The Congressional Transparency Initiative is a great program trying to make government more open and accountable. I consider myself an Independent, and I hope that increasing transparency in Congress is something that both Democrats and Republicans can support.
Their beliefs: - Read the bill - Ban "Phantom Amendments" - Show the votes - Open health care negotiations to the public - Bring sunlight to the Rules Committee
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</p><p> Mark McGwire will be announced as the St. Louis Cardinals hitting coach Monday, no doubt a move by his close personal friend Tony LaRussa to help get Big Mac into the Hall Of Fame and try to overlook all those nasty rumors of violating Baseball's substance abuse policy.The video above may be McGwire's best performance ever. THAT'S the kind of leader I want kids to look up to and team members to learn from.Now you Cards fans have NOTHING on the Cubs. If only you could get Barry Bonds for Strength and Conditioning Coach.
Grayson is rapidly becoming a favorite of mine. I am not necessarily in line with his politics, but I love his pit bull approach to his role. This clip is a brilliant dressing down of the whole Acorn obsession currently distracting Congress from more pressing business.
By CRP's latest tally, among House challengers, Bera's haul ranks as the sixth largest sum so far this year -- behind Republican William Russell in Pennsylvania, Democrat Rob Miller in South Carolina, Democrat Jack McDonald in Texas, Democrat Suzan DelBene in Washington and Republican Randy Altschulerin New York.
Bowing to political pressure from community bankers, the House Financial Services Committee approved an exemption on Thursday for more than 98 percent of the nation’s banks from oversight by a new agency created to protect consumers from abusive or deceptive credit cards, mortgages and other loans.
So here is the deal: Congress is going to pass legislation creating a new bureaucracy to protect us consumers from bad banks and credit card companies. And the first thing they do is exempt 8000 of the nations 8,200 banks from being reviewed by the new agency.
So rather than hold the existing regulators feet to the fire (did anybody in the SEC get fired for missing Bernie Madoff all those years?) they decide to do what the federal government always does - get bigger. But before they actually grow a new arm they hollow it out. This is an amazing Kabuki dance to watch.
Michael Moore has created yet another thoughtful film that with a provocative look into our banks, our government and how the economic meltdown has widened the gap between rich and poor.
Rarely does the audience (especially in L.A.) clap at the end of a movie, but they did at the end of this one.
Some of the points he covers in the film are:
How Americans were swindled by corrupt bankers.
How Wall Street actually controls Congress and regulates themselves (they don't).
How the bank bail-out, like war, was forced through the power of fear and propaganda with stipulations that allowed no accountability for the funds to the American people.
How major corporations have taken out life insurance policies on unsuspecting employees - making them worth more dead than alive.
How the best minds in science and math are ushered into the financial sector vs. the greater good of man.
How the wealthy used to be taxed 90% and that money helped to build the infrastructure of America like bridges, schools and research.
How we set up Europe and Japan with constitutions that allowed people the right to healthcare and education; rights we do not have.
How if we unite, protest, rally and fight back against corporate greed we may be able to one day balance the scales toward democracy.
The bill, however, would add $1.7 billion for an extra destroyer the Defense Department did not request and $2.5 billion for 10 C-17 cargo planes it did not want, at the behest of lawmakers representing the states where those items would be built. Although the White House said the administration "strongly objects" to the extra C-17s and to the Senate's proposed shift of more than $3 billion from operations and maintenance accounts to projects the Pentagon did not request, no veto was threatened over those provisions.
The destroyer and the 10 cargo planes are not earmarks. These are incremental spending - totaling more than $4 billion - that was not requested by Defense.
I guess when you are running a $1.5 trillion deficit this seems like monopoly money. There is an old saying: "No one manages someone else's money as carefully as they manage their own."
