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Tag Archives: United States Congress
a message from Barney Frank
Here we go again – at least here I go again, and I hope you can join me.
In January I announced that I would run for reelection in 2012 because I want to fight for the values I have been committed to throughout my career. The events in Washington since that time have reinforced my view that those values are under greater attack than at any time in my life.
Over the past few weeks, Congress has gone through a bizarre, grueling, and ultimately very sad budget process. This has been a disaster for those who believe that we have the capacity as a people to come together and cooperate on measures that are essential to improving the quality of all of our lives.
Republicans are attempting to weaken the financial reform bill we passed last year, and the far right has succeeded in passing through the House budgets that will re-deregulate derivatives and to weaken the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
At the same time, they resisted any effort to make significant cuts to our swollen military budget. Instead, they chose to inflict enormous harm on virtually all domestic programs, proudly stating that they had debated the entire US government in less than three days. I stood up in the House late at night after a marathon debate and I denounced their orgy of self-congratulation over their senseless budget cutting. http://images.myngp.com/LinkTracker.aspx?crypt=IVi0ax2%2b6UBSinc%2fCPYaKdaJwsMh0V5KnXpbYo0o6usIzZHtMm7avT6xh2PId64V3H1TXg9cveHz4X4iWQX%2f8nWBmlzPYqFO9PL61K1FacAU6VN1fqldK8%2fB3jnGOwZrHdqMotfOShGgWdUy45CNXMIOiDGBo%2fQ1q6IH2PgZSlM%3d
But the battle is not over — we will spend the next two years and more fighting this gross distortion of our budget priorities and of our values. I will give everything I can to this effort, and with your help I will do so through 2012 and beyond.
Last year, you helped me defend against coordinated attacks by national right-wing organizations which had been empowered to spend freely on elections by the recent Supreme Court decision. Because it was such an especially expensive campaign year, I am writing earlier than usual to ask if you can help me begin to payoff campaign debts – including one to myself – and to start to accumulate the funds that I will need to withstand another coordinated nation-wide right-wing assault in 2012.
It’s flattering to be the focus of the Right’s unhappiness, but it’s also expensive. I would be grateful if you would help provide me with what I need to fight back.
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Don’t let your tax dollars pay for discrimination …
This is how Congress is spending its time.
Right now, behind closed doors, Republican House leaders are deciding exactly how they’ll use our tax dollars to protect the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
And more than 90 right-wing lawmakers are wasting Congress’s time on a resolution condemning President Obama and declaring that same-sex couples should be denied equal rights. Some are even talking about impeaching the president for his principled stance against DOMA.
Meanwhile, as right-wing groups vilify gay members of Congress, we’re showing every lawmaker that a majority of Americans – both straight and LGBT – want DOMA repealed.
We need 535 more straight allies to join HRC in the next 24 hours so that we have the resources to get our message to all 535 members of Congress. Can you help fund this fight?
Join HRC in the next 24 hours with an urgent gift to fight DOMA and stand up for equality.
DOMA’s sole purpose is to deny married, same-sex couples the protections straight married couples enjoy: Social Security survivor benefits, joint tax filing, taking leave to care for a spouse, and more.
In the past few weeks, we’ve sent more than 170,000 letters to Congress calling out this discrimination. We’ve also released a new poll showing that a majority of Americans have no patience for these antics.1 They want Congress to focus on creating jobs – not defending DOMA.
Straight allies’ voices are critical in our fight to show Republican House leaders that they’re out of step with the American majority.
We refuse to be quiet. We’re standing up to right-wing ideologues, rallying support and fighting for DOMA repeal bills in the House and Senate. We’re continuously highlighting the scary truth about DOMA in the press. And we’re making sure your voice is heard in Congress on this issue.
This is not a test – equality for loving couples and families is on the line.
Declare your support as a straight ally. Stand up to hate – chip in now. www.hrc.org
I know you’re disgusted by our opponents’ hypocrisy and that you’re eager for progress. From the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. hate crimes law to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal, we’ve shown we can get things done together. I’m hoping you’ll stand with us today.
Keep up the fight,
President
1 A new poll from HRC and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research shows 51 percent of Americans oppose DOMA while 34 percent favor it. 54 percent of Americans want Congress to focus on jobs and only 32 percent would prefer Congress spend time defending DOMA.
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Deregulation = Financial Disaster + Middle-Class Robbery … AFL-CIO.org
This is not a drill. This is an emergency.
