection of earmarks approved by Congress, proves this point. Neither Obama’s stimulus nor Republican stimulus — GOP earmarks — is very effective at creating jobs.
Harvard University conducted an extensive study this year of how earmarks impact states. The researchers expected to find that earmarks drive economic growth but found the opposite.
“It was an enormous surprise, at least to us, to learn that the average firm in the chairman’s state did not benefit at all from the unanticipated increase in spending,” said Joshua Coval, one of the study’s authors. The study found that as earmarks increase capital investment and expenditures by private businesses decrease, by 15 percent specifically. In other words, federal pork crowds out private investment and slows job growth. Earmarks are an odd GOP infatuation with failed Keynesian economics that hurts local economies.
Earmarks also crowd out funding for higher-priority items. Transportation earmarks are a good example. Pork projects like the Bridge to Nowhere and bike paths divert funds from higher priority projects according to a 2007 Department of Transportation inspector general report. Thousands of bridges continue to be in disrepair across America in part because Congress has taken its eye off the ball and indulged in parochial spending.
4. Earmarking is bad politics
If the Senate GOP wants to send a signal that they don’t get it and are not listening they can reject an earmark moratorium. For Republicans, earmarks are the ultimate mixed message. We’ll never be trusted to be the party of less spending while we’re rationalizing more spending through earmarks. The long process of restoring fiscal sanity in Washington begins with saying no to pork.
— Sen. Tom Coburn represents the state of Oklahoma in the U.S. Senate.
Earmark Myths and Realities
November 10, 2010 4:39 P.M. By Sen. Tom Coburn
As Senate Republicans prepare to vote on an earmark moratorium, I would encourage my colleagues to consider four myths and four realities of the debate.
Myths of the earmark debate:
1. Eliminating earmarks does not actually save any money
This argument has serious logical inconsistencies. The fact is earmarks do spend real money. If they didn’t spend money, why defend them? Stopping an activity that spends money does result in less spending. It’s that simple. For instance, Congress spent $16.1 billion on pork in Fiscal Year 2010. If Congress does not do earmarks in 2011, we could save $16.1 billion. In no way is Congress locked into to shifting that $16.1 billion to other programs unless it wants to.
2. Earmarks represent a very tiny portion of the federal budget and eliminating them would do little to reduce the deficit
It’s true that earmarks themselves represent a tiny portion of the budget, but a small rudder can help steer a big ship, which is why I’ve long described earmarks as the gateway drug to spending addiction in Washington. No one can deny that earmarks like the Cornhusker Kickback have been used to push through extremely costly and onerous bills. Plus, senators know that as the number of earmarks has exploded so has overall spending. In the past decade, the size of government has doubled while Congress approved more than 90,000 earmarks.
Earmarks were rare until recently. In 1987, President Reagan vetoed a spending bill because it contained 121 earmarks. Eliminating earmarks will not balance the budget overnight, but it is an important step toward getting spending under control.
3. Earmarking is about whose discretion it is to make spending decisions. Do elected members of Congress decide how taxes are spent, or do unelected bureaucrats and Obama administration officials?
It’s true that this is a debate about discretion, but some in Congress are confused about discretion among whom. This is not a struggle between the executive branch and Congress but between the American people and Washington. Do the American people have the right to spend their own money and keep local decisions at the local level or does the federal government know best? Earmarks are a Washington-knows-best solution. An earmark ban would tell the American people that Congress gets it. After all, it’s their money, not ours.
An earmark moratorium would not result in Congress giving up one iota of its spending power. In any event, Republicans should be fighting over how to cut government spending, not how to divide it up.
4. The Constitution gives Congress the responsibility and authority to earmark
Nowhere does the Constitution give Congress the authority to do earmarks. The concept of earmarking appears nowhere in the enumerated powers or anywhere else in the Constitution. The so-called “constitutional” argument earmarks is from the same school of constitutional interpretation that led Elena Kagan to admit that Congress had the authority to tell the American people to eat their fruits and vegetables every day. That school, which says Congress can do whatever it wants, gave us an expansive Commerce Clause, Obamacare, and a widespread belief among members of Congress that the “power of the purse” is the power to pork.
