Cornyn votes to protect roaches by keeping the lights off

Senator Cornyn proudly proclaims that he voted to allow businesses with significant foreign shareholders to continue to spend unlimited amounts of money to affect elections in the United States, but is that the act of a patriot? He’s also proud that he voted to allow businesses with government contracts to continue to spend unlimited funds to influence elections. Cornyn claims to be protecting small donors but the only ones required to file new reports are donating over $10,000. Now I don’t know about you but to me $10,000 is serious money to just drop on a campaign ad. I doubt that any of us are ever likely to make such a donation, so who is he really protecting?

The Supreme Court has specifically said, “transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.” We’ve all heard the old axiom that “sunlight makes the best disinfectant”. Polls show that 80% of all Americans and 76% of Republicans want disclosure of who is paying for campaign ads yet John Cornyn voted to let them remain hidden. Tell Senator Cornyn he was wrong to vote against the DISCLOSE Act, call him at 202-224-2934.

Retaking Congress more important to Texas Republicans than taking care of Texans

According to the Washington Post two million people will lose their jobless aid before Congress returns from its week-long recess because Republicans voted against extending unemployment benefits.

Kevin Brady (R) TX-8 said “Businesses are slow to hire because they fear higher taxes, job-killing regulation and a dysfunctional Washington that is ideologically driven and increasingly anti-business.”

As a former manager of a small business I can tell you that fear of taxes and regulation had absolutely nothing to do with decisions on when to hire. The only thing that mattered was whether there was sufficient consumer demand to warrant the additional employee. Given that there is little to suggest an increase in consumer demand we can safely say that there will be little increase in job openings.

Our Senator, John Cornyn (R), claims that he believes unemployment benefits should be extended but that the method the Democrats want to use to pay for it is all wrong. He said “The whole difference of opinion was whether it ought to be paid for or whether it ought to be allowed to rack up more deficit spending.” So I guess Cornyn wants to stop other government spending to pay for unemployment benefits, the problem is if the federal government stops spending which generates demand then more people will be out of work which just make the problem bigger.

To paraphrase Upton Sinclair, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his hope of retaking Congress depends upon his not understanding it.” 

Guns vs. Butter in earnest

Our federal legislators are currently considering a budget for next year that imposes a spending freeze for most domestic programs yet somehow there's money to spare when it comes to nuclear weapons pork. The budget requests $7 billion for nuclear bomb making capacities, a $1 billion increase over last year's budget for the same programs and an astounding 40% jump over average annual spending, after adjusting for inflation, on nuclear weapons during the Cold War era.

The budget has hundreds of millions for new bomb plants that would enable the U.S. to increase its capacity to create new nuclear weapons in the future. A new plutonium facility in New Mexico to enable a huge increase in the production of radioactive cores for nuclear weapons is just one example of several proposals in the budget. This piece of pork will cost taxpayers $225 million in the coming year and about $4 billion by the time construction is complete.

While the president is working with the Senate to ratify the New Start Treaty which would reduce the threat of nuclear war, we don’t need to be building capacity to make more nuclear bombs. Just as importantly, we shouldn’t be spending money on unneeded weapons when we can’t balance our budget without cutting domestic spending in areas such as education and alternative energy that would create jobs now and be investments in our future.

Congressmen Lamar Smith and Henry Cuellar need to know that we want to invest in our future not our past.

Lamar Smith's hypocrisy continues - $485 million for a jet engine the Pentagon doesn't want

Congressman Lamar Smith makes much of the deficit on his campaign website referring to it as “a mountain of debt for our children to pay” then going on to say “which why is Congressman Smith voted against the stimulus”. Unfortunately his hypocrisy is showing because he voted to keep $485 million in the Defense Appropriations bill that pays to continue to develop a jet engine that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says the military doesn’t want. This is an alternate engine for the Lockheed built F-135 Joint Strike Fighter which already has an operational engine from Pratt & Whitney. According to Rear Admiral Mike Manazir, the Navy doesn’t want an alternate engine as it “would deploy only one type of engine in its JSFs that go to sea to optimize logistics and supply chains.”

