http://www.youtube.com/user/MrTimotheus85
Radio Address: Maine‘s Debt Burden & Voter Approval of Moral Obligation Bonds
http://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/index.php?topic=Gov_Radio_Addresses&id=199843&v=article
Governor Paul LePage – More Than Ninety Five Percent Of Maine’s Debt Was Never Approved By Voters As Required By Maine’s Constitution, This is just one of many statement made by Governor LePage in his weekly address given to the Maine people on February 19, 2011
The Senate Convenes at 10:00amET Friday 4, 2011
Following any Leader remarks, there will be a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.
There will be no roll call votes during Friday’s session of the Senate.
By unanimous consent, the Senate locked in the agreement outlined below with respect to Executive nominations. As a result of this agreement, there will be 2 roll call votes at 5:30pm on Monday.
On Monday, February 7, 2011, at 4:30 pm, the Senate will proceed to Executive Session to consider the following nominations:
– Calendar #3 Paul Holmes, of AR, to be US District Judge for the Western District of Arkansas;
– Calendar #6 Diana Saldana, of TX, to be US District Judge for the Southern District of Texas;
– Calendar #8 Marco Hernandez, of OR, to be US District Judge for the District of Oregon.
There will be one hour for debate equally divided in the usual form. Upon the use or yielding back of time, Calendar #8 will be confirmed and the Senate will proceed to vote on confirmation of Calendar #3 and Calendar #6 in that order.
As a result of this agreement, at 5:30pm on Monday, February 7, there will be 2 roll call votes on confirmation of the following nominations:
– Calendar #3 Paul Holmes, of AR, to be US District Judge for the Western District of Arkansas; and
– Calendar #6 Diana Saldana, of TX, to be US District Judge for the Southern District of Texas;
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The Senate Convenes at 9:30amET February 3, 2011
Morning business until 10:30am.
Following morning business, the Senate will resume consideration of S.223, the FAA Authorization bill.
The following amendments are pending to S.223:
– Whitehouse amendment #8 (laser pointers)
– Wicker amendment #14 (Excludes TSA from collective bargaining)
– Blunt amendment #5 (private screening company)
– Nelson (FL) #34 (NASA)
– Paul #21 (reduce authorization for FAA to FY2008 levels)
– Wyden #27 (increase test sites for unmanned aerial vehicles)
– Paul #19 (Davis Bacon)
Other Senators are waiting to offer their amendments. Senators will be notified when any votes are scheduled.
1-3pm morning business for the purpose of giving remarks relative to the upcoming centennial of the birth of President Ronald Reagan.
3:00pm Senator Manchin will give his maiden speech to the Senate.
The Senate has entered into an agreement that provides for 2 roll call votes around 5:20pm, if all time is used. Please note that some time may be yielded back and the votes could begin earlier.
Under the agreement, Senator Paul will call up amendment #19 (Davis Bacon). There will then be up to 30 minutes for debate equally divided between Senators Paul and Rockefeller, or their designees. There will then be up to 10 minutes for debate equally divided on the Whitehouse amendment #8 (laser pointers) between Senators Whitehouse and Hutchison, or their designees.
Upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate will proceed to vote in relation to the following amendments:
– Whitehouse #8 (laser pointers)
– Paul #19 (Davis Bacon)
There will be no amendments or points of order in order prior to the votes.
Votes:
10: Whitehouse amendment #8: (laser pointers);
Agreed To: 96-1
11: Rockefeller motion to table the Paul amendment #19: (Davis Bacon);
Tabled: 55-42
Unanimous Consent:
Adopted S.Res.42, a resolution making Majority Party committee appointments.
Adopted S.Res.43, a resolution making Minority Party committee appointments.
Adopted S.Res.44, a resolution supporting democracy, universal rights, and the peaceful transition to a representative government in Egypt.
Adopted S.Res.45, a resolution congratulating the Eastern Washington University Football team for winning the 2010 National Collegiate Athletic Association Division 1 Football Championship Subdivision title.
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the Senate Convenes at 10:00amET Wednesday
Following any Leader remarks, Senator Paul will be recognized for up to 20 minutes in morning business to deliver his maiden speech.
Following his remarks, the Senate will resume consideration of S.223, the Federal Aviation Administration bill.
The following amendments are pending to S.223, FAA Authorization:
– Stabenow #9 (1099 Reporting)
– McConnell #13 (Health Care Repeal)
This morning in his opening statement, Senator Reid announced to his colleagues that he spoke to Senator McConnell and they agreed to work towards having up to 3 roll call votes in the 5-6pm range this evening.
Those votes would be in relation to the following amendments to S.223, FAA Authorization:
– Possible Democratic amendment (1099 Reporting);
– Stabenow amendment #9 (1099 Reporting); and
– McConnell amendment #13 (Health Care Law Repeal).
At 5:15pm, the Senate will proceed to a series of 3 roll call votes in relation to the following amendments to S.223, FAA Authorization:
– Levin amendment #28 (repeal of 1099 with oil and gas offset);
– Stabenow amendment #9 (repeal of 1099 with unspent discretionary funds offset, exempts DoD, VA and Social Security Administration); and
– McConnell amendment #13 (repeal of health care reform).
