The Lunatics Have Finally Taken Over The Asylum

After nearly five years of a very difficult tenure, constantly at war with staunchly more conservative members of his GOP caucus, Speaker of the House, John Boehner announced his decision today to step aside as Speaker of the House Representatives and a member of Congress at the of October.

Read a full analysis HERE

If Boehner Sues Obama, Only The Courts Win

I agree, this is just a bad idea. Not because politically i'm a Democrat and support our president, but because it would reek all kinds of havoc that would lead to anarchy and a government ruled by activist judges, both conservative and liberal.  

By Jonathan Bernstein
Bloomberg News

The story on House Speaker John Boehner's lawsuit against President Barack Obama is pretty simple: regardless of whether the administration overstepped, what’s at stake is whether the courts are being empowered at the expense of the elected branches of government.

For starters, there’s zero evidence that Obama has been unusual in his use of executive powers. If he’s overdone it, then all the recent presidents have done so, too. The idea that he’s some sort of tyrant who acts differently than other modern presidents is nonsense.

In fact, It’s perfectly normal for presidents and executive branch departments and agencies to make broad interpretations of law that look a lot like legislating. It’s how the system works, and pretty much how it always worked. Thus Richard Neustadt’s famous claim that the system isn’t “separation of powers,” but separated institutions sharing powers.

Nonetheless, there are rules constraining how laws may be interpreted, and it is possible that in specific instances, the administration may have acted beyond what the law allows.
Indeed, experts have made the case that this kind of overreach occurred with the delayed implementation of the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act (which, apparently, is going to be central to the House Republicans' lawsuit), though other experts disagree.

In any case, it would be unprecedented, and in fact would constitute a significant change to the constitutional system, if the courts allowed Congress to sue the president over the ACA delay.
The technical issue is “standing.” For the courts to consider a lawsuit, the person or group bringing the suit has to show they were harmed in some direct way. So, for example, in the recent recess appointment case, Noel Canning Corp. was able to show that it had directly been harmed by an action taken by members of the National Labor Relations Board who had been recess-appointed. Generally, the courts have ruled (Vox has a good explainer on this) that Congress isn’t eligible to sue the president just because it doesn't like what he’s done....

Continue reading 

Boehner 'happy' to see sequester cuts happen

In a video released Friday, Democrats launched the latest salvo in the finger-pointing game over which party is to blame for the $85 billion in automatic cuts, which launched March 1. As the video repeatedly points out, House Speaker John Boehner got,"I got 98 percent of what I wanted, I'm pretty happy."



Hat Tip - thehill.com

The House Christie Built

The following Op-Ed appeared yesterday in  The Philadelphia Inquirer

By Joshua Henne

Leadership is, among other things, about taking responsibility. House Speaker John Boehner failed on that score when he caved to the tea partyers in his caucus and postponed a promised vote on Superstorm Sandy relief.

But by going off on one of his manufactured rants - this one against the radical elements that call the shots in his party - Gov. Christie also failed the responsibility test. Rather than being accountable for his year's worth of campaigning and keynoting for right-wing Republicans, Christie ducked it. And in an act of stunning hypocrisy, he slammed the very do-nothing GOP House that he was fighting and fund-raising for just a few months before.

There's no doubt Christie cares about those affected by Superstorm Sandy. And there's no doubt he was disgusted by Congress' abandonment of them. However, it's hard to believe he was shocked by it.

After all, these are the same representatives who have been consistent and clear in their opposition to most functions of the federal government. Steve LaTourette, a moderate Ohio Republican who just retired from the House, recently nailed the problem as "the same 40, 50 chuckleheads" who "have screwed this place up." They're simply making good on their promises by behaving in the halls of Congress precisely as they said they would on the campaign trail. Punting on Sandy relief was the inevitable result of a Congress dominated by representatives who simply don't believe in government.