Our financial system is being attacked in Congress, and if it collapses again because of reckless greed, working people will bear the brunt. CEO-backed politicians will raid our Social Security, our Medicare and our public services to bail out the fat cats. Take action now.
http://act.aflcio.org/salsa/track.jsp?v=2&c=8sLeYVGi1PcO0hsdij8rr2gmjdx9rGEF
Tell your members of Congress: Deregulation leads to financial crises. Don’t deregulate Wall Street and then rob working people to pay for the bailouts that will follow.
In 2008, Big Banks and Wall Street CEOs created the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. As a result, 14 million Americans still are unemployed today.
But even though unemployment is high and our economic recovery is pathetically slow and fragile, corporations are lobbying furiously to undo the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
Many parts of this new Wall Street Reform Act—including a requirement that outrageous CEO pay be publicly compared with worker pay—haven’t even gone into effect yet. But already, House Republicans are siding with corporate CEOs, trying to repeal the bill piece by piece.
What’s the Big Bank/CEO/House Republican plan? Deregulate. And if the economy collapses again because of reckless greed, rob working Americans to pay for bailouts while the rich get richer.
http://act.aflcio.org/salsa/track.jsp?v=2&c=8sLeYVGi1PcO0hsdij8rr2gmjdx9rGEF
Tell Congress to leave the Wall Street Reform Act alone—and that if deregulation leads to another financial panic, we won’t pay a dime for bailouts.
This is serious. This is the time to take action. As House Republicans pick at pieces and “provisions” of financial reform, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that deregulation brought our economy to the brink of collapse. That didn’t happen all at once, either. It happened in pieces since the 1970s. Little by little, corporations pushed their agenda, and they got away with it.
That’s why working people must push back hard when corporations and greedy CEOs lobby for even a small piece of deregulation.
Tell Congress to leave the Wall Street Reform Act alone—if deregulation leads to another financial crisis, we’ll know exactly whom to blame.
So far, this week Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have proposed repealing several important provisions of Wall Street reform, including CEO-to-worker compensation disclosure—before they even go into effect. They also want to create new loopholes in the law for private equity fund managers, companies that use derivatives, credit rating firms and companies that issue up to $50 million in securities.
The fact is, America deserves to know what CEOs make compared with their workers, and we simply cannot afford to deregulate Wall Street.
But more broadly, we can’t give an inch and allow the deregulators to bankrupt America again.
Efforts at repealing pieces of Wall Street reform are just the beginning of Wall Street thinking it can return to its old ways. We’ve got to put that notion to rest, right now.
Tell your members of Congress you oppose repealing any part of Wall Street reform, that you demand CEO-to-worker pay ratios be made public and that working people can’t afford more financial disasters.
http://act.aflcio.org/salsa/track.jsp?v=2&c=8sLeYVGi1PcO0hsdij8rr2gmjdx9rGEF
In solidarity,
Manny Herrmann
Online Mobilization Coordinator, AFL-CIO
P.S. BREAKING NEWS: A Wisconsin judge just issued a restraining order against the recently passed bill killing public employee bargaining rights. You can read more at the AFL-CIO Now Blog. http://act.aflcio.org/salsa/track.jsp?v=2&c=IWj7usJ61FDarYEuMmAMp2gmjdx9rGEF
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thirsty Thursday &some News
Today has an air of sadness in it because of the events in Japan as well as the uprisings in various parts of the Middle East these days. The impact on our family friends are both sad and rude realities of our lives today but as we all know life goes on so take some time to kiss , hug and love your family, tell them how you feel.
– take time to reach up to the sky slowly while breathing in deeply through the nose and hold and while lowering your arms to your sides exhale through your mouth and roll slowly your head, neck, shoulders torso …. repeat when needed. The weather on the other hand has gone from the upper 50’s back to the cold 30’s and that is maddening to me because spring officially starts this weekend but as we move into the last week of March college Basket Ball or March Madness is now in full effect and will play itself out to its final push toward the big dance in April.
My rant this week, well the last few weeks have been filled with crazy talk from some freshman tea party members and it definitely has driven many mad as the final push toward getting the budget for FY2011 finalized. We all have to wonder at what point do these amateurs of politics and governing understand the words negotiate and compromise. It is disturbing to watch folks from the right play with the rights and lives of Americans by offering up deep budget cuts in spurts let alone anything-long term. What we Americans have seen on the floor of the Republican led House is one after the other of many acts of calamity by Congress and includes DEFUNDING the following: BIG BIRD, Families, volcano and tsunami warning centers, Women ,Children oh and do not forget you old people or anyone else that is in need. The fact is Public Broadcasting only costs around $1.50 per person and as a parent watching Sesame Street with my child was just a great addition to learning … and it’s from home. Americans constantly need reminding that elections have consequences. The party of no plans, cohesiveness, and or experience is itching for a government shutdown, and seemingly wants to force Americans back into the 50’s living in my opinion.