The Levin amendment is subject to an affirmative 60-vote threshold for its adoption. No other amendments, points of order or motions are in order to these amendments prior to the votes except a Budge point of order, if applicable.
There will be 2 minutes for debate prior to each vote. The first vote will be 15 minutes in duration and the remaining 2 votes will be 10 minutes in duration.
Votes:
7: Levin amendment #28: (repeal of 1099 with oil and gas offset) (60-vote threshold);
Not Agreed To: 44-54
8: Stabenow motion to waive the Budget Act with respect to Stabenow amendment #9: (repeal of 1099 with unspent discretionary funds offset, exempts DoD, VA and Social Security Administration);
Waived: 81-17 (subsequently agreed to by consent)
9: McConnell motion to waive Budget Act with respect to McConnell amendment #13: (repeal of health care reform);
Not Agreed To: 47-51
There will be no further roll call votes tonight.
Unanimous Consent:
Adopted S.Res.30, a resolution celebrating February 2, 2011, as the 25th anniversary of ‘National Women and Girls in Sports Day’.
Adopted S.Res.36, a resolution raising awareness and encouraging the prevention of stalking by designating January 2011 as “National Stalking Awareness Month”.
Adopted S.Res.37, a resolution recognizing the goals of Catholic Schools Week.
Adopted S.Res.38, a resolution congratulating Brooklyn Center, Minnesota on its 100th anniversary.
Adopted S.Res.39, a resolution congratulating the Auburn University football team for winning the 2010 Bowl Championship Series National Championship.
Adopted S.Res.40, a resolution congratulating the University of Akron men’s soccer team on winning the National Collegiate Athletic Associate Division I Men’s Soccer Championship.
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The 3 Part VOTE spots that had |
Cuéntame’s “Don’t Silence The Vote” Music Video.
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Cuéntame takes on one of this year’s most racist Ad.
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More than seventy years ago, the Supreme Court abandoned a brief, disastrous experiment with “tentherism,” a constitutional theory that early twentieth century justices wielded to protect monopolies, strip workers of their right to organize and knock down child labor laws. This discredited constitutional theory is back — with a vengeance — endangering Medicare, Social Security, the minimum wage and even the national highway system and America’s membership in the United Nations. For the first time in three generations, the right is fielding a slate of candidates convinced that any attempt to better the lives of ordinary Americans violates the Constitution — while a number of sitting lawmakers such as Reps. John Shadegg (R-AZ) and Donald Manzullo (R-IL) are already actively pushing tentherism from within the Congress. Make no mistake, this agenda threatens all Americans, from the youngest schoolchild to the most venerable retirees.
SLAMMING SCHOOLHOUSE DOORS: Tentherism’s core tenet is that the 10th Amendment must be read too narrowly to permit much of the progress of the last century. Thus, for example, because the Constitution doesn’t actually use the word “education” — it instead gives Congress broad authority to spend money to advance the “common defense” and “general welfare” — Senate candidates like Ken Buck (R-CO) and Sharron Angle (R-NV) claim that the federal Department of Education is unconstitutional. That means no federal student loan assistance or Pell Grants for middle class students struggling to pay for college, and no education funds providing opportunities to students desperately trying to break into the middle class. And that’s hardly the worst news tenthers have in store for young Americans. Alaska GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller wants to declare child labor laws unconstitutional — returning America to the day when ten-year-olds labored in coal mines.
THANKLESS LABOR: Tenther candidates have even worse plans for working age Americans. Miller and West Virginia GOP Senate candidate John Raese both claim that the federal minimum wage is unconstitutional — a position the Supreme Court unanimously rejected in 1941. If you’re a person of color or a woman or a person of faith than you are also out of luck, because Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul agrees with Justice Clarence Thomas that the ban on employment and pay discrimination is unconstitutional (don’t try to get a meal on your lunch break either, because both men feel the same way about the ban on whites-only lunch counters). Significantly, the constitutional doctrine which supports the minimum wage is the same one which supports child labor laws and bans on discrimination, so when a candidate comes out in opposition to any one of these laws, it is likely that they oppose all of them. To top this all off, Alaska’s Miller even claims that unemployment benefits violate the Constitution, so Americans who are unable to find work in the new tenther regime will simply be cast out into the cold.
AN IMPOVERISHED RETIREMENT: Social Security may be the most successful program in American history. Without it, nearly half of all seniors would live below the poverty line. Yet, because words like “retirement” don’t specifically appear in the Constitution, tenthers think that Social Security is forbidden. Indeed, Social Security has not just been labeled unconstitutional by specific GOP candidates, the Republican Party’s “Pledge To America” embraces a tenther understanding of the Constitution which endangers both Social Security and Medicare. Tenthers respond to claims that they would abolish America’s entire safety net for seniors by pointing out that state governments could still create their own retirement programs, but such a state takeover of retirement programs is economically impossible unless America forbids its citizens from retiring in a different state than the one that they paid taxes in while working. Some tenther candidates have also suggested that Social Security can survive so long as it is privatized, but privatization would impose significant new risks on seniors, create new administrative costs, force benefit reductions and cost more money than the present system. In other words, the right has a simple plan for American families: making sure that everyone at the dinner table is completely on their own.