Earmark defenders are fond of quoting Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution which says, “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.” They also refer to James Madison’s power of the purse commentary in Federalist 58. Madison said the “power of the purse may, in fact, be the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people.”
Yet, earmark proponents ignore the rest of the Constitution and our founders’ clear intent to limit the power of Congress. If the founders wanted Congress to earmark funds to specific recipients, micromanage American society, and ride roughshod over state and local government they would have given Congress that authority in the enumerated powers. They clearly did not.
Our founders anticipated earmark-style power grabs from Congress and spoke against such excess for the ages. James Madison, the father of the Constitution said, “With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”
Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to James Madison, spoke directly against federally-funded local projects. “[I]t will be the source of eternal scramble among the members, who can get the most money wasted in their State; and they will always get the most who are the meanest.” Jefferson understood that earmarks and coercion would go hand in hand.
Also, if earmarks were a noble constitutional tradition, how did we thrive for 200 years without an earmark favor factory in Congress?
Finally, for those worried about ceding constitutional authority to the executive branch, I would respectfully remind them that the president has zero authority to spend money outside of the authority Congress gives him. The way to hold the executive branch accountable is to spend less and conduct more aggressive oversight. Earmarks are a convoluted way for Congress to try to regain authority they have already ceded to the executive branch through bad legislation. The fact is there is nothing an earmark can do that can’t be done more equitably and openly through a competitive grant process.
Beyond these myths, I would encourage members to consider the following realities.
1. Earmarks are a major distraction
Again, earmarks not only do nothing to hold the executive branch accountable — by out-porking the president — but take Congress’ focus away from the massive amount of waste and inefficiency within federal agencies. In typical years, the number of earmark requests outnumbers oversight hearings held by the Appropriations Committee by a factor of 1,000 to 1. Instead of processing tens of thousands of earmark requests the Senate should increase the number of oversight hearings from a few dozen to hundreds. The amount of time and attention that is devoted to the earmark chase is a scandal waiting to be exposed.
2. This debate is over among the American people and the House GOP
If any policy mandate can be derived from the election it is to spend less money. Eliminating earmarks is the first step on that path. The House GOP has accepted that mandate. The Senate GOP now has to decide whether to ignore not only the American people but their colleagues in the House. The last thing Senate Republicans should be doing is legislative gymnastics to get around the House GOP earmark ban.
3. Earmarking is bad policy
In recent years the conventional wisdom that earmarks create jobs has been turned on its head. The Obama administration’s stimulus bill itself, which is arguably a collection of earmarks approved by Congress, proves this point. Neither Obama’s stimulus nor Republican stimulus — GOP earmarks — is very effective at creating jobs.
Harvard University conducted an extensive study this year of how earmarks impact states. The researchers expected to find that earmarks drive economic growth but found the opposite.
“It was an enormous surprise, at least to us, to learn that the average firm in the chairman’s state did not benefit at all from the unanticipated increase in spending,” said Joshua Coval, one of the study’s authors. The study found that as earmarks increase capital investment and expenditures by private businesses decrease, by 15 percent specifically. In other words, federal pork crowds out private investment and slows job growth. Earmarks are an odd GOP infatuation with failed Keynesian economics that hurts local economies.
Earmarks also crowd out funding for higher-priority items. Transportation earmarks are a good example. Pork projects like the Bridge to Nowhere and bike paths divert funds from higher priority projects according to a 2007 Department of Transportation inspector general report. Thousands of bridges continue to be in disrepair across America in part because Congress has taken its eye off the ball and indulged in parochial spending.
4. Earmarking is bad politics
If the Senate GOP wants to send a signal that they don’t get it and are not listening they can reject an earmark moratorium. For Republicans, earmarks are the ultimate mixed message. We’ll never be trusted to be the party of less spending while we’re rationalizing more spending through earmarks. The long process of restoring fiscal sanity in Washington begins with saying no to pork.
— Sen. Tom Coburn represents the state of Oklahoma in the U.S. Senate.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
The Federal Government Under Obama and the Democrats is Simply Out of Control!
