The Politics of Climate Change

Posted on May 21, 2013 by

This week’s edition of the radio program, “The American Life”, is titled “Hot In My Backyard”. It looks at Politics of Climate Change. If you listened to it you would have heard about controversial scientific facts and figures, but they are not the focus. The focus is how our representatives and government administrators are tied to the political realities of this emotional topic.

The program is presented in three acts, or three different stories on a common topic.  The first act tells the story of Colorado State Climatologist Nolan Doeskin, who has slowly developed a stronger belief in Climate Change. His clients (farmers and ranchers) generally do not believe that Colorado’s recent extreme weather is more than an abnormality of the weather cycle. Doeskin struggles with warning his clients about the dire predictions of changing temperatures. He feels that “telling people to believe something different than what they do hardly ever has an impact”. The people most affected by Climate Change don’t want to believe in it. They want to be optimistic that next year will be better than this one. They believe Climate Change is a ‘liberal conspiracy’, ‘God is in charged’ or ‘the science is wrong (or rigged)”.  Doeskin decides to ‘come clean’ with his clients at an annual meeting, with interesting results.

The Second Act  is a story about former Congressional Representatives from South Carolina, Bob Inglis. Inglis was a 12 year veteran conservative congressman.  He had an 100% approval rating by the Christian Collation, 100% National Right To Life rating, 93%  American Conservative Union rating , and he earned an “A” rating from the NRA. In 2010 he faced a Tea Party backed Republican Primary Challenger, who used Climate Change against him. The Tea Party candidate crushed Inglis, 71% to 29%!

After he lost, Inglis decided to start a non-profit organization to promote climate change to the most conservative audiences. One Mississippi talk show host told him, “Every fiber in my body tells me that if you are a conservative you can not believe in Climate Change.” The story points put that  polls show 40% of republican voters believe in climate is changing  and are worried about it. Republicans representatives believe the Talk Show host, and have voted down language in bills that would just acknowledge that climate is changing!

The Third Act–is about writer turned activist, Bill McKibben. After writing about Climate Change and the need for the American Public and the Congress to react, he decided take the next step—become political. He realized that you need to have an organized campaign to educate people–to change their minds. He also realized that he needed to have somebody to blame. He has found his villains in the fossil fuel industry. They have control of the untapped carbon laden fossil fuels, that when tapped and burned it overloads our atmosphere with carbon which affects our climate.

His mode of operation is to get people politically active enough to convince large organizations to ‘divest’ their funds in the Fossil Fuel (Gas and Oil) Companies. He has been on speaking tours of colleges, urging the students to work on their colleges to divest their funds from oil companies. McKibben has motivated the many college students to become political activists! There have been over 300 college campaigns started and 5 small colleges have been convinced to actually divested their funds away from the Oil Companies.  The story also tells of a students who organized a “Sit In” in the President’s Office at the Rhode Island School of Design. It describes the difficulty in divesting and the Sit-Ins’ results.

What I liked about this program is it looks at politics through a real situation. As I listened to this story on This American Life, it hit me that the same activities could be about many controversial political topics– background checks, universal health care, DOMA, hydrofracking, the sequester, and more.  How do you change people’s minds? That’s the trick.

You can listen to this program at This American Life.org.

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Posted in Congress, Environmental, Gun Violence, Hydrofracking/Gas& Oil Industry, Political | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Company Rep. Reed Keeps

Posted on May 19, 2013 by

The following is a letter published in the Dunkirk Observer on May 17, 2013. It is posted her with the permission of the author, Ann Sullivan of Ithaca, N.Y.

Like most Upstate New Yorkers, I respect the Second Amendment as settled law. Anyone who has troubled to actually read the SAFE Gun Act knows the law does nothing to infringe on the right of law abiding and mentally sound New Yorkers to access and own firearms.

Congressman Tom Reed rejects this sensible legislation. On April 27, he attended and spoke at an anti-SAFE Gun rally in Horseheads where he said, “They don’t know what they stepped into up in Albany by trying to take away people’s freedom.”

