Emma Berry

Archive for the ‘Congressional Votes’ Category

Following is a two-minute 15 second montage of the use of rape as a metaphor by right wing pundits. It was created by Media Matters.

I couldn’t help but think when I watched this that while the right-wing pundits seem so fixated on the use of rape as a metaphor, the right wing members of Congress treat the very real and violent act of rape with casual and flippant disdain.

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from October 9, 2009

She could have been the daughter or granddaughter of any one of these men. In fact many of them do have daughters and granddaughters.  These men listened to Jamie Leigh Jones tell her horrible story–a story should have touched their hearts, but it did not.  They apparently heard nothing and chose to protect Halliburton instead of this young girl.

Jaime Leigh Jones was a 20-year old young woman working her fourth day on the job in Baghdad for Halliburton/KBR in 2005 when she says that she was drugged and raped by seven U.S. contractors and held captive by two KBR guards in a shipping container.  But more than four years after the alleged crimes occurred, Jones is still waiting for her day in court because when she signed her employment contract, she lost her right to a jury trial and, instead, was forced into have her claims decided through secret, binding arbitration. [One of the Republicans often touted methods of "tort" reform that they so love to brag about.]

After listening to her story, on Oct 7, 2009, the Senate approved an amendment by a vote of 68 to 30. This amendment will prohibit “the Defense Department from contracting with companies that required employees to resolve sexual assault allegations and other claims through arbitration.”

THIRTY REPUBLICAN MEN VOTED IN FAVOR OF HALLIBURTON’S RIGHT TO HOLD A KANGAROO COURT OVER THE RIGHTS OF A YOUNG WOMAN WHO HAD BEEN GANG RAPED.

Remember the young rape victim, Jamie Leigh Jones.  Remember your own mothers, wives and daughter.  Remember these Republican Senators who voted against them.

Lamar Alexander TN; John Barrasso Wy; Kit Bond MO; Sam Brownbeck KS; Jim Bunning KY, Richard Burr NC; Chambliss GA; Tom Coburn OK; Thad Cochran MS; Bob Corker TN; John Cornyn TX; Mike Crapo ID; Jim DeMint SC; John Ensign NV; Mike Enzi WY; Lindsey Graham SC; Judd Gregg NH; Jim Inhofe OK; Johnny Isakson GA; Mike Johanns NE; Ron Kyl Az; John McCain AZ; Mitch McConnell KY; Jim Risch ID; Pat Roberts KS; Jeff Sessions AL; Richard Shelby Al;  John Thune SD;  David Vitter LA; Roger Wicker MS–NONE OF THESE MEN DESERVE RE-ELECTION. SHAME ON ALL OF THEM FOR THEIR VOTE. Do you want men representing you who put the needs of corporate America and Wall Street before their own humanity?  I don’t!

A few Republican Senators voted on the side of common decency and all the Republican female Senators were on the right side.

A new low for the Republican leadership was reached this weekend when  Republican members of Congress stood on the balcony of the people’s House and stirred an unruly crowd. As lawmakers debated their way to a vote on the legislation, dozens of GOP members walked from the chamber, across the Speaker’s Lobby and out onto the balcony to whip up thousands of “tea party” protesters massed on the south side of the Capitol, within about 50 feet of the building.

Some lawmakers waved handwritten signs and led the crowd in chants of “Kill the Bill.” A few waved the yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag of the tea party movement. Still others fired up the demonstrators with campaign-style signs mocking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and offering messages such as “Let’s Meet ‘em at the State Line.”

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If Republican leadership think that the Tea Party people can get them re-elected in November, they are not dreaming–they are hallucinating. I

They need to get a handle on reality and the more intelligent people in their party are telling them this.  The Tea Party bunch represent less than 10% of the American people  and most of the remaining 90% of Americans–Republican, Democrats and Independents alike are totally disgusted by the  vile evil racist behavior that these people demonstrated over the weekend.

The racial epitaphs hurled from the mouths of the Tea Party bunch were the very same ones that American witnessed during the Civil Rights  riots.

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If Republicans think that their continued political gamesmanship will win them elections in November, again–they are hallucinating.

Now their latest obstructionist tactic is refuse to work past 2 p.m. — a tactic they can employ by invoking a little-known Senate rule.