From the Heritage Foundation...
Get to Work Getting Control of Government
Remember when Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL) was asked to identify what part of the Constitution empowers the federal government to force Americans to buy health insurance, and he replied: "I don’t worry about the Constitution on this to be honest." Remember when Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) told his Hayward, Calif., constituents that "The Federal government can, yes, do most anything in this country." And remember when Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), famously said of Obamacare: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."
The progressives that controlled the 111th Congress simply had no respect for the limitations on federal government power that the Founders placed in the U.S. Constitution. That is why 56% of last week's voters told the national exit poll that "government is doing too much." That is why progressives no longer control the House. But there are still progressives in the White House. In just the past year, the federal agencies under President Barack Obama's control have already promulgated 43 new rules which the Obama administration itself estimated will cost the U.S. economy $26.5 billion a year. And President Obama is just getting warmed up. The 2,319 page financial regulation bill requires 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 different federal agencies. The 2,700 page Obamacare bill contains more than 1,000 instances where Congress instructed HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to regulate the health care industry. And the Federal Communications Commission is considering implementing, for the first time in the history of the Internet, "net neutrality" regulations that will undermine investment incentives, thereby robbing the nation of much-needed broadband upgrades.
The federal government is out of control. Congress must immediately reestablish legislative accountability by posting complete legislation, ending earmarks, reviewing all unauthorized programs and respecting constitutional limits on government. Congress must check executive branch overreach with aggressive oversight, roll back recent government interventions, stop unnecessary administrative regulations and sunset new ones, restrict bureaucrats' rulemaking authority and override expansive executive orders. Specifically, Congress must:
Provide Legislative Text: Each House of Congress must adopt a rule requiring the public posting of the text of each bill and major amendment not less than 72 hours before floor debate on that bill or amendment.
Stop Earmarks: Congress must permanently end the earmarking process which favors local pork projects over the national interest.
End Automatic Funding: Any program (other than for physical protection of Americans) that Congress has not reauthorized must be suspended for review. Committees must not be permitted to create new programs with automatic funding or that specify minimum funding levels to circumvent the appropriations process.
Reassert Constitutional Limits: Rather than deferring to courts, Congress must promptly repeal any unconstitutional legislation enacted by previous Congresses, consider the constitutionality of pending bills and assert constitutional limits on the size and scope of government.
Stop Unnecessary Regulations: Congress must use the Congressional Review Act to stop new and unnecessary regulations. If the President blocks such action, Congress must use appropriations riders to prohibit agencies from adopting such rules.
Get to Work Getting Control of Government
Remember when Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL) was asked to identify what part of the Constitution empowers the federal government to force Americans to buy health insurance, and he replied: "I don’t worry about the Constitution on this to be honest." Remember when Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) told his Hayward, Calif., constituents that "The Federal government can, yes, do most anything in this country." And remember when Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), famously said of Obamacare: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."
The progressives that controlled the 111th Congress simply had no respect for the limitations on federal government power that the Founders placed in the U.S. Constitution. That is why 56% of last week's voters told the national exit poll that "government is doing too much." That is why progressives no longer control the House. But there are still progressives in the White House. In just the past year, the federal agencies under President Barack Obama's control have already promulgated 43 new rules which the Obama administration itself estimated will cost the U.S. economy $26.5 billion a year. And President Obama is just getting warmed up. The 2,319 page financial regulation bill requires 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 different federal agencies. The 2,700 page Obamacare bill contains more than 1,000 instances where Congress instructed HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to regulate the health care industry. And the Federal Communications Commission is considering implementing, for the first time in the history of the Internet, "net neutrality" regulations that will undermine investment incentives, thereby robbing the nation of much-needed broadband upgrades.
The federal government is out of control. Congress must immediately reestablish legislative accountability by posting complete legislation, ending earmarks, reviewing all unauthorized programs and respecting constitutional limits on government. Congress must check executive branch overreach with aggressive oversight, roll back recent government interventions, stop unnecessary administrative regulations and sunset new ones, restrict bureaucrats' rulemaking authority and override expansive executive orders. Specifically, Congress must:
Provide Legislative Text: Each House of Congress must adopt a rule requiring the public posting of the text of each bill and major amendment not less than 72 hours before floor debate on that bill or amendment.