These are the folks Christie crisscrossed the country to put in power. And now he seems as shocked as Capt. Renault finding out about gambling in Casablanca.

Despite what his State of the State address this week would have you believe, Christie didn't become governor the moment he walked alongside President Obama and gave Bruce Springsteen a hug in the wake of Sandy. New Jersey's unemployment hovers around 10 percent, and Yahoo Financial ranked it among the five worst-run states in the Union. A major reason for these sad facts is that Christie is more focused on his national brand than on the people of his state. He has a three-year record of governing recklessly, just as he has campaigned recklessly.

Last summer, after Mitt Romney announced Paul Ryan as his running mate, Christie gave the ticket a full-throated endorsement. Ryan was one of the 67 members of Congress who recently voted against legislation to pay flood insurance claims.

Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa threatened to vote against Sandy aid for the same reason he opposed Katrina relief - because the recipients might spend the money on "Gucci bags and massage parlors." Last summer, Christie campaigned for King, whose state is home to crucial presidential caucuses - another in a string a choices that put the governor's political ambitions ahead of the interests of New Jersey.

During Sandy and its immediate aftermath, Christie did his state proud. But now he should be held culpable for supporting the right-wingers who are selling out New Jersey and the storm victims. He can go around pointing fingers, but he ought to look in the mirror first.

After all, Christie isn't just another typical politician who thinks he can say one thing and do another. Is he?



Joshua Henne is the spokesman for One New Jersey. He can be found on Twitter at @JoshuaHenne.

Pallone Rails Against Boehner Plan to Slow Sandy Recovery

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ-06) took to the Floor of the U.S. House of Representatives to rail against House Speaker John Boehner’s plan to pass only a small piece of funding over a larger, comprehensive Senate passed relief package for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Pallone, who represents some of the hardest-hit areas of the Jersey Shore characterized the $9 billion Sandy funding plan as “too little, too late” and noted that the delay in passing full funding for a Sandy recovery plan in the waning days of the 112th Congress has been an impediment to New Jersey’s storm recovery efforts. Instead of passing the $60.4 billion bill already approved in the U.S. Senate, Republican Leaders in the House chose to break the funding up into three, smaller separate parts, which will not be considered in the House for weeks.

The following are Congressman Pallone’s remarks on the House Floor today:



“Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to thank my colleague from New York.

“This action by the House Republican Leadership is too little, too late. I have to say I'm still very upset and I think it's deplorable that the Speaker did not bring this bill up and the whole package that addresses Hurricane Sandy relief in the lame duck session in the last days of Congress. It would have been passed, we had the votes. It would have been on the President’s desk, he would have signed it, and we would have started to rebuild the shore.

“Now we have another delay. I don’t know how many weeks it has been, nine weeks, ten weeks, whatever it is. I have no idea what the Senate is going to do. My understanding is that the Senate is mired in filibuster over the next three weeks and isn't coming back until after the inauguration. That means we could be waiting another three weeks. The rest of the package which is the most important part of it, might not come up until we return after a week's break. We're going to be on recess and then we come back on the 15th and hopefully the rest of the package comes out that day. That means we have three separate votes on this package that could have been passed and signed into law over the last couple days. Three separate votes. It is not acceptable, Madam Speaker.”

Rep. Pallone: Boehner doesn't care about blue states NY, NJ

Early this morning Frank Pallone appeared on CNN's Early Start show to talk about why a comprehensive Sandy relief bill is needed now.

From the  CNN Pressroom blog

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) criticizes Speaker John Boehner for not bringing a Hurricane Sandy relief bill up for a vote on Tuesday because he thinks Boehner wanted to avoid too much spending at one time, opting for a more “obscure” piecemeal plan of lesser payments.

Rep. Pallone says, “I really think that the speaker doesn't care about New York and New Jersey. In other words, we're blue states. The fact of the matter is that he was afraid to bring this up yesterday, in my opinion, because the Tea Party and the right wing did not want to vote for the spending bill for New York or primarily for New York and New Jersey.”

