Upset 2010?
by Ryan Jaroncyk

Not your typical Republican, John Dennis is adopting an unorthodox strategy in his bid to unseat Speaker Nancy Pelosi in next year’s congressional mid-terms.  Many political pundits would consider his campaign a long shot, especially in the more liberal domain of San Francisco, but rising voter discontent and a 27% congressional approval rating may set the stage for some potentially spectacular upsets.

Pelosi is revered by most Democrats and is one of the most powerful women in the world.  She is a seasoned politician and has become one of the most recognizable faces in the US Congress. However, a number of developments have weakened Pelosi’s political standing. In an October poll, Pelosi registered a 34% approval rating in the state of California, with only a small majority of Democrats (51%) giving her high marks.  Since the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress, Pelosi and her fellow Democrats have continued to fund the Iraq War, despite offering vociferous opposition under President Bush, and three years later, there are still over 120,000 troops stationed there and sectarian violence is once again on the rise.  In early 2008, the Bush-Pelosi $168 billion stimulus failed to rescue the economy from the coming crash.  In 2009, the $787 billion stimulus failed to stem unemployment at the predicted 8.1%, the Afghanistan-Pakistan war has been ramped up with two substantial troop surges in less than a year, and healthcare reform has disappointed many in the Democratic Party.  Couple these troubling developments with an angry grassroots movement bent on punishing incumbents throughout the nation, and Speaker Pelosi’s seat may not be as secure as she’d like.

Enter John Dennis.  Dennis is a successful businessman and entrepreneur running as a political outsider.  Unlike most of his fellow Republicans, he believes America should withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as close down a significant number of US military bases around the world.  Instead, Dennis advocates a more limited, focused, and cost effective approach to national defense. On the domestic front, Dennis is a staunch defender of civil liberties, a diehard fiscal conservative, and a devoted adherent to the Constitution.  Not afraid to hold his own party accountable, Dennis even campaigned for Dr. Ron Paul in the 2008 presidential primaries, a campaign that vigorously challenged the GOP’s foreign policy, debt-laden fiscal record, and inability to predict the economic collapse.  For a closer look at Dennis’s positions on a slew of issues, click here.

If healthcare reform turns out weaker than expected, climate change legislation stalls, unemployment still hovers around 10%, the pace of the Iraq troop drawdown disappoints, and the Afghanistan war bogs down yet again, Pelosi could face robust competition from the upstart Dennis.  However, if the opposite scenario plays out, then Dennis will not stand a chance and Pelosi will face an easy reelection.

Keep an eye on this California’s 8th Congressional District.  Things could get very interesting.

Read original post at www.caivn.org

The point was to allow Democrats to put their names on a “jobs bill” before heading home for the holidays to their increasingly disappointed constituents. But many of those same Democrats are taking a detour through Denmark, and their constituents deserve to know that their work there is all about killing jobs, not creating them. (NPR)

The Congressional Budget Office and the Energy Information Administration say the cap and trade bill, passed by the House and awaiting Senate approval, will lead to more job loss.  The bill virtually admits this by adding a subsidizing clause to aid those “hardest hit,” which of course, would be the industries producing the most carbon emissions.  Globally, such provisions are what world leaders at Copenhagen were understandably upset about (i.e. that first world nations would create loopholes in legislation).

The bill includes a tacit admission that it would be a job-killer: To prevent mass layoffs, it would subsidize the industries hit hardest by higher energy costs. Refineries and utility companies would get billions of dollars’ worth of free carbon permits to offset the costs associated with capping their emissions. (NPR)

Sunday the Senate passed the $447 billion spending bill with a number of earmarks (5,224 special spending requests) totaling $3.9 billion.  The Peterson-Pew panel calls for immediate action to stabilize our GDP to debt ratio at 60%, according to the San Francisco Gate.  Our GDP to debt ratio is estimated to be over 90% by the end of this year.  Soon, more than 100% of our gross domestic product will be used to service our national debt.

Pelosi has opposed the idea, and so has the powerful retiree group AARP. But Pelosi now would agree to it as long as a “pay-as-you-go” budget rule favored by conservative “Blue Dog” House Democrats is included.

That would require new spending to be offset by spending cuts or tax increases.

[...]

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has railed about stimulus pork, singling out for ridicule $54 million going to Napa Valley’s “wine train.”

“Wine train”?  Conflict of interest anyone?  If you’re unaware, Pelosi and her husband own a vineyard worth up to $25 million in Napa Valley.

John Boehner represents Ohio’s 8th district in the House.  He strongly criticizes Pelosi’s actions in the Hillsboro Times-Gazette.

On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) completed the latest chapter in this lengthy story by ramming a massive $447 billion spending bill through Congress that contains double-digit funding increases to Washington agencies.