Congressman Reed’s ignorance is surpassed only by the company he keeps. One proclaimed sponsor of the rally was the Oath Keepers. Oath Keepers is a right wing extremist group that encourages military personnel and peace officers to disobey “unconstitutional orders.” Its website targets as “Red Coats” individuals as centrist as retired general Stanley McChrystal and Congressman Peter King of Long Island.

Congressman Reed has embarrassed himself and his constituents by appearing at a rally where the Oath Keepers manned a booth and took such a visible role. An informed politician would know better than to keep company with such extremists. Sensible residents of the New York 23rd Congressional district will not forget the company Tom Reed keeps in November 2014.

You can read the comments to this letter here.
Posted in Constituents, Gun Violence, Reed's Views | 1 Comment

Reed Should Focus on the Real Issues

Posted on May 19, 2013 by

Saturday brought news of a Congressional Budget Office finding that President Obama’s 10-year budget proposal would save $1.1 trillion and bring the deficit down to manageable 2% of GDP — holding it there for years to come. This is the same budget that would expand early childhood education and make sound investments in infrastructure — although it’s proposed Social Security cost of living adjustment change still needs work.

Congress ought to be debating the budget right now and acting on it. Both houses have passed their own versions a budget plan. They should take these plans to conference, where the best parts of the President’s proposal could be factored into a final deal. But that can’t happen, because Republicans refuse to let a conference happen. They’re afraid the final result might require the wealthy and the big corporations to pay their fair share.

Instead, Republicans are glorying in a set of so-called scandals they believe can knock the Administration off balance and keep the nation from dealing with any of its fundamental problems, from the budget to global warming. Our own congressman, Rep. Tom Reed, is firmly in this camp. His latest email to constituents was devoted to the scandals rather than the issues, although there is very little substance to any of them — with the exception of the secret subpoena of AP phone records, which will be discussed in a future post.

Let’s take the IRS scandal. “Unwarranted,” “partisan,” and “blatant” were among the terms used by Reed to describe the decision by some IRS employees to keep an eye out for the words “Tea Party” and “Patriot” in considering applications from organizations seeking to be classified as social welfare organizations. If they were found to be political action committees rather than social welfare organizations, they would have to pay taxes.

At the heart of this affair is the infamous Supreme Court decision, Citizens United, which overturned government restrictions on political contributions by corporations. The decision was a boon to corporations wanting to influence politics and government for private gain, but there was a problem — contributions to political action committees have to be disclosed and might provoke objections from stockholders and customers.

What were corporations caught in this dilemma to do? The solution was discovered in a heretofore little known type of tax exempt non-profits known as 501(c)4 organizations. These organizations are granted a tax exemption in exchange for engaging in social welfare activities.  Engagement in civic issues is defined as a social welfare activity, and that allowed them to involve themselves in political issues. They were still corporations, and before Citizens United their involvement in political campaigns was restricted. But suddenly that bar was lifted. Now they could participate in elections and campaigns as long as their “primary purpose” remained social welfare. What brought particular joy to corporations and other wealthy conservatives was that under the law, 501(c)4 organizations need not disclose their donors. They were the ideal vehicle for flooding American politics with secret corporate money. They could directly engage in campaigns. They could even make contributions to political action committees, and no one would be able find out where the money really came from.

A rash of 501(c)4 applications soon hit the IRS. How were employees to sift through them all and find those organizations which might be trying to mask a primarily political rather than social welfare purpose? Looking closely at applications for non-profits that included the words “Tea Party” and “Patriot” in their names seemed a good place to start. Those words give a pretty strong hint of a primarily political purpose. But how exactly is a “primary purpose” to be determined? That’s an ambiguous standard, and it’s worth noting that the IRS seems to have been extremely generous in allowing organizations that are highly political to receive social welfare organization status. Just take a look at the website of the Tea Party Patriots, which has been granted a 501(c)4 exemption.