One of the defining characteristics of the current Republican Party is the near-unanimous denial of the science behind the threat of global warming pollution. “The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones,” writes the National Journal’s Ron Brownstein. Many of the candidates — whom Daily Kos blogger RL Miller has dubbed the “climate zombies” — are signatories of the Koch Industries‘ Americans For Prosperity No Climate Tax pledge and the FreedomWorks‘ Contract From America. The second plank of the Contract From America is to “Reject Cap & Trade: Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.” The Koch oil billionaires have pumped $1,125,400 into the campaign accounts of congressional candidates and $332,722 to state-level candidates, 87 percent to Republicans, and have contributed $1 million to the Proposition 23 campaign to kill California’s AB32 climate legislation. But Koch’s main influence is through its Astroturf arm, Americans for Prosperity, which has spent $649,188 in attack ads while organizing a massive get-out-the-vote effort for its Tea Party members across the nation. The polluting power of Koch Industries and other fossil fuel giants over the GOP in the Tea Party age is overwhelming. “[S]kepticism about climate science has become one of the many litmus tests for candidates backed by the surging right,” Nature magazine’s Jeff Tollefson observes. The denialism is an excuse to oppose green economic policies that would bring jobs back to America and clean the air, and would also limit the influence of the fossil fuel industry‘s dirty money on our nation’s politics.
ZOMBIES FOR SENATE: Remarkably, of the dozens of Republicans vying for the 37 Senate seats in the 2010 election, not one supports climate action, after climate advocate Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) lost his primary to Christine O’Donnell. Even former climate advocates Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) now toe the science-doubting party line. California GOP candidate Carly Fiorina is “not sure” that global warming is real, and is supporting Koch’s Prop 23 effort. Tea Party darlings are leading the charge: Florida’s Marco Rubio questions the “scientific evidence,” Kentucky’s Rand Paul charges scientists are “making up their facts,” and Nevada’s Sharron Angle has attacked the “climate change mantra of the left.” Some Democrats have made their opponents’ denial of science an issue. When Koch-funded Pennsylvania candidate Pat Toomey said the science is “very much disputed,” the Joe Sestak campaign called him a “closed-minded ideologue bent on insisting that the ‘world is flat.'” After Wisconsin candidate Ron Johnson said that global warming is caused by “sunspot activity,” Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) responded, “I’m not going to take a course in Ron Johnson science any time soon.” However, in coal company-dominated West Virginia, both U.S. Senate candidates — John Raese (R) and Gov. Joe Manchin (D) — question the scientific reality that burning coal is destroying our climate.
ZOMBIES FOR THE HOUSE: If Republicans take back the House, Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) would take over committees and have pledged to launch investigations against climate scientists. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), who apologized to BP and demonizes climate scientists, wants to become the chair of the House energy committee. And they may be joined by dozens of new radical global warming deniers who are campaigning to replace Democratic incumbents who were the swing votes in favor of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act in 2009. “I just don’t buy into it,” says GOP House candidate Bob Gibbs (OH-18). It’s “crap,” says Steve Pearce (NM-2). Global warming is “a hoax perpetrated by leftist ideologues with an agenda,” believes Todd Young (IN-9). “I don’t believe we have a significant impact on climate change,” argues Randy Hultgren (IL-14). The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has identified fourteen top House races in which a strong supporter for action to reduce global warming pollution is being challenged by a denier of the threat of global warming, but there are dozens more climate zombies in every state of the nation (especially Texas).
ZOMBIES FOR GOVERNOR: In Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming, four Democratic governors who have supported clean energy may be replaced by Republicans who have expressed fealty to big oil in the November 2010 elections. Florida is under imminent threat from the rising sea levels, fiercer heat waves, and stronger storms resulting from global warming, but GOP candidate Rick Scott has “not been convinced.” In Illinois, Tea Party candidate Bill Brady says the “premise” of global warming is “wrong.” Minnesota’s Tom Emmer thinks global warming science is just “Al Gore’s climate porn.” Ohio candidate John Kasich believes “global warming is cyclical.” Even in the Northeast, where the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative cap-and-trade system has been successfully in place for years, Maine’s Paul LePage thinks “scientists are divided on it,” Maryland’s Bob Ehrlich is newly “skeptical,” and Massachusetts candidate Charlie Baker is “not smart enough to believe that I know the answer to that question.” The Western Climate Initiative — the regional compact scheduled to begin in 2012 — is threatened by California’s Meg Whitman, Oregon’s Chris Dudley, and New Mexico candidate Susana Martinez, who thinks the science of climate change is an “ideological debate.” Even more troubling is the growing opposition by Republicans to renewable electricity standards, which have long enjoyed bipartisan support. LePage, Ehrlich, Kasich, and Brady have all challenged their state’s renewable standards, with Scott calling Florida’s proposed standards “leftist energy proposals.”
Be a Seed for Change 
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