The 114th Congress: Two More Years!

[Slap Shot]

Re: The 114th Congress: Two More Years!

I thought the fundraising link would garner more discussion. It hasn't stopped at my other haunt. Too obvious of a topic?

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The 114th Congress: Two More Years!

This is brilliant.

Very well done. And she's from Wisconsin. Wow.

[Kepler]

Re: The 114th Congress: Two More Years!

This is brilliant.

If states can drug test low-income residents seeking welfare assistance, why can’t they do the same for members of the one percent asking for hefty federal tax deductions?

So goes the thinking of Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI), who spoke to the Guardian on Wednesday about her new Top 1% Accountability Act. The bill would force taxpayers reporting itemized deductions of over $150,000 to either submit a clear drug test to the IRS or accept the much lower standard deduction when filing their tax returns.

“We’re not going to get rid of the federal deficit by cutting poor people off SNAP,” Moore told the Guardian, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps. “But if we are going to drug-test people to reduce the deficit, let’s start on the other end of the income spectrum.”

The Milwaukee congresswoman's bill comes as a rebuke to Republican lawmakers and her state’s governor, Scott Walker. A state law that went into effect in December forces applicants for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to answer questions about their drug use, and Walker is suing the federal government for the right to drug test Wisconsin residents applying for SNAP benefits.

Other officials like Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) and West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) have pushed for similar measures in their states.

[Rover]

Re: The 114th Congress: Two More Years!

Well THIS is nice! Lets use anti-gay Bible versus before an anti-discrimination vote right after the Orlando massacre.

http://www.rollcall.com/news/politic...gop-prior-vote

[burd]

Re: The 114th Congress: Two More Years!

The Hill thumbnails the ten Senate seats most likely to flip. 538 also did a cool assessment of the likelihood of Democratic wins (the first number below):

.77  1. Kirk    (R - IL)

.85  2. Johnson (R - WI)

.64  3. Rubio   (R - FL)

.41  4. Ayotte  (R - NH)

.18  5. Toomey  (R - PA)

.46  6. Portman (R - OH)

.51  7. Reid    (D - NV)

.20  8. Burr    (R - NC)

.25  9. McCain  (R - AZ)

.04 10. Blunt   (R - MO)

If Feingold beats Johnson, we Wiscovites can feel a little better about ourselves, after a pretty pitiful run in recent years.

[Slap Shot]

Re: The 114th Congress: Two More Years!

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minut...telemarketers/

This is just part of the full transcript:

Stop fundraising, start working, says Fla. Rep. David Jolly, who is seeking to ban federal-elected officials from dialing for dollars

The American public has a low opinion of Congress. Only 14 percent think it's doing a good job. But Congress has excelled in one way. Raising money. Members of Congress raised more than a billion dollars for their 2014 election. And they never stop.

Nearly every day, they spend hours on the phone asking supporters and even total strangers for campaign donations -- hours spent away from the jobs they were elected to do. The pressure on candidates to raise money has ratcheted up since the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010. That allowed unlimited spending by corporations, unions and individuals in elections. So our attention was caught by a proposal from a Republican congressman that would stop members of Congress from dialing for dollars. Given what it costs to get elected today, it's either a courageous act, a campaign ploy or political suicide.

Florida Republican David Jolly won a special election to Congress in March 2014. Facing a reelection bid that November, he was happy to get a lesson in fundraising from a member of his party's leadership. But he was surprised by what he learned.

Rep. David Jolly: We sat behind closed doors at one of the party headquarter back rooms in front of a white board where the equation was drawn out. You have six months until the election. Break that down to having to raise $2 million in the next six months. And your job, new member of Congress, is to raise $18,000 a day. Your first responsibility is to make sure you hit $18,000 a day.
Norah O'Donnell: Your first responsibility--
Rep. David Jolly: My first responsibility--
Norah O'Donnell: --as a congressman?
Rep. David Jolly: --as a sitting member of Congress.
Norah O'Donnell: How were you supposed to raise $18,000 a day?
Rep. David Jolly: Simply by calling people, cold-calling a list that fundraisers put in front of you, you're presented with their biography. So please call John. He's married to Sally. His daughter, Emma, just graduated from high school. They gave $18,000 last year to different candidates. They can give you $1,000 too if you ask them to. And they put you on the phone. And it's a script.