The real scandals here are Citizens United, a poorly written law that has created a loophole big enough for an elephant — or Karl Rove and Crossroads GPS — to get through, and the determination of big corporations and the rich to influence politics with secret money. IRS employees, if they were more politically sensitive, would also have run searches on words like “progressive” and “liberal,” even though progressives and liberals weren’t really the problem. But those employees were only trying to do their job in scrutinizing applications for 501(c)4 tax exemptions from organizations they had good reason to suspect might well be primarily political.

Rep. Reed evidently sees it as his job to defend the interests of the rich and powerful, even when they want to abuse a loophole to pursue their selfish interests.

Posted in Political, Reed's Views, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

An Angry, Frustrated Constituent, Part 2

Posted on May 17, 2013 by

This is the second of a two part article that presents a speech made at Rep. Tom Reed’s Town Hall Meeting in Manchester, New York on May 11, 2013. The first part was posted yesterday (May 16. 2013).

The speaker, as we found out yesterday, is a 61 year old woman who is presently unemployed (she worked in the Construction Industry). Immigration, Medicaid, and Obamacare, are ruining her life, and  exists because the Democrats need to have their warm fuzzies and feel happy. She has a 16 year old niece who doesn’t know what wants to do in her future, and, as a good Aunt should,  blames that on the feel-good philosophy of the Educational System, controlled by Democrats.

In this portion of her speech, she unveils her plan to take the government back from Democrats and stop the ‘train wreck’ that this country is experiencing.

Again I include how Rep. Reed responds to her negativity through two long comments.

Twitter and Problem Solving–Nobody can figure out the simple ways except the people who sit at the kitchen table come up with incredible ideas. I’m extremely active on twitter and have been for years. I’ve got thousands of followers on twitter. I can’t believe the information that comes out of these people. The energy that working class people like me and we talk to our politicians and you’re talking in terms, that and we’re talking about this, we’re working on this, we’re discussing this, we’re looking for ideas, then get down to the nitty gritty and talk to the people who are suffering the most and that’s the middle class.

Voting–And my vote in this state, it doesn’t matter. Why should any republican, or independent, or conservative, or libertarian, or anything, why should we bother voting. The Democrats are going to make the decision. Really why does anybody bother voting in November of 2012 when Ohio made the decision? That is all we heard weeks before the election. Down to Ohio. Down to Ohio. Why should I go to vote? The electoral system should go down the toilet. It is unfair. When you’ve got districts whose vote doesn’t even matter! It’s unfair. It’s unconstitutional.

Politicians (and Immigration)–You all  seem too proper. You all seem too nice. You all seem too casual. You all seem to well sit down and have a civil conversation. You know here is an entire class of people in this country that says “NO!” Let’s sit down I want to slap you on the side of the head and say Wake up to this, the reality.  You’re destroying jobs,and you’re opening the gates to all of these people. We don’t know the people we’ve got here already. We have no clue. We found out who two of them were in Boston, didn’t we? We found out the hard way. And who is the family in Arizona or New Mexico or Texas that’s going to get slaughtered while they’re sleeping in their home by illegal immigrants when they’re  trying to find a safe haven? Because that is what’s going to happen. And then the Politician is going to stand up and , “Oh, My! Look what happened. We’re going to have to do something about that. Let’s develop a COMMITTEE. “

I’m sorry, you guys are killing us.

Rep. Reed’s response to the last comment…What I try to do, we live in a split government in Washington DC. and if we are going to get anything done we have to be respectful to each other, in my opinion, and we have to sit and take the debate to the American people. You have identified about thirty different problems there. We are trying to have our input on, and push. I try to do it the way I was brought up. The way I’m trying to conduct myself coming from a large family is that I try to understand other peoples’ point of view that doesn’t mean I give away my philosophy and who I am and what I believe is the right path for us to go. Because if you don’t do that what ends up happening is we become further divided and nothing gets done.

That’s one of the problems that I think we’re facing in the country because right now because there are people on both sides of the aisle, far right, far left, who are utilizing that to say “Holy Cow, if I can throw these bombs they’ll put me on newspaper. They’ll put me on FOX or Rachel Maddow, and all that. I don’t do that because I went to Washington to do something.

