Politics: All liberal Democrat all the time. 9/19/2022 2 of 3

 

Conflicted over the sequester

I guess the Republicans were hoping that it would just be Democrats who suffered from their indiscriminate budget cutting.

From Daily Kos...

Kansas Republicans love the sequester but not so much its effects
from Daily Kos by rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson)

There was real enthusiasm for the sequester in the Kansas delegation in the U.S. House:

    Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas) referred to sequestration as "the first significant tea party victory" in Washington, while Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas)said the cuts were "a home run for America."

Yay! This is awesome, right? Well ... maybe for Huelskamp and Pompeo's sloganeering far-right ideology, but for their constituents in Kansas? Not so much:

    A court ruled earlier this year that Kansas had failed to meet its constitutionally defined obligation to fund state education requirements. Now, the state Department of Education estimates a loss of $59 million in federal funds in the 2013-2014 school year, just as the state was looking to get its education funding back on track.

    The cuts will also cost the federal courthouses in Wichita, Topeka and Kansas City $750,000 this year-14 percent of their budget-according to the court clerk in Topeka. Judge Julia Gibbons, budget committee chairwoman for the U.S. Judicial Conference, said that as a result, some criminal cases in Kansas won't be prosecuted this year, and Kansans who face federal charges may wait longer to see a court-appointed lawyer.

    But most of the local attention has gone toward the closure of seven air traffic control towers, a consequence of the $600 million funding reduction for the Federal Aviation Administration this fiscal year.

And of course Huelskamp and Pompeo are outraged about the control tower closures, because closing those is bad and political, unlike all the other cuts that they support, which are good and, okay, also political, but in a good way that they agree with. A tea party victory, home run for America kind of way. I mean, when you hear that the justice system is slowed down and an already inadequate education system is losing funds, don't you think "YES! HOME RUN"?

Good words on inequality in the U.S.

From Gunch on Reddit...

No one has gone to jail for crashing the world economy, torture or unconstitutional wiretaps. There is however room in our jails for people who share files or smoke pot. This is not a justice system. It is an exploitation system.

It's Simple, Really...

Marisa Taylor, a reporter with McClatchy Newspapers, reports on the government employees in the scandal going on in the oil and gas royalty program in the U.S. Department of the Interior. And she posits a pretty good question...

WASHINGTON — The Interior Department's watchdog criticized the Justice Department on Thursday for declining to prosecute the managers of an oil- and gas-royalty program that's been tainted by allegations of illicit sex, drug use and taking favors worth thousands of dollars.

The Justice Department prosecuted two employees from the Minerals Management Service, but Inspector General Earl Devaney said he didn't know why the department's lawyers didn't act on his recommendation to prosecute two high-ranking officials who've since retired.

But really - the answer is pretty simple. Since there are so many crooks in the Republican party, and within the Bush Administration in particular, the Justice Department is trying to protect as many of them as they can. It would be a shame if half of the Republican Party leadership was all in jail or under indictment.

Iraq Wants Some Justice

From Chron.com

Iraqi authorities want the U.S. government to sever all contracts in Iraq with Blackwater USA within six months and pay $8 million in compensation to each of the families of 17 people killed when the firm's guards sprayed a traffic circle with heavy machine gun fire last month.

The demands — part of an Iraqi government report examined by The Associated Press — also called on U.S. authorities to hand over the Blackwater security agents involved in the Sept. 16 shootings to face possible trial in Iraqi courts.