Though both Political Parties support the “stopgap bill”, which is only a temporary solution ;who would have thought that keeping the Government in biz for 2-3 weeks at a time is acceptable let alone and I say that again, let alone have the Democratic Party be the ones who keep the absolutely unacceptable 2012 spending bill alive. This whole thing is offensive to Working Families. I will admit I was not happy that 85 left of centers voted with Republicans to make sure that the latest deal …a 3-week stopgap passed on the floor of Congress. It would have been great if our Democratic party could have said look you do not have the votes let’s negotiate a real CR a good compromise and permanent budget. I don’t know about you but the lack of leadership and or control Boehner has over his freshman tea members is hilarious. It should also be a warning and enlightenment to rightwing backers to see Speaker Boehner is an epic failure. The number of bills that the new members of Congress has blocked, stalled, or voted down by their members of the Tea Party is beyond funny; at least it is funny to this voter.
The great debate or debates among members of Congress, talking heads, so-called journalists and us civilians about WHO WILL VOTE NO on the floor of Congress on any given day and why or do Democrats really want to support the President’s agenda or save themselves has gotten way too much media play for my taste. It has changed my thoughts and opinions on how honest certain reporters and the cable stations they work for are. Most of us have to question just what side of the aisle they represent on any given day or hour in the day. There used to be a time when most maybe not all but most talking heads in “the media” actually did subscribe to “fair and balanced news”. Now, given the rhetoric no one should be representing a side whatsoever but then again we have FOX as an example, who has some sort of pass to all things considered compassion, equal rights, discrimination and just plain ole human being type behavior. Well, let’s remember it is FOX.
The President subjected himself to a FOX interview for the Super Bowl and though he was unable to respond to Fox host Bill O., who clearly was hostile toward the President, butted in, kept asking questions, and seemed to think that interview was all about him. The behavior by the host should have been quite an embarrassment for fox management; actually, for anyone who works for “the Media” and calls themselves a reporter and or journalist who intentionally acts with such bad manners but there were no reports suggesting he was held accountable, which is so typical and offensive.
Other News …
**Dozens of nuke plant workers injured,exposed
**ok, yes low radioactivity heads for N.America
**Senate sends 3wk funding bill to President Obama
**Four NYT journalists reported missing in Libya
**Gahadfi pounds “rebel” his own people -US hints at air strikes
**House is set to vote on defunding BIG BIRD
*Another Earth Quake rocks Japan 6.0
** DEA takes lethat drum from GA dept of Corrections
**Republican led republicans want to cut tsunami warning centers .. odd
**RNC will sell tv rights of republican presidential primary debates
**Diplomats discussing “range of options” beyond no-fly zone
**Mexico confirms presence of the US drones
**The NRA will not talk gun control with Obama ..ask yourself why
**
CSPAN …
Capitol Hill
Is U.S. Prepared for Next Big Disaster
Also a look at earthquake monitoring
http://c-span.com/Events/Is-US-Prepared-for-Next-Big-Disaster/10737420262/
House To Vote To Defund NPR
http://c-span.com/Events/House-To-Vote-To-Defund-NPR/10737420260/
Republicans Push Drilling to Offset Rising Gasoline Prices
http://c-span.com/Events/Republicans-Push-Drilling-to-Offset-Rising-Gasoline-Prices/10737420263/
Senate Hearing on Winding Down of TARP
http://c-span.com/Events/Senate-Hearing-on-Winding-Down-of-TARP/10737420261/
Press Secretary Jay Carney conducts a daily briefing at the White House. Questions were mostly about the safety of Japan’s nuclear plants, in the aftermath of the recent earthquake and tsunami. Mr. Carney also responded to questions about the unrest in the Arab world.
http://c-span.com/Events/White-House-Briefing-with-Press-Secretary-Jay-Carney/10737420233/
Elizabeth Warren, Assistant to President Obama & Special Adviser to the Treasury Secretary on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said she thinks the President will nominate a director for this new agency soon and added that if it was operational years ago “we won’t be in the mess we’re currently in.” She also said she’s only been offering advice to the Obama Administration involved in a formal settlement with mortgage servicers, but may participate in these discussions when the CFPB becomes operational in July.
http://c-span.com/Events/Warren-Defends-Consumer-Financial-Protection-Bureau/10737420228/
Representatives from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), joined by health and security experts, responded to concerns raised by the use of body imaging technology and other airport security measures at a House Oversight & Government Reform Subcommittee hearing.
http://c-span.com/Events/Congress-Hears-Publics-Concern-with-Full-Body-Scans/10737420257/
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