I’m sure that will go a long way with the voters in today’s economy.  These rich spoiled Republican brats did not get their way on health care reform and now they are declaring a six hour work day for themselves.

They get paid $174,000 a year, and now they are declaring a 30 hour work week in addition to all their current vacation time?

AND THEY THINK THIS WILL ENDEAR THEM TO THE MAJORITY OF AMERICAN PEOPLE?

What the heck are these people smoking?

SAM JOHNSON VOTED AGAINST GIVING YOU THE SAME CHOICE FOR HEALTH CARE THAT HE HAS

AND YOU CALL HIM YOUR CONGRESSMAN?  WHY?  Don’t you think that you deserve at least as good a deal as he has, or do you think that he is special and deserving of better health care than you have?  No doubt he has benefited from 20 years of the best health care available in our nation.  The life expectancy for males in the USA if 75.5 and Sam will be 80 this year.  The majority of Americans are not so fortunate.  Sam needs to be reminded that his constituents pay for his health care and that we are no less deserving that he is.  That he would not even vote for the few crumbs that the current health care bill hands to Americans is despicable–just another example of the Republican leadership “let them eat cake” attitude.  The Republican leadership need to remember what happened to Marie Antoinette and other aristocrats who thought they they deserved more than the rest by virtue of their position.

1. TOM COBURN – “To our seniors, I have a message for you: you’re going to die sooner,” if the health care bill passes, Sen. Tom Coburn (R- Okla.) said on the floor of the Senate in December. This ridiculous nonsense just adds to the long list for Tom Coburn:  his membership in the religious cult THE FAMILY;  his advisement of John Ensign; his vote with the other Republican rape nuts to allow corporations and not a court of law to rule on gang rapes; his “prayer” in the Senate “What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight,” he said. “That’s what they ought to pray.” At the time it was questionable if 92 year old Robert Byrd who was at home sick would be able to make it to the Senate to vote for a bill that Coburn objected to.

2. Rep. Paul Broun (R- Ga.) took the floor of the House of Representatives Thursday to say: “If ObamaCare passes, that free insurance card that’s in people’s pockets is gonna be as worthless as a Confederate dollar after the war between the states — the Great War of Yankee Aggression.”

Mr. Broun calls Nancy Pelosi “a domestic enemy of the Constitution” and yet Mr. Broun has introduced a bill into the House of Representatives that would make 2010 THE YEAR OF THE BIBLE.Judging from the content of our Constitution, it would appear that Mr. Broun, like George Bush who said that our Constitution was no more than a gd piece of paper,  is the  true enemy of the Constitution. Separation of church and state is a legal and political principle derived from the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . .”

3.Lindsey Graham (R-SC) “Nancy Pelosi, I think, has got them all liquored up on sake and you know, they’re making a suicide run here,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on a local radio program last week of the Democrats’ final push for the health care bill.  I don’t think that it is the Democrats who are making the “suicide run”.  I think the Suicide Run was already made by the Republican Senators who chose corporations over rape victims a few months ago.  If Senator Graham thinks that is not going play and play and play again, he is a fool.

4.Orrin Hatch R- Utah “It is going to be outright war and it should be, because it would be such an abuse of the reconciliation rules,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R- Utah) said in January. “If they abuse those rules it is going to lead to even more heated animosities between not just the two parties, but even between individual senators.”  Of course it just happens to slip Senator Hatch’s mind that since 1981, reconciliation has been used 21 times—the vast majority of those reconciliation efforts have been by Republicans.  But then that doesn’t fit into the double-standard world of Orrin Hatch.

5. Chuck Grassley - The people of Iowa may “pull the plug” on Grassley in November for lying to them about death panels.  Here is one Iowan’s opinion of the liar:

Jim Hightower in a recent article spoke the blunt truth.  I wish that Democrats in Congress would take it to heart and do what the MAJORITY of Americans elected them to do:

“.    .     .    Despite a constant racket from the forces of the far-out right (Fox television’s yackety-yackers, just-say-no GOP know-nothings, tea-bag howlers, Sarah Palinistas, et al.), the great majority of Americans support a bold progressive agenda for our country, ranging from Medicare for all to the decentralization and re-regulation of Wall Street. Indeed, in the elections of 2006 and 2008, people voted for a fundamental break from Washington’s 30-year push to enthrone a corporate kleptocracy.  Yet the economic and political thievery continues, as the White House, Congress, both parties, the courts, the media, much of academia, and other national institutions that shape our public policies reflexively shy away from any structural change. Instead, the first instinct of these entities is to soothe the fevered brow of corporate power by insisting that corporate primacy be the starting point of any “reform.  .   .”

