Quote of the Day

C’mon JK, don’t go introducing facts and context into the situation. The Republican, Tea Party socialist chanting masses can’t handle that. It’s more fun to shout “death panels” than to actually look at the facts and historical context.

IOKIRDO. It’s Okay If Republicans Do It.

The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com

Wasn’t the Medicare Part D vote the one where the House Republicans kept the floor vote — required to be no more than 15 minutes long — open for a full three hours?
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The one where Republicans cut off the C-SPAN feed so no one could see what they were doing on the floor?
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The one where Republicans went after Rep. Nick Smith on the floor of the House and got him to switch his vote from no to yes by offering money for his son’s campaign?
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That wasn’t business as usual. It was Republican business as usual.

The one where Republicans went after Rep. Nick Smith on the floor of the House and got him to switch his vote from no to yes by offering money for his son’s campaign?

You forgot the part where the Republican leadership threatened him after attempting to bribe him. See it here:
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http://www.slate.com/id/2091787/

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

- Milan Kundera

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/forgive-and-forgetforget/

I don’t follow this logic that says if Republicans once did something (and may do it again), it provides a license for the Democrats to behave in the same way. Every child knows from experience that this defense of wrongdoing is a losing argument. You know perfectly well that the majority of voters who oppose this bill would never defend the Part D vote. Both then and now, the taxpayer loses when the legislation passes. This isn’t our side versus their side, it’s bigger government versus smaller government. Show me an informed person who doubts that the next Congress will have fewer big-government members. A lot fewer.

Medicare Part D legislation was an unpaid for entitlement that will cost taxpayers an estimated $7 Trillion this century.
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The point for me is all those blathering on the floor of Congress and in the press that helped to make this an even worse bill by screaming about how much will it cost, must bring the costs down, etc., were utterly silent about this which is adding to the debt as we speak and will continue to do for years to come.

Gary,

Contesting both programs is one thing, but, just knowing how government works, I am sure you are aware that when it is time pass legislation YOU LIKE, it, also, involves this kind of deal making.

If this is wrong doing, then everything this country has ever done since the Washington Administration headquartered in New York City has been wrong doing too.

This is government unveiled. It is the ONLY way that anything even slightly controversial gets passed.

Joe,

One thing I find almost as unpleasant as uninformed fear mongering Republican opposition to good or at least reasonably good legislation is manipulation of numbers.

“…will cost taxpayers an estimated $7 Trillion this century…”

I just spent $10 at Wendy’s for lunch for one.

That would be $365,000 THIS CENTURY.

How about a fairer number like “will cost taxpayers an estimated $70 billion per year” if that number was not inflated for estimated inflation over the century. If it does include that, then another headline could be “Patrick’s fast food lunch may cost as much as a million dollars THIS CENTURY.”

Ha! The late great folksinger/storyteller/ activist Utah Phillips used to say “The most radical thing in America is a long memory.”

Gary,

Check out this trivia.
New York City was the capital of the United States back when Washington DC was a malarial swamp.

Thomas Jefferson did not want a large federal government and wanted to put the capital in a spot then so inhospitable that if congress stayed to debate through the Summer, they would be taking a risk of dying from malaria. Also, more importantly, since Jefferson never imagined that a city would arise in DC, he wanted congress and the president to live in what he thought would remain a rural area.

The opposition wanted to keep New York the capital, but, New York State had a huge debt from the Revolutionary War which Jefferson and party did not want the Federal government to pay.

So, they made a deal.

Sounds like things happening today, doesn’t it.

BTW: New York today has enough going on that nobody misses the fact that it is not, also, the capital. We discouraged the mayor from bringing the Olympics here, too.

Show me an informed person who doubts that the next Congress will have fewer big-government members. A lot fewer.

Are you serious? To what party will these “small government” politicians belong to? They certainly won’t be Republicans, who despite preaching smaller government, have done nothing but expand it every chance they get. Hell, the only one to actually shrink the size of government in recent memory was Clinton.
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What Republicans seem to mean by smaller government is fewer services for the vast populace, more tax cuts for the rich and more corporate welfare. The Democrats have been slightly better on this score but I don’t see how your prediction could possibly come true.
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Feel free to find some of these small government candidates and link to their positions here so we can all see what they’re about.