Rep. David Jolly: The House schedule is actually arranged, in some ways, around fundraising.
Norah O'Donnell: You're telling me the whole schedule of how work gets done is scheduled around fundraising?
Rep. David Jolly: That's right. You never see a committee working through lunch because those are your fundraising times. And then in between afternoon votes and evening votes, that's when you can see Democrats walking down this street, Republicans walking down that street to spend time on the phone making phone calls.

By law, members of Congress cannot make fundraising calls from their offices. So both parties have set up "call centers" just a few blocks away. This is where the Republicans have theirs.

Norah O'Donnell: So can I go in there?
Rep. David Jolly: I don't think they would let either one of us in here, at this point. Remember I stopped paying my dues.

What Jolly means is that in addition to raising money for their own campaigns, members are supposed to raise thousands of dollars for their parties. That's their dues. If Republican members don't pay up, they can't use the party's call suites. No photos exist of the inside of either the Democratic or Republican centers. But with the help of a staffer, we were able to get into the Republican center with a hidden camera.

Rep. David Jolly: It is a cult-like boiler room on Capitol Hill where sitting members of Congress, frankly I believe, are compromising the dignity of the office they hold by sitting in these sweatshop phone booths calling people asking them for money. And their only goal is to get $500 or $1,000 or $2,000 out of the person on the other end of the line. It's shameful. It's beneath the dignity of the office that our voters in our communities entrust us to serve.
Norah O'Donnell: But you may not have a job if you don't fundraise.
Rep. David Jolly: I'm willing to take that risk.

A risk because David Jolly has pledged to stop personally asking donors for money. And that's not all. In February, he introduced a bill called the "Stop Act," that would ban all federal-elected officials from directly soliciting donations.

Norah O'Donnell: You've spent your life running a commercial roofing company.
Rep. Reid Ribble: Yeah.
Norah O'Donnell: And when you came to Congress and heard how much you have to raise to keep getting re-elected, did you want to quit?
Rep. Reid Ribble: Yeah, I did.
Norah O'Donnell: Are you the only one who feels that way?
Rep. Reid Ribble: No. No. If members would be candid, there's a lot of frustration centered around it. And some of this is the result of Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision that opened up really corporate dollars into the system. And so, if you want to have your own voice, if you want your voice to be heard as opposed to some outside group speaking for you, you better-- you better do your job and raise enough money that you can.

After the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, a flood of outside money poured in to Super PACs - political groups which are allowed to spend unlimited dollars on ads to support or attack candidates for office.

Norah O'Donnell: The last few years of Congress have been the most unproductive ever.
Rep. Rick Nolan: Yeah, it's unbelievable. I didn't hardly recognize the place when I came back.

Congressman Rick Nolan, a Democrat from Minnesota, is also co-sponsoring the Stop Act. Nolan was first elected to Congress in 1974 but served just six years. He returned in 2013.

Rep. Rick Nolan: It seems like I took a nap and I came back and I say, "Wow, what happened to this place? What's happened to democracy?" I mean, the Congress of the United States has hardly become a democratic institution anymore.
Norah O'Donnell: Why?
Rep. Rick Nolan: Well, because of all the money in politics, in my judgment.
Norah O'Donnell: What has your party said about how members of Congress should raise money?
Rep. Rick Nolan: Well, both parties have told newly elected members of the Congress that they should spend 30 hours a week in the Republican and Democratic call centers across the street from the Congress, dialing for dollars.
Norah O'Donnell: Thirty hours a week?
Rep. Rick Nolan: Thirty hours is what they tell you you should spend. And it's discouraging good people from running for public office. I could give you names of people who've said, "You know, I'd like to go to Washington and help fix problems, but I don't want to go to Washington and become a mid-level telemarketer, dialing for dollars, for crying out loud."
Norah O'Donnell: You're saying members of Congress are becoming like telemarketers?
Rep. Rick Nolan: Well, 30 hours a week, that's a lot of telemarketing. Probably more than most telemarketers do.

Is it any wonder?

[SJHovey]

Re: The 114th Congress: Two More Years!

http://gawker.com/documents-reveal-s...abo-1780574150

So what you're saying is...

I've read the article twice now, including the links to the documents, and I still don't see where Snowden directly tried to report the illegal NSA activities to his supervisors or anyone like the U.S. Attorney's office or anything else. There is the well known email where Snowden asks a question about Executive Orders and their legal status compared with acts of Congress, and then a whole series of emails where people debate whether they should publicly claim Snowden made no complaints, understanding there are probably hundreds or thousands of emails out there and who knows what is in them.