In order to do something in that town I have recognized that split government, and you do have a legitimate difference of opinions on what is the best philosophy for going. The one philosophy that is on the left side is “government is the solution, government should do more.” I am on the other side saying “Enough is Enough.” The government should be very limited in what it does. And should be smaller because it is not sustainable. You jeopardizes the whole system in regards to that bigger government. We are seeing the results as we speak with the debt and everything that is going on with it. So I try to take logic and commitment and a lot of times in these conversations, as you say, the other sides wants the warm and fuzzies.  They are well intentioned, some of these people, but the intentions causes unintended consequences that impact all of us.

(Woman…) Getting Black Democrats, and Independents To Vote For Republicans–We need to find a way to reach democrat voters. And to show them the damages being done by this administration policies and that is one of places where Mitt Romney failed in his campaign. He failed greatly. He didn’t point out the hugh train wreck coming down the pike that we are all seeing now. Nobody pointed it out. Nobody said … I stood in line at the IRS. A few weeks ago. I was the only white person there. There was about fifty black people in line. They were all complaint about it. I can’t remember what it was. It was something new that has been done to Medicare I believe. They were all complaining about it. High taxes, high this, high that. I just wanted to scream and ask “who did you vote for?”and they don’t even have any idea that where the damages they’re feeling are coming from. Yet every complaint I heard them talk about were things that were done through the Obama Administration and they don’t even know.

So if these are democrat people and these are black voters, if these are people that the republicans need to clean out the rest of the elections coming down the road, you need to find a way to enlighten democratic voters to the damage that is being done because you are not letting people know the damage. I don’t care if it is a stupid television commercial that says…this is what happened before Obama and this is what things look like now. You know  you are not reaching those voters.

Rep. Reed’s response to the last comment…I appreciate those comments but I will not classify people based on color or anything like that. The philosophy of what we are doing and what our vision is we need at articulate much better. I try to get out there, that’s why I go to the younger generation, I need to do these town halls and I try to get out there and say, …”This is why I feel the way I do”…and I am asking them to explain why…I want us to explain why this is beneficial to all Americans, regardless of race, regardless of background. I think if we start with at that attitude there is a lot we can accomplished.

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An Angry, Frustrated Constituent, Part 1

Posted on May 16, 2013 by

The following is a transcript from a videotape of Rep. Tom Reed’s (R, NY-23) Town Hall meeting held on May 11, 2013 in Manchester (Ontario County).

The woman was angry and frustrated with life events that she no control over. At first I was offended that she blamed Democrats for what seemed like all the problems in the world. After hearing the tape over again I realized that the real story is how successful the right-wing media had in getting its message out to the most vulnerable of our society.

I tried to organize the content by topic. In doing so I had to move some of the comments around, since she jumped from topic to topic a bit.

I included a few of Rep. Reed’s comments. The ones you’ll see are the longer comments, telling us a bit more about his character. (I also had to add a few comments myself, questioning the validity of her remarks.)

Because of length of her speech (over 20 minutes–it’s a good thing that there were only five others in the audience), her remarks will be posted in two parts. The second one should be posted tomorrow, Friday, May 17.

Immigration and American Jobs–What do you think is s going to happen right now with people pouring over the borders?

We have a President who would love this and an entire party called Democrats who would love this crap, because they want to feel more fuzzy and happy about giving things away to people. For what they don’t see is that they are completely raping the middle class.

Why should I struggle everyday? I love what Marco Rubio is doing with immigration, but he is becoming twisted because as soon as he engaged the democrats it was give-a-way, give-a-way, give-a-way!

I’m a middle class person. We have no more to give AWAY! This is what it boils down to you can’t take one more nickel out of me or I’ll lose my — I’ve already lost my job. I’m an unemployed construction worker–road construction. Our roads suck in this state. Our bridges are ready for collapse. I worked with a DOT inspector for 15 years. Now I work for  (I could not hear the name of the company) Construction out of Rochester. At the Rochester Airport FAA just cancelled our projects. (Sequester?) I have no job this year. That means I lose everything. I am a member of AFL-CIO who I don’t how is it that they get to legally take money out of my paychecks and give it to assholes like Obama. How can they legally do that? And nobody does anything about it.

