Blatant Reality

Though Senator McCaskill has been a very strong support of President Obama and the Democratic version of Health Care reform, her conscious wouldn’t allow her to vote against an amendment to ban the practice of using earmarks to buy votes.

What vote-buying, or bribes to us laymen, am I talking about? Surely this Chicago style of politics hasn’t infected the great halls of Congress? Well, sadly, it has and the majority of Democrats voted to continue its practice.

Here is what Senator DeMint has said about this vote.

December 23, 2009 – WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, made the following statement after the Senate defeated his amendment to prohibit the practice of trading votes for earmarks in the United States Senate. Senator DeMint’s motion was defeated on a 53-46 vote.

“The American people are disgusted by the earmarks, kickbacks, and backroom deals that have been used to buy votes for this health care takeover,” said Senator DeMint. “We had a chance today to put an end to this practice but Senate Democrats voted for business as usual. 53 Democrats just gave their personal seal of approval to the Louisiana Purchase, Cornhusker Kickback and other earmarks used to bribe senators into supporting this atrocious bill.”

“Democrats have truly hit the bottom on their reckless pursuit of a government takeover of health care. The Democrat majority just voted to retain the culture of corruption in Congress. Just two years ago, Democrats bragged about draining the swamp, but now they’re endorsing political bribery. This is Washington at its worst.”

Senator Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska), who secured a special earmark for his state that forces taxpayers in 49 states to fund Medicaid in Nebraska, first voted against the ban on trading earmarks for votes but switched his vote before the final tally. Senator DeMint responded, “Senator Nelson, unfortunately, is trying to have it both ways, he was for trading his vote for earmarks before he was against it.

Because Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) had blocked all further amendments to the health care bill, Senator DeMint was forced to seek the suspension of the rules of the Senate – a rare parliamentary maneuver – to get an up-or-down vote on his amendment and put an end to earmark vote-buying.

“The House of Representatives has a rule that bans trading votes for earmarks but the Senate does not,” said Senator DeMint. “The Senate passed a vote-trading ban in 2007 by a unanimous vote of 98 to 0, but it was dropped behind closed doors. If that rule were in place today, the earmarks and kick-backs used to buy votes for the health care bill would not have been possible.”

The DeMint amendment, which only applies to future legislation, would have prohibited the use of earmarks to buy votes for legislation. Specifically, the amendment states:

(a) IN GENERAL.—It shall not be in order in the Senate to consider a congressionally directed spending item, a limited tax benefit, or a limited tariff benefit, if a Senator, Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner has conditioned the inclusion of language to provide funding for a congressional directed spending item, a limited tax benefit, or a limited tariff benefit in any amendment, bill, or joint resolution (or an accompanying report) or in any conference report on a bill or joint resolution (including an accompanying joint explanatory statement of managers) on any vote cast by any Senator, Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner.

A similar prohibition was offered by Senator DeMint and U.S. Senator Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) in 2007 during the debate on S.1, the lobbying and ethics bill. The Durbin-DeMint amendment, which included a ban on earmark vote-trading, passed the Senate by a vote of 98 to 0. The Senate vote-trading rule was dropped in closed-door negotiations with the House and was not part of the final legislation signed by the President.

“This rule has been passed before, it only applies to future earmarks, and does not threatens the Democrats’ health care bill,” said Senator DeMint. “There’s only one reason Democrats voted against this reform: they want to keep using earmarks to buy votes,” said Senator DeMint.

Many of you might not know this but the controversial GIVE Act was signed into law today. Yea, I know, how could you have missed the news that the bill, which included language prohibiting volunteer members from participating in religious activities, got signed into law?

Well, I think part of it has to do with the fact that they are now calling it by another name: the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. However, don’t be fooled because H.R. 1388, Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act (GIVE Act), is the bill that actually got signed by the president.

How do I know the bill signed by Obama was H.R. 1388? Well, the Serve America Act (S. 277) (sponsored by Kennedy) just made it out of committee but was never even voted on in either the House of Representatives of the Senate. What seems to have happened was that the Serve America Act was adopted as an amendment to the GIVE Act.

Therefore, H.R. 1388 ( the GIVE Act) was passed by both chambers and handed to the president yesterday to sign (which he did today). Since the signing seems to have been reported after 5:00pm EST, I’m assuming that the records on GovTrack.us will show that it was signed into law when they update it sometime tomorrow or in the near future.

Now, why is the GIVE Act so controversial? Well, most of the controversy revolves around this section:

SEC. 1310. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS.

 

Subtitle C of title I (42 U.S.C. 12571 et seq.) is amended by inserting after section 132 the following:

 

‘SEC. 132A. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS.

 

‘(a) Prohibited Activities- An approved national service position under this subtitle may not be used for the following activities:

 

‘(1) Attempting to influence legislation.

 

‘(2) Organizing or engaging in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes.

 

‘(3) Assisting, promoting, or deterring union organizing.

 

‘(4) Impairing existing contracts for services or collective bargaining agreements.

 

‘(5) Engaging in partisan political activities, or other activities designed to influence the outcome of an election to Federal office or the outcome of an election to a State or local public office.

 

‘(6) Participating in, or endorsing, events or activities that are likely to include advocacy for or against political parties, political platforms, political candidates, proposed legislation, or elected officials.

 

‘(7) Engaging in religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of proselytization, consistent with section 132.