Stop Earmarks: Congress must permanently end the earmarking process which favors local pork projects over the national interest.
End Automatic Funding: Any program (other than for physical protection of Americans) that Congress has not reauthorized must be suspended for review. Committees must not be permitted to create new programs with automatic funding or that specify minimum funding levels to circumvent the appropriations process.
Reassert Constitutional Limits: Rather than deferring to courts, Congress must promptly repeal any unconstitutional legislation enacted by previous Congresses, consider the constitutionality of pending bills and assert constitutional limits on the size and scope of government.
Stop Unnecessary Regulations: Congress must use the Congressional Review Act to stop new and unnecessary regulations. If the President blocks such action, Congress must use appropriations riders to prohibit agencies from adopting such rules.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
The Blatant Arrogance of Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats!
This just show the blatant arrogance of Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats...the have NOT gotten the message from the election and will not get it.....They have spend money like drunken sailors and now they're spending more money throwing a party to celebrate NOT what they've done for the American People, but what they've done TO the American People......Just another Disgrace...and another reason why the American people have to keep the fight up against the democrats from now til 2012 when we can get control of the Senate AND get Obama out of Office!
Pelosi to Throw Party for Congress After Last Week's 'Shellacking' of House Dems
Published November 09, 2010 | FoxNews.com
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., shown here at an election night party, is throwing a party Nov. 10 to 'honor the accomplishments of the 11th Congress.'
Just one week after House Democrats were swept out of power, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is hosting a reception Wednesday "honoring the accomplishments of the 111th Congress."
"Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the United States House of Representatives requests the pleasure of your company at a reception honoring the Accomplishments of the 111th Congress on Wednesday, the tenth day of November, two thousand ten at three thirty in the afternoon Cannon Caucus Room 345 Cannon House Office Building," reads the invitation sent to advocates who worked on the legislative agenda.
"It's just a thank you for the advocates," a spokesman for Pelosi told FoxNews.com, adding that the reception is not for lawmakers. "No taxpayer funds are being spent."
The celebration comes as Democrats wage a battle over leadership positions in the next Congress in which Republicans will control the House and have a larger presence in the Senate.
Pelosi is running for minority leader while outgoing Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn battle for minority whip in the next Congress, which will be the No.2 position for Dems. Usually, leaders take a step down after their party loses power, which would make Clyburn the chairman of the Democratic Caucus.
Pelosi's party could prove awkward as she celebrates, among other accomplishments, the passing of President Obama's health care law that several moderate Democrats had campaigned against.
Democrats also passed other controversial bills such as an overhaul of the financial regulatory system and a massive financial stimulus package that made Pelosi the symbol of government excess.
Many moderate Democrats also have publicly opposed Pelosi's bid to remain in leadership although she is likely to prevail.
Pelosi's reception won't be open to the press and it's not clear whether Democratic lawmakers, especially those who lost last week, will attend.
Republicans recorded their largest gains in the House in more than 70 years by capturing more than 60 seats. They also won six seats in the Senate, leaving Democrats with a slim majority. Obama said he and his party took a "shellacking" at the polls.
Pelosi to Throw Party for Congress After Last Week's 'Shellacking' of House Dems
Published November 09, 2010 | FoxNews.com
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., shown here at an election night party, is throwing a party Nov. 10 to 'honor the accomplishments of the 11th Congress.'
Just one week after House Democrats were swept out of power, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is hosting a reception Wednesday "honoring the accomplishments of the 111th Congress."
"Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the United States House of Representatives requests the pleasure of your company at a reception honoring the Accomplishments of the 111th Congress on Wednesday, the tenth day of November, two thousand ten at three thirty in the afternoon Cannon Caucus Room 345 Cannon House Office Building," reads the invitation sent to advocates who worked on the legislative agenda.
"It's just a thank you for the advocates," a spokesman for Pelosi told FoxNews.com, adding that the reception is not for lawmakers. "No taxpayer funds are being spent."