Middle Class–You’ve got a new group of slaves and that’s the middle class. We are working two, three, four jobs. We are driving more by the way the environmentalists should be pissed off at Obama because now you’ve got an individual who’s driving to three and four jobs instead of one. Look what its doing to the environment. I mean hen you’re looking at those people that is all they care about is the stupid issues that don’t matter. They don’t care if you can put food on the table.

Medicaid-We are living a lower quality of life than people on welfare and people on disability and social security and people on medicare, medicaid, MEDICAID. Walk into he door, got a bad tooth? We’ll give you all the teeth you want. Can’t see? We’ll give you eye glasses, want an ear-aid? Here you go–the best on the market. If you are on medicare you don’t get SHIT. You don’t get SHIT. I’m sorry of my language. I’m so pissed off right now because of this entire government in all of the countries. All–of– the– counties.

Obamacare–God, don’t get me started on Obamacare. I don’t understand how its existing. It is the single most destructive thing to this nation. It’s driving jobs away. We’ve got a wonderful hospital over in Clifton Springs that’s talking about closing because they don’t know how they are going to stay open. (They are also talking about merging with other nearby hospital.) Do you know how–it is going to devastate. It will become a ghost town. The tax dollar will disappear to this community, to the town of Manchester, the town of phelps, and yet who is it benefiting? It is benefiting people who have had already everything given to them. When Obama speaks of somewhere up to thirty millions of people supposedly that didn’t have medical coverage well by the time that we get done estimating they’ll be 32 million who do not have coverage, and I am one of them because I am middle class because I own my own home and  have do so for years and that I own a vehicle that is worth more than 15 hundred dollars. I don’t qualify for anything, not anything. So I’m going down the toilet. So do all of the other rest of the people in the community because we’re all in the same boat.

(I do question her idea that she can not get insurance coverage because she owns her house and has a car that is worth more that $1,500. )

Democratic Parenting Skills–When we grow up we are suppose to achieve. We have wonderful parents we usually start out with wonderful teachers sometimes and they try to instill an development of you want to develop interests, you want to develop a love of life, and develop a love for achievement. You want to achieve things and you want to become something and you want to have dreams. You want to have your life chasing those dreams. What the democrats do is and what people who are wimpy do and try think they are well intentioned, when they look at a child who is bored they says, “you will never be anything. You will never accomplish anything, you will never do anything and you will never have any dreams and that’s how I am going to keep you so I going to feed you and clothe you and put heat in your homes and put money in your pocket and so you can go to the strip clubs in Colorado with your welfare card. I mean we deafen  people, their minds no longer function. We have an entire generation of children coming out of school and they are different. I mean don’t you all sense it when you talk to young children. Do you see a drive, do you see a passion for anything? There is nothing. It’s like they are in a void. It’s like they are soul-less. So the democrats keep people soulless from the day they are burned. An they do it to the immigrants coming into this country its another generation of people being driven into soulless ness. Don’t achieve anything. Don’t become anything, don’t have any dreams , don’t get a job or work. Stay right here, be a cripple and I’m going to keep you a cripple because it makes me feel so good to take care of you. We don’t want those people need to be taught a different method of thinking they need to be taught very carefully by psychologist or psychiatrist w will sit down and say here is child A and here is child B. this is how this child was raised and this is how that child was raised, who would you rather have as your child? This is what is so frustrating. We are crippling people.

I have a sixteen year old niece and I look at her and say “God you are like empty up here. You don’t have any clue about what is going on and in  the world. You have no pursuit whatsoever. You don’t know what you want to do when you grow up, why you want to do that.” I think she thinks things are going to be handed to her. All of her friends are like that.

Rep. Reed’s response to the last comments…I share the frustration that you have just touched on. In DC I see a lot of people who want to blame…it someone else who did it, it’s the guy who makes a hundred million dollars a year, he’s the one keeping me down. Blame is something I don’t believe in and don’t try to do it. It all goes back to the old agate that I firmly believe in is you give a fish you feed him for a day. You teach  him to fish, you take care of him and his or her family for a lifetime. That’s the mentality that I think we need to go back to and try to share.