I don’t know about you but if the Pentagon doesn’t want a piece of military hardware I think that’s a pretty good indication that we don’t need it. Smith’s vote amounts to corporate welfare for the GE/Rolls Royce consortium that is developing the engine. I might be able to understand his vote if the engine were being built in his district but it isn’t so he can’t claim local jobs are at stake.

If the deficit is so important to Mr. Smith why is he voting to spend nearly half a billion dollars unnecessarily? According to the logic he espouses on his website that money should go to reducing the deficit.

Ken Mercer continues to mislead when questioned about evolution

In a recent interview of candidates for the State Board of Education in District 5, Ken Mercer responds to the question: What is your position on the teaching of evolution? “My biggest quote was, ‘If our kids do not have the freedom to raise their hands in science class and ask honest questions, then we are no longer living in the United States of America.’ You can call it strengths and weaknesses, but we won the right for kids to ask questions in class, and that was the battle. It wasn’t religion. It was just a right to ask questions.”

I don’t know about you but I’ve never been in a classroom whether as a student or as a parent observing where children didn’t have the right ask questions. Our teachers encourage questions as a way to participate in class and clarify understanding. Mr. Mercer’s answer is an evasion because he never states his position on the scientific validity of evolution. What he and the other conservatives on the SBOE did was encourage our children to not just ask questions but to argue with their teachers about whether or not scientific principles are appropriate to the study of biology.

Texas has some of the lowest performing schools in the nation and Mr. Mercer’s actions will keep it that way. That’s all the reason I need to send him packing in November by voting for Dr. Rebecca Bell-Metereau.

Our Internet Sold Out for Campaign Contributions

Failure to adequately regulate industry has within the last two years led to the collapse of Lehman Bros., the banking system and the U.S. economy as well as the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that British Petroleum is responsible for. The collapse of our financial markets hurt us all and has put about 10% of the labor force out of work, the oil spill in the Gulf is more localized but will harm that locality for as much as a generation. Both the fishing and tourism industries are likely to suffer for years not to mention many species of fish and birds including Louisiana’s state bird, the brown pelican, which was removed from the endangered species list just six months ago.

Now the telecommunications industry wants internet services to be unregulated. This as we’ve so recently seen is a recipe for disaster. The websites that so many of us have come to rely on and enjoy are at risk of being shoved aside by telecommunications companies that seek monopolize control of access and use of the internet in order to maximize their profits. They claim to want to advance innovation when in fact they want to stifle it. Innovation is a messy business that is most often accomplished by small organizations and seldom by monopolies.

The telecommunications industry like the Wall Street bankers and oil industry before them have exerted pressure on our elected representatives. 73 Democrats in the House including Congressmen Henry Cuellar, Ciro Rodriguez and Charlie Gonzalez have submitted to that pressure. You ask what kind of pressure, how about anywhere from $23,000 to $36,750 in campaign contributions.

It is time we had a campaign finance solution that removed the influence of special interests from the equation. It’s time we passed the Fair Elections Now Act, HR 1826, which provides for voluntary public campaign financing. Call you congressman and urge him to support Net Neutrality and co-sponsor HR 1826.

Elections should be won, not bought

About 30 members of MoveOn.org, Common Cause and the League of Women voters held a rally in support of the Fair Elections Now Act at Congressman Lamar Smith’s San Antonio office Thursday afternoon. We were there to let the Smith know that we “the People” believe that elections should be won, not bought.

The Fair Elections Now Act would provide public financing of congressional campaigns to candidates who voluntarily participate. This bipartisan bill creates an alternative to big special interest money in politics by allowing congressional candidates to run a viable campaign on public funds and unlimited small contributions from ordinary citizens.

Just think, if our legislators weren’t beholden to unions and corporations for campaign contributions they could actually work for the citizens who elect them. Maine has been incredibly successful with a similar plan for state level legislators with about 80% of them participating in the plan.

Don’t you think that banking reform would be much easier to pass with strong consumer protections and regulations that would prevent the need for future bailouts if our legislators weren’t, as Senator Dick Durbin put it, “owned by the banks”? If you want Congress to work for you and not special interests call your representative today and urge him to co-sponsor the Fair Elections Now Act, HR 1826.