 

‘(8) Consistent with section 132, providing a direct benefit to any–

 

‘(A) business organized for profit;

 

‘(B) labor union;

 

‘(C) partisan political organization;

 

‘(D) nonprofit organization that fails to comply with the restrictions contained in section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, except that nothing in this paragraph shall be construed to prevent participants from engaging in advocacy activities undertaken at their own initiative; and

 

‘(E) organization engaged in the religious activities described in paragraph (7), unless the position is not used to support those religious activities.

 

‘(9) Providing abortion services or referrals for receipt of such services.

 

‘(10) Conducting a voter registration drive or using Corporation funds to conduct a voter registration drive.

 

‘(11) Carrying out such other activities as the Corporation may prohibit.

 

‘(b) Ineligibility- No assistance provided under this subtitle may be provided to any organization that has violated a Federal criminal statute.

 

‘(c) Nondisplacement of Employed Workers or Other Volunteers- A participant in an approved national service position under this subtitle may not be directed to perform any services or duties, or to engage in any activities, prohibited under the nonduplication, nondisplacement, or nonsupplantation requirements relating to employees and volunteers in section 177.’.

The original language that got people all up in arms back in mid-march was a little more explicit in what and who it banned. Take a look:

SEC. 1304. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS.

 

Section 125 (42 U.S.C. 12575) is amended to read as follows:

 

SEC. 125. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS.

 

(a) Prohibited Activities- A participant in an approved national service position under this subtitle may not engage in the following activities:

 

(1) Attempting to influence legislation.

 

(2) Organizing or engaging in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes.

 

…

 

(7) Engaging in religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of religious proselytization.

Now it seems from the current, signed version that the writers of the bill tried to tone it down for the version reported earlier in March. For example, they rephrased “A participant in an approved national service position under this subtitle may not engage in the following activities” in Sec 125 (a) to read “An approved national service position under this subtitle may not be used for the following activities” in Sec 132 (a) of the new version. In conjunction with this, they also added the phrase “consistent with section 132″ to the end of Sec 132 (a)(1) which didn’t appear in the original version.

Now, I don’t know how the new phrasing will affect what those participating in the “National Service Trust Program” but it still seems to me that religious and free speech rights will be greatly hampered if you take part. However, I think it will take a court case and a couple first amendment lawyers to sort out how this law will/should apply.

However, right now I’m just wondering how signing this $5,700,000,000 act correlates with the mere $100,000,000 he decided cut from the budget yesterday.

Or at least created one since Obama won. However, the question remains, how long will it last? I think they will be back to burning flags in no time when they discover that Obama won’t be their knight in shining armor. Iraq seems to be won but Afghanistan is a whole different story and these people hate war of any kind, no matter how justified. Therefore I give it about a year before this “new patriotism” wears off. How long do you give it?

Conservatives really are going to have it easy the next couple of years. I mean, Obama promised so much that it is technicaly impossible for him to accomplish anything resembling the 200+ pages of plans he has for America. The only thing his followers have is hope, and even that shouldn’t last too long before it decays into disillusionment.
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Pajamas Media has more on how this will come about for Obama’s supporters.

Well it looks like the environmentalists have decided to steal some Christmas joy by denouncing the evils of energy-guzzling video game consoles. The console that makes it to the top of the ‘Naughty’ list is PS3 so don’t expect any gaia-fearing environmentalists to get one of those for their kids.
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Click here for the whole story

I stumbled upon this ad surprisingly on IMAO and was very shocked by what it is implying. First watch the ad and make sure you finish it:

Yea, pretty horrible right? I thought it was just one of those simple Democrat leaning ads at the beginning but was shocked to see it end with the message “Vote Obama ’08.” Honestly, this ad implies that a vote for Republicans will mean a vote for a ruined future, 40 years down the road.

Here is the YouTube page for The Year 2048 and here is their actual website where they have many more videos.

I wasn’t able to find anything about them or if they are affiliated with anyone in a cursory search. The cinematography is pretty good so I would suggest that someone dig a little bit deeper into this.

It looks like the ‘green’ democrats at their ‘green’ convention won’t have to pay taxes on the gas they buy during the DNC in Denver, CO. Take a look.

Al Gore is once again out trying to convert people to his mission, this time he was at a nutroot convention. I’m sure people were just fainting left and right after listening to his devine inspiration. Take a look below
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http://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/us/politics/20netroot.xml

As you might have already noticed, I am going in a somewhat new direction with the website by mainly focusing on Environmental, Energy, and Global Warming issues because I feel these topics will have great significance in the coming years. However, there will be times like this were I just can’t help but post an article about another topic.

This really just makes my blood boil to even think that some of these liberals who have been hooting and hollering for the past year that the surge isn’t working to finally admit that it has worked and that it was there idea the whole time. I refuse to even publish the outright lies that these liberals are saying on my blog but you can read all about it with commentary here.

I will republish this part of the commentary that highlights Obama’s foresight into the whole Surge situation.

And yet the Democrats whined, “We need more troops” in mantra like fashion, meaning not that the surge would be a success but that the additional “surge” troops in Iraq would be insignificant. Barack Obama’s comment at the time captured the prevailing lefty sentiment rather well: “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

 

Wow! What judgment!

Here is a post from over at Right Wing News that describes what will happen if Obama wins the presidency and Democrats gain several members in Senate and the House. The legislation that will most likely be passed will be quite grim. Take a look.