The celebration comes as Democrats wage a battle over leadership positions in the next Congress in which Republicans will control the House and have a larger presence in the Senate.
Pelosi is running for minority leader while outgoing Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn battle for minority whip in the next Congress, which will be the No.2 position for Dems. Usually, leaders take a step down after their party loses power, which would make Clyburn the chairman of the Democratic Caucus.
Pelosi's party could prove awkward as she celebrates, among other accomplishments, the passing of President Obama's health care law that several moderate Democrats had campaigned against.
Democrats also passed other controversial bills such as an overhaul of the financial regulatory system and a massive financial stimulus package that made Pelosi the symbol of government excess.
Many moderate Democrats also have publicly opposed Pelosi's bid to remain in leadership although she is likely to prevail.
Pelosi's reception won't be open to the press and it's not clear whether Democratic lawmakers, especially those who lost last week, will attend.
Republicans recorded their largest gains in the House in more than 70 years by capturing more than 60 seats. They also won six seats in the Senate, leaving Democrats with a slim majority. Obama said he and his party took a "shellacking" at the polls.
A 1948 Cartoon that seemed far fetched then, but not so much so now!
A Cartoon from 1948 that seemed far fetched at the time it was first made, but now it doesn't seem so far fetched and is the very reason the American People have sent a strong signal to Washington that they do NOT like the direction the Obama Administration and the Democrats are taking our country....
Monday, November 8, 2010
Obama getting Hammered by His Party, America and even His Own Staff....But he won't change!
This is a long article, but it is worth reading...It's from the Politico which as we all know is a liberal outlet....and they are Killing Obama!...But he certainly doesn't seem to be getting this message OR the message from the American People last Tuesday.
President Obama isolated ahead of 2012
By MIKE ALLEN & JIM VANDEHEI | 11/8/10 4:30 AM EST Updated: 11/8/10 10:12 AM EST
President Barack Obama has performed his act of contrition. Now comes the hard part, according to Democrats around the country: reckoning with the simple fact that he’s isolated himself from virtually every group that matters in American politics.
Congressional Democrats consider him distant and blame him for their historic defeat on Tuesday. Democratic state party leaders scoff at what they see as an inattentive and hapless political operation. Democratic lobbyists feel maligned by his holier-than-thou take on their profession. His own Cabinet — with only a few exceptions — has been marginalized.
His relations with business leaders could hardly be worse. Obama has suggested it’s a PR problem, but several Democratic officials said CEOs friendly with the president walk away feeling he’s indifferent at best to their concerns. Add in his icy relations with Republicans, the media and, most important, most voters, and it’s easy to understand why his own staff leaked word to POLITICO that it wants Obama to shake up his staff and change his political approach.
It should be a no-brainer for a humbled Obama to move quickly after Tuesday’s thumping to try to repair these damaged relations, and indeed, in India on Sunday, he acknowledged the need for “midcourse corrections.”
But many Democrats privately say they are skeptical that Obama is self-aware enough to make the sort of dramatic changes they feel are needed — in his relations with other Democrats or in his very approach to the job.
In his effort to change Washington, Obama has failed to engage Washington and its institutions and customs, leaving him estranged from the capital’s permanent power structure — right at the moment when Democrats say he must rethink his strategy for cultivating and nurturing relations with key constituencies ahead of 2012.
“This guy swept to power on a wave of adulation, and he learned the wrong lessons from that,” said a Democratic official who deals frequently with the White House. “He’s more of a movement leader than a politician. He needs someone to kick his ass on things large and small and teach him to be a politician.”
Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) expressed a much deeper frustration to POLITICO: that the president never had House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s back — and it cost both of them. “They not only failed to defend her and her accomplishments on their behalf,” said Miller of the White House, “they failed to defend themselves.”
Tuesday’s losses have left high-level Democrats feeling freer to open up about White House missteps over the past two years — complaints that were repressed when Obama was strong but now are being aired as clues to his team’s isolation as he tries to regain command of the capital after his midterm thrashing.