In addition to these excessive increases, the bill includes more than 5,200 earmarks, including $300,000 for music and education programs at New York City’s Carnegie Hall, where they pay the employee who oversees the props more than $530,000 in salary and benefits.  Regardless of whether these are worthy projects, are they really more important than our children and grandchildren, who will have to repay the debt we’re piling up to do all this stuff?

[...]

This is just another ploy to increase spending at a time when our national debt hit a record $12 trillion last month.  Before the end of the year, Democrats plan to raise the debt limit by another $1.8 trillion dollars.

While the Obama administration is addressing jobs creation with a special forum on Thursday — a day before the government releases November jobless numbers — it is trying to stress deficit reduction and is avoiding making any more spending commitments. And Sen. Carl Levin, a powerful Democrat from hard-hit Michigan, said Sunday that he doesn’t see “a lot of evidence” that another stimulus would succeed.

The downbeat assessments come as doubts are increasingly raised about the impact of the first $787 billion stimulus in February. The nation’s unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent in October, and it remains high even in states where the administration says the stimulus has saved or created the most jobs. In California, for instance, the administration says the package saved or created more than 110,000 jobs, but unemployment in the state is at 12.2 percent.

Critics say part of the problem is that the money is being used to keep government workers at the state level from being laid off, a move that saves jobs but does not necessarily spur economic growth. Other jobs, like those created through infrastructure spending, represent short-term employment gains. Such jobs would need constant infusions of public money to be sustained.

“The only jobs we’re creating are government jobs. This nonsense about we’re creating and saving jobs — they’re non-existent,” former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said on “Fox News Sunday.” “This has been the biggest scam and waste of taxpayer money.”

Read More: Fox News

In the audio clip below from today (Nov. 24), Pelosi explains very clearly that we will be happier once her “job creation” bill goes through, and the increased debt will all be forgotten.  She says if people were asked they would rather a job than to protect our national debt from going up.

We have two choices according to Madame Speaker: more debt with jobs, or less debt with continued (or increased) unemployment.  This “A or B” trickery is exactly the kind of manipulative strategy politicians are best at.  When you set the stage, you can control the outcome.  Creative thinking and debate are avoided at all cost by most politicians, especially ones with low approval ratings, such as Pelosi.

Job creation is very important to communities, but is our government best suited for the job?  Besides, what ever happened to the nearly $1 trillion bailout, wasn’t that supposed to somehow provide jobs?  And we saved GM, why don’t people simply apply there?  They must be hiring.  Considering the banks made out best, you would think they’d be hiring some more tellers or something, right?  This is sarcastic, as obviously the aid wouldn’t be direct, but indirectly these measures were supposed to employ more people.  I guess that bailout is ancient history, and we have to start looking towards future, to new ways we can indenture our children into slavery — I mean, give them jobs.  Pelosi and Reid are just the team to do it.  By the time they’re through, our children will have “jobs” from cradle to grave.

The main idea is to compromise on a highway construction bill the Democrats have been trying to pass through the Senate.  “One of the best ways to spur job creation and economic recovery is through infrastructure investment,” 7 Committee members wrote in a letter to Reid and McConnell.  “That is why a longer term extension of the surface transportation program is so important to maintaining our nation’s vital bridges, roads, public transportation and other related infrastructure, restoring our economy and creating good jobs for American workers.”  (NY Times)  To reiterate: They are willing to compromise this bill ($500 billion over 6 years) in order to pass a bailout job creation bill.  Does this make sense?

Perhaps this “job-creation” bailout, possibly on the floor before Christmas, will provide some jobs in the New Year.  But I wouldn’t plan the celebration just yet.

Multiple Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalists Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele recently reviewed the outcome of the massive government bailout known as TARP (Vanity Fair).

Worth every word to read, this work speculates as to where the money went and whether or not it helped the American public.

With massive financial institutes buying up smaller banks with reputations for poor lending practices, the public is outraged at the outcome of this “economic recovery” package.  Pelosi continues to vote in favor of bailing out those most responsible for our current crisis.

Treasury had prepared a form with blank spaces for the name of the bank and the amount of tarp money requested. Each C.E.O. filled in the two blanks by hand—$10 billion, $15 billion, $25 billion, whatever—and then signed and dated the document. That was all it took.

[...]

Rather than targeting the weak for relief—or allowing them to fail, as the government allowed millions of ordinary Americans to fail—Paulson and Treasury pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the financial system without prior design and without prospective accountability. What was this all about? A case of panic by Treasury and the Federal Reserve? A financial over-reaction of cosmic proportions? A smoke screen to take care of a small number of Wall Street institutions that received 100 cents on the dollar for some of the worst investments they ever made?