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Thus we see the absurdity of the very Wall Street banking officials who created our economic mess leading the forefront of cleaning it up and the very Wall Street Health Insurance predators who continue to default on their contracts with their customers and charge outrageous prices being the ones who make the decisions on health care.

In his article, Hightower talks abouth the Koch brothers (billionaires and 19th richest in the world)  who control a family owned empire that includes ownership of NOrthern tissue, Brawny papertowels, Dixie paper cups, Vanity Fair napkins, Lycra, owner of Teflon, etc.  Their daddy was the inventor of the process that turned oil into gasoline.  Daddy Fred was also the one who started the John Birch society in 1958.  His two sons, David and Charles have following in Daddy’s footsteps.  David founded Americans for Prosperity and is on the boards of Cato Institute and Reason Foundation.  Cato was founded by Charles.  Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is the third largest recipient of Koch Foundation funds.   As Hightower points out, AFP can “pop out a grassrootsy-looking, cookie-cutter political operation on demand.”

People like the Kochs, although they are a tiny minority of Americans, have have the money and the power to skew our public debates, agendas and policies  with their vast and hugely funded propaganda mills.  That, according to Hightower is why even Democrats shrink from attempting anything more audacious than incremental reforms and court Republicans and corporatists who are out to gut any forward-thinking changes.

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Frankly, I disagree with Jim’s assessment, although you can go here and read for yourself.  SOURCE

I think that the real reason why our Congress is unwilling to pass anything more than fake reform on any issue from Health Care reform to banking reform is because THEY are part of the problem.  THEY LIKE THE KOCH BROTHERS ARE HEAVILY PERSONALLY INVESTED IN WALL STREET AND THE STATUS QUO THEMSELVES. And this includes Democrats as well as Republicans.  We need more independents from Main Street like me–independents who don’t have one penny invested in Wall Street.

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As for the topic of the Koch brothers and their hate machines for the rich, over the past two years I have written a plethora of posts on that topic:

Our Battle Should be with the people who fund the hate groups

This is the violence that Grassley and David Koch incite with their rhetoric.

Speaking of Crimes Against Humanity–How about our current privatized health care system

Look at the vile propaganda that David Koch helps to fund and promote

Meet one of the architects of the corporate nation:  David Koch

The current U.S. military budget is almost as much as the rest of the world’s defense spending combined and is over nine times larger than the military budget of China.   If you want even more of your tax dollars to go to the Defense Industry, then Sam Johnson is definitely your representative ( and so is Obama for that matter*). I guess you wouldn’t expect any less from a man who offered to bomb Syria off the face of the earth.

Of the eight requests for earmarks last year from Johnson totaling $9 million, 7 were defense/military  related.  Five of the nine earmarks he requested made the cut and  four of the five are military related.

Defense-related expenditures outside of the Department of Defense constitute between $216 billion and $361 billion in additional spending, bringing the total for defense spending to between $880 billion and $1.03 trillion in fiscal year 2010.  The U.S. Department of Defense budget accounted in fiscal year 2010 for 28% of estimated tax revenues.

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* NOTE:  So as to not be accused of playing favorites here, President Obama has proposed the largest defense budget since World War II.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is more honest than his recent predecessors about how much money he’s really requesting. The figure for FY 2011 is $708.2 billion—consisting of $548.9 billion for the “baseline” budget plus $159.3 billion to pay for “overseas contingency operations,” mainly the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And, by the way, he says, tack on another $33 billion to the current year’s budget, to pay for the 30,000 extra troops (and all their supplies, weapons, and so forth) that President Obama is sending to Afghanistan.  All told, that’s $741.2 billion in new money.

The ability of Congress to bury controversial legislation needs to change.  As the US Representative for the Third District of Texas, this is one of the specific issues of government transparency that I will change.