Snowden himself seems to confirm this when, after making his leaks to the press, he apparently testified in Europe that he basically went the route that he did because U.S. whistleblower laws, in his opinion, didn't provide him with enough protection.

But I guess here is the question that I would have for Ed. You didn't want to report it through proper channels, or even other authorities, because you didn't believe whistleblower laws would protect you, so you decided to just steal the information and hand it over to the media??? That makes no sense.

I understand the dilemma Snowden was in. The NSA was engaged in some very questionable activities, and he wants to expose it. Do you tell your supervisor? What's he going to do?

How high up the chain do you go? For all you know, this is maybe being done with the knowledge and permission of the POTUS. So instead, he dances around the issue in emails or discussions with his supervisors, asking vague questions like what law takes precedence over what law, etc...

But if you're Snowden, don't you at least have to try? Don't you at least have to go all the way to the top. If you go to the FBI or the U.S. Attorney or the Justice Department and report it, and nothing gets done, then fine, go to the media.

[Kepler]

Re: The 114th Congress: Two More Years!

The Hill thumbnails the ten Senate seats most likely to flip. 538 also did a cool assessment of the likelihood of Democratic wins (the first number below):

.77  1. Kirk    (R - IL)

.85  2. Johnson (R - WI)

.64  3. Rubio   (R - FL)

.41  4. Ayotte  (R - NH)

.18  5. Toomey  (R - PA)

.46  6. Portman (R - OH)

.51  7. Reid    (D - NV)

.20  8. Burr    (R - NC)

.25  9. McCain  (R - AZ)

.04 10. Blunt   (R - MO)

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The 114th Congress: Two More Years!

When Congress is too lazy, John Oliver steps in.

http://time.com/4357841/john-oliver-...-week-tonight/

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The 114th Congress: Two More Years!

http://gawker.com/documents-reveal-s...abo-1780574150

So what you're saying is...

[Handyman]

Re: The 114th Congress: Two More Years!

Every time I hear that dude speak I cringe...I hated him on Maher.

[Kepler]

Re: The 114th Congress: Two More Years!

Really weird FL race gets even weirder.

The Grayson wedding adds more drama to the 9th Congressional District race, in which Grayson’s former aide and political hand, Susannah Randolph, had been laying the groundwork for the seat. But then she learned last year that her boss’s girlfriend wanted to run and that he would back her.

“I’m speechless,” Randolph, who hadn’t heard the word of the representative’s intentions at the time, told POLITICO May 5, 2015.

At the time, Grayson hadn’t officially announced for U.S. Senate and was starting to get into an increasing number of scraps with fellow Democrats and reporters.

Grayson was also involved in a messy bigamy case*, in which he prevailed, and soon faced ethics questions over a hedge fund he ran.

* Because why not?

Grayson has been on Bill Maher a few times and he's erudite and shrewd. But good lord his personal life is a hot mess.

Last May, the Congressman was embroiled in a messy divorce with his wife of 24 years, whom he accused of bigamy and called a “gold digger.” This year, he’s just married a candidate running to replace him in the 9th Congressional District. Aw!

Grayson accused his then-wife Lolita of bigamy during their divorce proceedings, which were infamously delayed when one of her breast implants sprang a leak. Lolita, meanwhile, accused Alan Grayson of neglect, saying he’d cut off much of her financial access and abandoned her and their four children in a house filled with mold.

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The 114th Congress: Two More Years!

Ok, so I'm listening to Soundcloud on my phone. This is a really, really good discussion/interview. He is so level-headed, pragmatic, and informed. Unlike many from the GOP, he's also avoiding logical fallacies and well, being an idiot.

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The 114th Congress: Two More Years!

He is supposedly one of the very few Members who is universally respected by his colleagues of both parties. His staffers would also run through a wall for him, which is equally rare.

Apparently he is just flat out a good guy who also got elected. So it does happen once or twice a century.

The last two have been from Minnesota and the same seat in the Senate, best I can tell.

[Kepler]

Re: The 114th Congress: Two More Years!

Al Franken is seriously one of the best people who works on the Hill. He's really won me over. I'm hoping I remember to listen to this later, work blocks it here as well.

He is supposedly one of the very few Members who is universally respected by his colleagues of both parties. His staffers would also run through a wall for him, which is equally rare.

Apparently he is just flat out a good guy who also got elected. So it does happen once or twice a century.