Congressman Frank Pallone Calls on Republicans to Stop Efforts to Raise Taxes on the Middle Class

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 20, 2011

WASHINGTON D.C.—Today, Tuesday, December 20, 2011, Congressman Frank Pallone Jr. (NJ-06) stood with Members of the House Democratic Leadership at a press conference calling on Speaker John Boehner and House Republicans to vote for a Senate bill extending the current Payroll Tax cuts and Unemployment Insurance. Both the Payroll Tax cuts, instituted by President Obama in 2009, and Unemployment Insurance for Americans who are out of work to no fault of their own, are set to expire on December 31, 2011 if the House fails to take action.

Earlier in the day in a speech on the Floor of the House of Representatives Congressman Pallone stated that, “The consequence for the American people is that the economy is in a very perilous situation right now, if you take this tax cut and you don't extend it, then it's very possible people won't have money to spend, the economy won't grow, and this teetering economy could easily fall back into a recession again.”

“They are playing a dangerous game with the lives and livelihoods of all Americans, at a time when we can afford it the least,” said Pallone. Their agenda is clear; end tax breaks to working Americans and the middle class while cutting the lifeline for the unemployed at a time when they can afford it the least.”

If Congress fails to take action and allows the Payroll Tax cuts to expire, Americans can expect to pay an additional $1,500 per year in additional taxes and 2.2 out of work Americans will lose their Unemployment Insurance.

View Congressman Pallone’s full floor statement here.

On income taxes and job creation, history debunks GOP views

By Star-Ledger Editorial Board
Sunday, July 17, 2011

We’re used to politicians stretching the truth, but this is getting ridiculous. For months now, congressional Republicans have refused to support any debt ceiling and budget deal that would raise taxes on the wealthy because, these economic wizards tell us, the rich are “job creators.”

Tax increases would discourage these job genies from expanding their businesses. Unemployment, already at 9.2 percent (which says something about the job-creation myth, doesn’t it?), would get even worse, they insist. The problem with this economic philosophy? It’s garbage.

Even Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, knows that: “The rich are always going to say, ‘Just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you.’ But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.”

The American public, it seems, is catching on, even if Republicans want to twist the truth about that, too. Speaker of the House John Boehner keeps insisting, “The American people don’t want us to raise taxes.” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says, “This economy is ailing and we don’t believe, nor do the American people believe, raising taxes is the answer.”

Think again. Americans believe Congress should raise taxes on the wealthy.

A new Quinnipiac survey asked voters if they support a budget deal with only budget cuts or a blend of cuts and taxes on corporations and the rich. Only 25 percent said cuts only. Sixty-seven percent want cuts and a tax increase on the wealthy.

Republican leaders are not only misrepresenting what the American people want, they’re covering up Republican numbers, too. In a recent Gallup poll, only 26 percent of Republicans favored lowering the debt with cuts alone. In just about every poll — ABC News, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Reuters — Americans want spending cuts and they want the wealthy to pay a larger share.

But maybe the American people are wrong. Let’s check the history. Did giving the wealthy a break with the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 help create jobs? Uh, no. From the end of the 2000-01 recession, just when the first Bush tax cuts took effect, until the beginning of the Great Recession, the economy grew at a slower pace than in any postrecession recovery period since World War II. Pay, adjusted for inflation, fell. And it took 39 months to get the number of jobs back to where it was before the 2000-01 recession.

Despite the same promises of jobs, the economy limped along. And the additional tax cut in 2003 didn’t rev it up, either.

President Bill Clinton faced vociferous opposition to his 1993 budget plan, which raised the top tax rates from 31 percent to 39.6 percent. Republicans called it the “Kevorkian Plan.”

So, what happened? Unparalleled economic growth. The nation’s unemployment dropped from 6.9 percent to 4 percent. The deficit shrank, and in 1998, the federal government boasted a surplus for the first time since 1969.