Consider state party leaders. Many feel slighted by a president they helped elect. The slights are both big and small. In July, Obama was visiting GM and Chrysler plans in the Detroit area and invited the local House member — but other Democratic lawmakers who stood to benefit from the exposure were left in the cold.
"President Obama has done a lot for the people of Michigan, including rescuing state services and saving GM and Chrysler,” said former Michigan Gov. Jim Blanchard, a Democrat and Obama supporter. “We'd like to see a political operation in Michigan commensurate with his achievements."
Other Democrats are fuming at Obama’s decision not to endorse the Democratic candidate for governor of Rhode Island — and shun conventional political interactions, including refusing to meet with a group of black ministers at a campaign event this fall.
This is problematic because in a 50-50 country, political infrastructure matters — and the consensus among Democratic consultants is that Obama has allowed theirs to atrophy by neglect.
Florida Democratic gubernatorial nominee Alex Sink took it further, hitting a “tone-deaf” Obama White House to explain why she narrowly lost her campaign, saying the administration mishandled the BP oil spill and hasn’t fully grasped the political damage done by Obama’s health care reform push. “They just need to be better listeners and be better at reaching out to people who are on the ground to hear about the realities of their policies as well as politics,” Sink told POLITICO.
On their own, some gripes about Obama look like little more than trivial violations of Politics 101. But they have had the cumulative effect of leaving the president and his team isolated from many of the constituencies required for success in Washington:
— When Obama was giving the commencement address in the University of Michigan’s “Big House” stadium last May, he mingled in the home-team locker room with university deans and regents. Across the tunnel, in the visitors' locker room, several members of Michigan’s Democratic congressional delegation — including Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin and House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. — waited patiently.
Some had brought grandchildren so they could get their picture taken with the president. But they never got to see him. Obama didn’t cross the tunnel to see the lawmakers.
— In June, during an East Room reception for top supporters at Ford’s Theatre, several of the attendees were disappointed that they didn’t get to shake the president’s hand and take a photo, as they had in the past. Instead, Obama greeted a few people down front, reaching over a rope line.
“People thought they were going to a reception with the president, not a campaign event,” one attendee recalled.
— One veteran Democrat recalled a group of Obama donors who were chatting at last December’s State Department holiday party, hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “Half of them were upset because they had not been invited to a White House party,” this Democrat recalled. “The [other] half was upset because they had been invited to the White House and were kept behind a rope line instead of getting to greet the president.”
— The president invited Senate chairmen and ranking members over for dinner in March 2009 but came in after they were seated and went back to the residence without shaking hands or visiting each table.
One well-known Democrat summed up the cost of the slights and the seeming indifference to basic political courtesies this way: “These are little things that are not going to affect public perceptions. But it affects the infrastructure of how you put together a campaign. These are the people that you need to raise money, to give money, to organize, to show up, to speak out.”
Several top Democrats explained that Obama’s unorthodox ascent in 2008 left him with little appreciation for the conventional machinery that most ambitious natural politicians nurture obsessively.
“Because Hillary had all the institutional support [in the primaries], he came here without a support structure,” said one Democratic lobbyist. “They made a decision that was a good thing and tried to go around all those institutional players. But as a president, you can co-opt a lot of those constituencies. You don't have to be captured by them."
The problems run deeper. Big-dollar donors and liberal special interests feel used, and only in the past month has the White House made an effort to play nicer with them. Some donors contend the White House should have encouraged its own counterpart to the outside GOP groups like American Crossroads, rather than griping about the new competition.
Democratic lobbyists say they’re upset that the president had not only vilified their profession but frozen them out of discussions on key issues. By one light, this is precisely what Obama promised to do in an effort to restore faith in government. By another, it simply enhanced the Congress-K Street power nexus because most of the horse-trading was done on Capitol Hill with White House control.
While the lobbying community is usually covered by the media like a crime beat, most lobbyists are policy experts who often provide input on commissions and other advisory boards. So lobbyists argue that the White House shunning has cost the president valuable advice, political intelligence and institutional backup.
And business leaders, even the few who continue to be Obama-friendly, say they are convinced he is hostile to free markets and the private sector. Some of these executives have balance sheets flush with cash but are reluctant to add jobs or expand in part because they don't trust Obama’s instincts for growth.