The only way to be absolutely certain as to what your representative voted for is to follow this torturous process.  At the end of this one example, you will find proof from the Congressional Record  that US Representative Sam Johnson voted to continue to suspend your Constitutional Rights by extending the nonsense in the Patriot Act instead of allowing it to expire and die the death it deserved.

For example, H.R. 3961 titled Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act was about a lot more than Medicare payment reform.  It was about selling out some of the rights guaranteed to you by the Constitution.

1.  Go to the Library of Congress [http://thomas.loc.gov/home/rollcallvotes.html]

2.  Select the current session (or the session where you think the bill was passed) 111th 2nd session [http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2010/index.asp]

3. Read the list in the table and find the bill that you want more detail on.  Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act. (Note the title of this bill is innocuous. You could never intuit from the title that it included a clause to extend the Patriot Act and its infringements on your Constitutional rights, could you?

4. Select the Number of the bill [HR 3961] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:h.r.03961:

5. Select Text of Legislation that appears in the table on this page.  [http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.3961:]

6.  Mercifully at the very beginning of the text of the legislation they list all the versions of the bill.  Please pay attention to item 6.

Yes, that is correct.  In this bill, titled “Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act” we have a provision to continue the violation of American’s Constitutional Rights by extending the provisions of the Patriot Act.

Now, you may be interested to know that Sam Johnson voted to have the suspension of your constitutional rights as a citizen extended.

But don’t take my word for it.  Return to the table listing all the bills for the 111th Congress, 2nd session and select the first column in the row for this bill with the number 67 in it.

Then you can see for yourself on that page with your own eyes that Sam Johnson voted to support the further suspension of your constitutional rights.

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There are 6 versions of Bill Number H.R.3961 for the 111th Congress

1 . Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act of 2009 (Introduced in House)[H.R.3961.IH][PDF]
2 . To amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to reform the Medicare SGR payment system for physicians and to reinstitute and update the Pay-As-You-Go requirement of budget neutrality… (Engrossed as Agreed to or Passed by House)[H.R.3961.EH][PDF]
3 . To amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to reform the Medicare SGR payment system for physicians and to reinstitute and update the Pay-As-You-Go requirement of budget neutrality… (Received in Senate from House)[H.R.3961.RDS][PDF]
4 . To amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to reform the Medicare SGR payment system for physicians and to reinstitute and update the Pay-As-You-Go requirement of budget neutrality… (Placed on Calendar in Senate)[H.R.3961.PCS][PDF]
5 . Resolved, That the bill from the House of Representatives (H.R. 3961) entitled `An Act to amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to reform the Medicare SGR payment system for… (Engrossed Amendment as Agreed to by Senate)[H.R.3961.EAS][PDF]
6 . To extend expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 and Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 until February 28, 2011. (Enrolled as Agreed to or Passed by Both House and Senate)[H.R.3961.ENR][PDF]

Unlike just about every other industry in America, health insurance companies are completely exempt from federal antitrust laws.

They can establish monopolies and raise rates without having to worry about competition, like Blue Cross just did in California, where they’re raising premiums by up to 39% for some customers.

But now, there’s a real chance that could change, thanks to Rep. Tom Perriello, a progressive freshman in a very challenging Virginia district. His bill to subject insurers to antitrust laws just passed the House 406-19 despite overwhelming opposition from the insurance industry.

Republicans have been trying to protect insurers—they even tried to block this bill from coming to a vote—but Perriello called their bluff and forced them on the record.  Some Republicans are saying that the bill is political grandstanding on the part of Democrats and that it won’t make any difference.  Well, neither Democrat nor Republican politicians are above political grandstanding but on this one I side with the Democrats.  What person who supports a Democratic society and the “free” market also support monopolies?  The two do not go together. Making exceptions to the law for some is NOT how democracies work

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HELP RESTORE OUR DEMOCRACY NOW!

PLEASE CALL OR EMAIL YOUR SENATORS TODAY AND TELL THEM TO VOTE NO ON EXTENDING SPECIAL ANTITRUST LAWS TO HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES. For Texans: Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn

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To Sam Johnson’s credit, whether he liked it or not, he voted to abolish these special antitrust privileges for Health Insurance Companies.  He was not among those 19 Republicans  who were on the wrong side of the fence.