It seems the economy can survive a tax hike on the wealthy after all. And the tax hike did wonders to reduce the deficit as well, as designed.

More evidence: During the 1950s and early 1960s, when America experienced sustained growth, marginal tax rates on the rich were the highest they’ve ever been — 91 percent for the top bracket. (Even President Ronald Reagan, the Republican economic poster boy, raised taxes after he cut them.)

But Republicans keep chanting the same nonsense — without offering historical evidence to back it up. Instead, they want to bring the nation to the brink of default while protecting corporations (who are sitting on billions in profits) and fat cats — while everyday Americans are squeezed by high gas and food prices, plunging home prices and lower wages.

Let’s call the job-creator stuff what it is: a myth.

President Obama's Weekly Address 4/9/11: President Obama on the Budget Compromise to Avoid a Government Shutdown

After weeks of negotiations, President Obama and leaders from both the Democratic and Republican parties in Congress found common ground in an agreement about the United States' budget. This means the government will remain open to serve the public, including small businesses who need need loans to grow, families who've applied for mortgages and others who are visiting national parks and museums. It also means that hundreds of thousands of Americans - including brave men and women in uniform - will get paychecks on time.

In his Weekly Address, the President discusses the importance of the bipartisan budget agreement that represents both a significant investment in the United States' future - and the largest annual spending cut in our history.

Tea Party Thuggery as Election Nears

By Michael Winship
Posted at Consortiumnews.com
October 20, 2010

ConsortiumNews Editor’s Note: Sadly but predictably, the two years of economic pain and the anger over the first African-American president are combining for a particularly nasty election as Tea Partiers see, within their grasp, their goal of “taking our country back.”

The 2009 phenomenon of armed protesters threatening to unleash violence against Washington over health-care reform has morphed into Tea Party candidates surrounding themselves with thugs determined to silence reporters and intimidate opposition voters, as Michael Winship notes in this guest essay:

One of the most memorable moments in television coverage of American politics came during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968.

Out on the streets, anti-Vietnam war demonstrations were attacked viciously by law enforcement officials in what later was described in an official report as “a police riot.”

Inside the convention hall, tightly controlled by the political machine of the city’s notorious Mayor Richard J. Daley, CBS correspondent Dan Rather was attempting to interview a delegate from Georgia who was being removed from the floor by men in suits without ID badges.

One of them slugged Rather in the stomach, knocking him to the ground. As the reporter struggled to get his breath back, from the anchor booth, Walter Cronkite exclaimed, “I think we’ve got a bunch of thugs here, Dan!”

It was an uncharacteristic outburst from America’s Most Respected Newsman, indicative of just how terrible the violence was both inside and out and how shocking it was for a journalist to be so blatantly attacked while on the air by operatives acting on behalf of politicians.

As appalling as that 1968 assault was, thuggery is nothing new in politics; it transcends time, ideology and party.

But what’s even more disturbing in 2010 is how much of the public, especially many of those who count themselves among the conservative adherents of the Tea Party, is willing to ignore bullying behavior – and even applaud it – as long as the candidate in question hews to their point of view.

Here in New York State, of course, we have Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, who combines the boyish charm of J. Edgar Hoover with the sunny quirkiness of Pol Pot.

So extreme are Paladino’s views, so volatile his temper, that even Rupert Murdoch’s right wing New York Post has endorsed Democrat Andrew Cuomo, which is a bit like the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano dissing the Pope and singing the praises of Lutherans.

Doubtless this is in part because Crazy Carl, as he is affectionately known to many, almost came to blows with the Post’s state political editor, the redoubtable Fred Dicker, shouting “I’ll take you out, buddy!” at Dicker.

The journalist had asked Paladino for evidence to back up allegations the candidate was making against Cuomo. Paladino claimed the paper was harassing his out-of-wedlock daughter.

