Politics: All liberal Democrat all the time. 7/10/2022 #3 of 3

 

Why we are fucked as a nation...

...unless we elect people not subject to the influence of big money. Democrats OR Republicans.

Apple is guilty of tax evasion, legal though it may be.

From The Political Carnival.


Today's Los Angeles Times letter to the editor, because our voices matter:

    Re "Apple execs grilled over tax strategy," Business, May 22

    I don't know whether it's funny or hypocritical for politicians to grill Apple executives on business ethics. After all, these are the people who, for years, have regularly taken bribes disguised as campaign contributions and generally enriched themselves at the public trough, all with impunity.

    The politicians should be embarrassed - but to be embarrassed, one first has to have a conscience.

    Joe Martin

    Long Beach

On the Monsanto Protection Act

What it is...

And how we got it...

NRA now running America

DUCK - we're under fire!

Obama on gun control measures

Even Republicans don't like Republicans

Ka-pow!

More shootings, Congress still owned by the NRA. How proud must they be, those Congresspeople who put the NRA's money, and the right to bear arms, above the right of our children to remain alive? Some days I really wish there was a hell so that those SOBs would have a place to pay for their sins.

Will there be new gun laws?

Will improved background checks and stricter enforcement of current gun laws survive in Congress?

Religion and politics

Speaking of the sequester - in lyrics

Evidence: Republicans are actively working to make things worse.

Click "Yes" please

Congress is dying.

We have a House of Representatives that is divided and run by a blithering idiot who is so frustrated at his own inability to get the job done that he keeps swearing at and insulting his colleagues in Washington, and a Senate that can't move because it is frozen in place by the filibuster. And they yell and scream at Obama for not leading. Ha ha ha.

Cutting the deficit

Periodically I run across these posts that declare that Congress should take cuts in pay - or that Congress should have to live on the same health insurance plan as everyone else - and these posts are tempting to buy into. I don't see that Congressional salaries are too high, or that their benefits are too good - they are running the largest economy in the world - but it does irk that once elected, even if they only serve for a few months, they continue to get that salary and those benefits for the rest of their lives. I know that my pension is nowhere near as generous as the salary I once earned, nor is my health insurance still provided.

But the bigger point is that the amount of money involved is just a pittance when we compare it to the cuts that really need to be made to bring our budgets back to a balanced state. To be blunt, this is really just something to divert our attention away from the real problems we have.

Congress included

Seems logical

The problem with the logic in this image is that it's not 1 person, it's 535 people, each representing a different constituency. And most voters are happy with the way their elected officials are doing their job - they just hate everybody else's elected officials. Just sayin'.

New gun - seems legit

The perversion of our political system

Source

I don't know if we can call Rick Nolan of Minnesota a freshman congressman. Technically, he is one of the incoming congressmen of the 113th Congress, but Nolan's been there before. He was part of the 94th through 96th Congress as well. And he's noticed a whole lot of changes since the last time he walked the halls of Congress. One thing that sticks out like a sore thumb? The work hours:

"My first term, we worked 48 out of 52 weeks," Nolan said on Friday's edition of The Daily Rundown. "Most of those days were four and five day weeks. We were in committee virtually every morning, we were on the floor of the House throughout the afternoons and the evenings and we were working in the process of governing which is what we're elected to do."

He expressed his disappointment that Congress is only currently scheduled to work 34 out of 52 weeks and considers most of those days "not real."

"We went into session Monday, for example, we don't have any votes scheduled until 6:30 in the evening, we were also scheduled to work on Tuesday-which we did-and then we were scheduled to work on Wednesday and we took the day off," Nolan said.

Nolan quickly agreed with the public's sentiment "everybody's campaigning and nobody's governing," saying Congress isn't governing like they should especially with all the serious issues the country is facing. He told Todd that the time given for Congressional members to campaign and the money they use has become "toxic."

"I mean, we're told here two things," he said. "One is the one with the most money gets the most votes and number two - you should be spending 30 hours a week in fundraising and call time-dialing for dollars."

Surprise!

Surprise on you! Or maybe not?

The nineteen new Republican House committee chairmen are all white males