“He used anti-corporate, confrontational rhetoric too for legislative gain and kept doing it after folks found it gratuitous,” a top executive said. “During health reform, it was the bad, evil hospitals. . . Same with financial regulation: It was fat cats, greed, corruption.”
Other executives complained that Obama did not do enough outreach, even after the friction became clear. And executives who did get an audience complain that he is too often behind a podium, not doing the off-the-record question-and-answer sessions that would make them feel more involved and maybe promote understanding between the two sides.
“The thing they’re most proud of is that during the campaign, they had a game plan they believed in and they stuck to it, even when everyone told them they were going to lose,” said a well-known Democratic official, summing up a widely held view of the White House. “They didn’t believe what outside people said. So they have this siege mentality, and it’s closed the door.”
President Obama isolated ahead of 2012
By MIKE ALLEN & JIM VANDEHEI | 11/8/10 4:30 AM EST Updated: 11/8/10 10:12 AM EST
President Barack Obama has performed his act of contrition. Now comes the hard part, according to Democrats around the country: reckoning with the simple fact that he’s isolated himself from virtually every group that matters in American politics.
Congressional Democrats consider him distant and blame him for their historic defeat on Tuesday. Democratic state party leaders scoff at what they see as an inattentive and hapless political operation. Democratic lobbyists feel maligned by his holier-than-thou take on their profession. His own Cabinet — with only a few exceptions — has been marginalized.
His relations with business leaders could hardly be worse. Obama has suggested it’s a PR problem, but several Democratic officials said CEOs friendly with the president walk away feeling he’s indifferent at best to their concerns. Add in his icy relations with Republicans, the media and, most important, most voters, and it’s easy to understand why his own staff leaked word to POLITICO that it wants Obama to shake up his staff and change his political approach.
It should be a no-brainer for a humbled Obama to move quickly after Tuesday’s thumping to try to repair these damaged relations, and indeed, in India on Sunday, he acknowledged the need for “midcourse corrections.”
But many Democrats privately say they are skeptical that Obama is self-aware enough to make the sort of dramatic changes they feel are needed — in his relations with other Democrats or in his very approach to the job.
In his effort to change Washington, Obama has failed to engage Washington and its institutions and customs, leaving him estranged from the capital’s permanent power structure — right at the moment when Democrats say he must rethink his strategy for cultivating and nurturing relations with key constituencies ahead of 2012.
“This guy swept to power on a wave of adulation, and he learned the wrong lessons from that,” said a Democratic official who deals frequently with the White House. “He’s more of a movement leader than a politician. He needs someone to kick his ass on things large and small and teach him to be a politician.”
Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) expressed a much deeper frustration to POLITICO: that the president never had House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s back — and it cost both of them. “They not only failed to defend her and her accomplishments on their behalf,” said Miller of the White House, “they failed to defend themselves.”
Tuesday’s losses have left high-level Democrats feeling freer to open up about White House missteps over the past two years — complaints that were repressed when Obama was strong but now are being aired as clues to his team’s isolation as he tries to regain command of the capital after his midterm thrashing.
Consider state party leaders. Many feel slighted by a president they helped elect. The slights are both big and small. In July, Obama was visiting GM and Chrysler plans in the Detroit area and invited the local House member — but other Democratic lawmakers who stood to benefit from the exposure were left in the cold.
"President Obama has done a lot for the people of Michigan, including rescuing state services and saving GM and Chrysler,” said former Michigan Gov. Jim Blanchard, a Democrat and Obama supporter. “We'd like to see a political operation in Michigan commensurate with his achievements."
Other Democrats are fuming at Obama’s decision not to endorse the Democratic candidate for governor of Rhode Island — and shun conventional political interactions, including refusing to meet with a group of black ministers at a campaign event this fall.
This is problematic because in a 50-50 country, political infrastructure matters — and the consensus among Democratic consultants is that Obama has allowed theirs to atrophy by neglect.
