Unhappy Voters Jam Capitol Hill Phone Lines |
A word of unsolicited advise to the Obama administration: In the future, you would be better off if you didn’t let internationally acclaimed rocket scientist Nancy Pelosi write any more spending bills for you. Essentially the same bill that she wrote for the House is now being debated in the Senate. The same government as sugar daddy philosophy is at work in the Senate version, except it’s more sugar and less daddy.
This bill is as welcome as a skunk at a garden party. Here’s hoping the Pubbies can cobble enough votes together in the Senate to send this porker back to committee for a major re-write.
~~John Cronin~~
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/04/voter.anger/index.html
By: Lisa Desjardins
Tags: Economic Stimulus PlanWASHINGTON (CNN) – The recent debate over the nearly $900 billion economic stimulus plan and revelations of tax problems by three Obama administration appointees have voters angrily jamming phone lines on Capitol Hill to air their frustrations to their elected representatives.
Their reactions are putting pressure on Congress and benefiting watchdog groups on both sides of the political aisle.
Capitol operators tell CNN Radio that phone lines have been jammed for the past two weeks, sometimes prompting busy signals.
A spokeswoman for Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, said calls on the sweeping stimulus plan jumped from eight during all of January to hundreds a day now.
In a sampling of 12 Senate offices, half had so many messages that their voicemail boxes were full.
It’s because of people like Betty Davidson.“I’m very upset!” exclaimed the 63-year-old from Laguna Hills, California.
She called her senators Tuesday, frustrated with the almost $900 billion-dollar economic recovery proposal.
“What a joke!” she said.
But she is particularly incensed by news that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and former Obama appointees Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer didn’t pay their taxes properly in the past.
“They can make the laws, but they don’t have to abide by the laws,” she complained. “It’s only we taxpayers.”
Those bitter words are like spring rain to nonprofit watchdog groups across the spectrum, who are seeing big boosts in interest.
“Just in the last week … responses to our e-mails out to activists have jumped dramatically,” said Grover Norquist, president of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform. “We’ve had more calls into our offices, more e-mails.”
That same spike has hit Citizens Against Government Waste, which is also seeing a surge in e-mails, calls and angry posts to its Web site.
“These people are almost feeling like suckers now for paying taxes, because no one else does,” said the group’s vice president, David Williams.
He sees the tax issues and stimulus bill as hair triggers after months of frustration over bailouts, Wall Street greed and whether the rich and powerful get special treatment.
“In the past week, we have gotten numerous e-mails from people talking about how the interest rates on their credit cards are going up even though these companies have received taxpayer bailouts,” he said, “and they don’t understand why they’re not feeling any relief.”
At the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Deputy Director Naomi Seligman said that whenever a well-known politician, such as Daschle or Geithner, is involved in an ethics question, it does raise some interest for them.
Seligman suggested that tax issues are raising the greatest ire.
“I think the average American is looking at their taxes during tax time and saying ‘Wow, I pay my taxes. Why aren’t these guys?’ ” she said.
That’s certainly how Davidson feels. She’s worried about shoveling debt onto her grandkids from the stimulus bill, and she is convinced Washington is corrupt.
“I’m just getting so sick and tired,” she said.
Pork |
Pork is the culinary name for meat from the domestic pig (Sus domesticus), often specifically the fresh meat but can be used as an all-inclusive term. It is one of the most commonly consumed meats worldwide,[1] with evidence of pig husbandry dating back to 5000 BC.Pork is eaten in various forms, including cooked (as roast pork), cured or smoked (ham, including the Italian Prosciutto) or a combination of these methods (gammon, bacon or Pancetta). It is also a common ingredient of sausages. Charcuterie is the branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products, many from pork. Pork is a taboo food item in Islam and Judaism, and its consumption is forbidden in these two religions.
The above definition of “pork” is from our friends at Wiki. They tell us that pork “is also a common ingredient of sausage.” As we all know it is also a common ingredient of run of the mill spending bills and now it is the major ingredient of the so called “stimulus” bill. Here is hoping ( with fingers, toes and eyes crossed ) that this plethora of porcine plentitude goes down to inglorious defeat.
~~John Cronin~~
Tags: Economic Stimulus Plan
Changing history? |
This is the link to the transcript of the Obama Clinton debate. I was trying to find the question about Obama’s 91 million dollars in earmarks. I’ve looked pretty hard, did they remove that question from the transcript?
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=10292802
If the link doesn’t bring you right to the whole debate, click on “printer friendly”, and that should display the whole text.
I think it is pretty stark, how Obama has used 91 million in pork, compared to John McCain who (he says) has never used an earmark.
That is a big difference.
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