The Post had to admit that Paladino is “long on anger and short on answers... undisciplined, unfocused and untrustworthy -- that is, fundamentally unqualified for the office he seeks.”

Okay, Paladino will lose, but in other parts of the country, Tea Party-supported candidates with a similar bullying, threatening attitude, or who seem to surround themselves with such people, are more likely to win.

Republican Allen West, endorsed by Sarah Palin and John Boehner, is leading in his race against incumbent Democratic Representative Ron Klein in South Florida’s 22nd Congressional District.

A retired Army lieutenant colonel, West resigned from the military, according to the progressive Web site ThinkProgress.org, “while facing a court martial over the brutal interrogation of an Iraqi man. …

“According to his own testimony during a military hearing, West watched four of his men beat the suspect, and West said he personally threatened to kill the man. According to military prosecutors, West followed up on his threat by taking the man outside and firing a 9mm pistol near his head, in order to make the man believe he would be shot.”

You can’t make this stuff up: Last week, NBC News reported that West has been communing with a notorious Florida motorcycle gang, the Outlaws, which the Justice Department alleges has criminal ties to arson, prostitution, drug running, murder and robbery.

And on Monday, West could be heard at a rally urging some bikers – also with Outlaw connections – to “escort” out a Klein staffer who was video-recording the event.

“Threats can be heard on the videotape,” said a reporter from NBC’s Miami affiliate. “West supporters forced him to get back into his car.”

The West campaign responded that “the latest attacks aimed at associating … Allen West with a criminal and racist gang are completely baseless and nothing short of a hatchet job.”

So what’s with the photograph of him glad-handing bikers who according to NBC brag about their association with the Outlaws? And why did West tell a supporter to back off when concern was expressed about “criminal organization members in leather” appearing at West’s campaign rallies?

Which brings us to Joe Miller, the Republican and Tea Party candidate for the United States Senate from Alaska.

On Sunday, at a Miller town hall, private security guards hired by the campaign – two of whom were moonlighting, active-duty military – took it upon themselves to detain a reporter pursuing Miller with questions, placed the reporter under citizen’s arrest and handcuffed him – then threatened to detain two other reporters who were taking pictures and asking what was going on.

The plainclothes rent-a-cops, complete with Secret Service-type earpieces and Men in Black-style neckties and business suits, come from an Anchorage-based outfit called DropZone Security, which also runs a bail bond service and an Army-Navy surplus store – with one of those anti-Obama “Joker” posters pasted to its window.

One-stop shopping for the vigilante militiaman in your life – kind of like that joke about the combination veterinarian-taxidermist: either way you get your dog back.

All of this would be funnier if not for the fact that this kind of hooliganism and casual trampling of First Amendment rights from people who claim to embrace the Constitution as holy writ is symptomatic of a deeper problem.

The anger of the electorate is understandable: politicians and politics as usual have given voters much about which to be mad; furious, in fact. But bullying is different. It comes from insecurity and fear, and lashes out with tactics of intimidation. To dismiss it as merely a secondary concern and say “I’ll take my chances” as long as the candidates in question agree with you is dangerous.

Scuffling with the press and others may seem minor, but it’s just the beginning. In states where there is early balloting, already there are allegations of voter harassment, primarily in minority neighborhoods.

The only way to fight back against bullies and thugs is to stand up and tell them to go to hell. To do otherwise is to give an inch and prepare to be taken for the proverbial mile. That way lies madness. And worse.

Michael Winship is senior writer at Public Affairs Television in New York City.

House GOP leader uses expletive to describe Obama

From Yahoo News -

House Republican leader John Boehner has used a vulgar expression to refer to Democrat Barack Obama and his voting record in the Illinois legislature.

While campaigning for Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Wednesday, Boehner told a small crowd at a bar in the college town of Oxford that failing to vote "yes" or "no" on an issue meant a lawmaker was a "chickenshit."

The Ohio congressman said the last thing the country needs is to have a "chicken" in the White House.