Florida Democratic gubernatorial nominee Alex Sink took it further, hitting a “tone-deaf” Obama White House to explain why she narrowly lost her campaign, saying the administration mishandled the BP oil spill and hasn’t fully grasped the political damage done by Obama’s health care reform push. “They just need to be better listeners and be better at reaching out to people who are on the ground to hear about the realities of their policies as well as politics,” Sink told POLITICO.
On their own, some gripes about Obama look like little more than trivial violations of Politics 101. But they have had the cumulative effect of leaving the president and his team isolated from many of the constituencies required for success in Washington:
— When Obama was giving the commencement address in the University of Michigan’s “Big House” stadium last May, he mingled in the home-team locker room with university deans and regents. Across the tunnel, in the visitors' locker room, several members of Michigan’s Democratic congressional delegation — including Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin and House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. — waited patiently.
Some had brought grandchildren so they could get their picture taken with the president. But they never got to see him. Obama didn’t cross the tunnel to see the lawmakers.
— In June, during an East Room reception for top supporters at Ford’s Theatre, several of the attendees were disappointed that they didn’t get to shake the president’s hand and take a photo, as they had in the past. Instead, Obama greeted a few people down front, reaching over a rope line.
“People thought they were going to a reception with the president, not a campaign event,” one attendee recalled.
— One veteran Democrat recalled a group of Obama donors who were chatting at last December’s State Department holiday party, hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “Half of them were upset because they had not been invited to a White House party,” this Democrat recalled. “The [other] half was upset because they had been invited to the White House and were kept behind a rope line instead of getting to greet the president.”
— The president invited Senate chairmen and ranking members over for dinner in March 2009 but came in after they were seated and went back to the residence without shaking hands or visiting each table.
One well-known Democrat summed up the cost of the slights and the seeming indifference to basic political courtesies this way: “These are little things that are not going to affect public perceptions. But it affects the infrastructure of how you put together a campaign. These are the people that you need to raise money, to give money, to organize, to show up, to speak out.”
Several top Democrats explained that Obama’s unorthodox ascent in 2008 left him with little appreciation for the conventional machinery that most ambitious natural politicians nurture obsessively.
“Because Hillary had all the institutional support [in the primaries], he came here without a support structure,” said one Democratic lobbyist. “They made a decision that was a good thing and tried to go around all those institutional players. But as a president, you can co-opt a lot of those constituencies. You don't have to be captured by them."
The problems run deeper. Big-dollar donors and liberal special interests feel used, and only in the past month has the White House made an effort to play nicer with them. Some donors contend the White House should have encouraged its own counterpart to the outside GOP groups like American Crossroads, rather than griping about the new competition.
Democratic lobbyists say they’re upset that the president had not only vilified their profession but frozen them out of discussions on key issues. By one light, this is precisely what Obama promised to do in an effort to restore faith in government. By another, it simply enhanced the Congress-K Street power nexus because most of the horse-trading was done on Capitol Hill with White House control.
While the lobbying community is usually covered by the media like a crime beat, most lobbyists are policy experts who often provide input on commissions and other advisory boards. So lobbyists argue that the White House shunning has cost the president valuable advice, political intelligence and institutional backup.
And business leaders, even the few who continue to be Obama-friendly, say they are convinced he is hostile to free markets and the private sector. Some of these executives have balance sheets flush with cash but are reluctant to add jobs or expand in part because they don't trust Obama’s instincts for growth.
“He used anti-corporate, confrontational rhetoric too for legislative gain and kept doing it after folks found it gratuitous,” a top executive said. “During health reform, it was the bad, evil hospitals. . . Same with financial regulation: It was fat cats, greed, corruption.”
Other executives complained that Obama did not do enough outreach, even after the friction became clear. And executives who did get an audience complain that he is too often behind a podium, not doing the off-the-record question-and-answer sessions that would make them feel more involved and maybe promote understanding between the two sides.
“The thing they’re most proud of is that during the campaign, they had a game plan they believed in and they stuck to it, even when everyone told them they were going to lose,” said a well-known Democratic official, summing up a widely held view of the White House. “They didn’t believe what outside people said. So they have this siege mentality, and it’s closed the door.”
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