We are seeing the effects of this policy, if you would, cycle of dependency if you you want to call it that and we need to move away from that ….

(Woman, interrupting…) “Really, do you see… I look at my sixteen year old niece, I don’t see her or her friends going to want to join the military.” 

Reed… I’ve had this conversation with all of the nieces and nephew I have and I’ve had a couple who have interned for me and I’m like spending hours with them saying we need to be thinking and we need to be asking the questions why. That is why we have the classes in the high schools and engage in the conversation …‘Why do you feel like that? Not just what you feel, but why, and be creative.”  I still have a lot of optimism for our county and optimism  for our next generation. We have seen first hand people that you would have thought would have no chance in his world and they have pull themselves up. We do the military academy review (He goes on and explains the procedure of appointing a student to the military academies.) But the sentiment that you’ve expressed is very frustrating and I get your frustration. I hear it. And what we’re trying to do in Washington to our part to say where can we work together to advance the American Dream and the Individual Society that made us strong. The other alternative is to give up.

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MORNING NEWS: Gillibrand Voices Frustration Over Draft Farm Bill that Cuts SNAP Funding

Posted on May 15, 2013 by

Reblogged from WRFA-LP 107.9 FM:

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is announcing her anger over the passage of a Committee version of a U.S. Farm Bill that slashes Food Stamp funding for communities across the country.

On Tuesday, Gillibrand voted against the Farm Bill in the Senate Agriculture Committee, although it still received enough votes to move to the full Senate for consideration. Gillibrand said that despite her best effort, the committee version of the bill slashes $4.1 billion over 10 years to the…

Read more… 110 more words

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Reed Votes to Pay China First

Posted on May 15, 2013 by

Our congressman, Rep. Tom Reed, stepped up once again last week to loyally vote as his Republican leaders told him to vote, no matter what the consequences for his constituents.

This time the bill in question was HR 807, the Full Faith and Credit Act. This was not a complicated bill. It’s purpose was clear in its official title: “To require that the Government prioritize all obligations on the debt held by the public in the event that the debt limit is reached.” If the debt ceiling is reached, and Congress takes no action to raise it, government borrowing will stop.  We are now expected to hit the debt ceiling in September or October. When that happens, HR 807 requires that the United States use its income to pay, first, foreign holders of U.S. debt, and second, Social Security recipients. For all other programs, severe cuts are inevitable.

Under HR 807, should it become law, China would receive payments due on its loans to the United States, no problem. But would our troops in Afghanistan be paid? Would doctors receive payments for treating Medicare patients? Would the government be able to fund student loan programs? That’s all up in the air.

What could be behind this hare-brained scheme? Republicans are planning yet another destructive confrontation over raising the debt ceiling. The Congressional Budget Office reported on Tuesday that the annual U.S. deficit is dropping rapidly, thanks to spending cuts already in place, the very limited modifications in the Bush-era tax cuts, and economic growth that would be even higher were it not for the sequester. If current trends continue, by 2015 the deficit will reach a level that can be easily sustained over the long run.

But that’s not enough for House Republicans. They want their constituents to endure more austerity, and they believe the way to get more austerity is another showdown over the debt ceiling.

In past showdowns, House Republicans have been criticized for the damage their stance has done to the U.S. credit rating. That’s what H.R. 807 is all about. It will allow House Republicans to say that they didn’t want to damage the credit rating — in fact, they tried to assure that foreign creditors were paid. They’ve also taken some heat from seniors for the threat their debt ceiling crises have posed to Social Security recipients. Now they can say that they wanted to prevent any interruption in payments. H.R. 807 will not pass the Senate and will never become law, but when the debt ceiling crisis comes, House Republicans will try to say that their hands are clean with respect to U.S. credit rating and Social Security.

Two hundred twenty-one House Republicans, and not a single Democrat, voted for H.R. 807. Eight wiser heads among the Republicans joined 199 Democrats in opposing HR 807. Too bad Rep. Reed wasn’t among them.

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