Before a vote on legislation in the House of Representatives under regular order, you need a vote on the rules for debate. That’s what we just saw with their upcoming vote today on extending the tax cuts put in place by George W. Bush for the first $250,000 of income. And we have the results of that vote. Every Republican opposed, along with 33 Democrats. 18 members, nine in each party, didn’t vote on the rule.

The Democratic no votes included mostly people who lost their election (lame duck Congress members in CAPS):

ADLER, Altmire, BAIRD, BEAN, BERRY, Boren, BOYD, BRIGHT, Chandler, Connolly, DAHLKEMPER, A.DAVIS, ELLSWORTH, HERSETH SANDLIN, Himes, KIRKPATRICK, Lipinski, MARSHALL, Matheson, McIntyre, MINNICK, MITCHELL, Moran, PERRIELLO, Peters, Peterson, POMEROY, Ross, Shuler, SPACE

As expected, Republicans gave the usual line about this being a tax increase on small businesses, etc. I think what the 33 Democratic defections shows a combination of wanting rich people to have tax cuts (Connolly, Moran) and not wanting there to be a vote on the final bill so as not to be tarred as a tax-raiser, despite the fact that the vote cuts taxes for everyone in America. Democrats ingeniously found a work-around that ensures a single vote on just the tax cuts on the first $250,000 of income, without the possibility of a motion to recommit or other amendments.

Alarmed & Angry at Christmas Time

By Carl Bloice – BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board
Black Commentator
November 2, 2010

http://www.blackcommentator.com/404/404_lm_angry_christmas_time.php

It was just a routine call to set up the logistics for weekend football watching and I was somewhat stunned by the response I got from my friend when I asked him how he was. “I am angry,” he said. About what? “Those (explicative) are not going to extend unemployment insurance.” I recalled that I had recently sent out a couple emails that used another expletive to describe the first vote in the lame duck Congressional session which didn’t reach the two-thirds majority needed to take emergency action to keep benefits going to nearly 2 million people unsuccessfully looking for work. “They really going to do it,” he said, reflecting the sudden, shocking awareness that that one third of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives were prepared to allow all those people – victims of an economic crisis not of their making – to face the holidays with no income.

The number of people who have been out of a job for more than six months is now 6.2 million. Congress has never cut off extended benefits when the unemployment rate was above 7.4 percent. It’s now at 9.6 percent.

“It is hard to believe, as the holidays approach yet again amid economic hard times, but Congress looks as if it may let federal unemployment benefits lapse for the fourth time this year,” the New York Times said editorially last week.

That’s something to get really mad about.

Any shrink will tell you that there’s not something necessarily bad about being angry; in fact, trying to repress being damn mad might not be good for you. Still, we are heading into the holiday season and the pressure is on to “be of good cheer.” Yet, all over the North “Atlantic Community,” situations are being described as “dickensonian,” a reference to Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” The problem is despite being repeatedly reminded of our Judeo-Christian heritage, Scrooge seems to be getting the upper hand on Santa,
the Maccabeen insurgents and the Nazareth carpenter’s son.

The richest and most powerful nation on the planet somehow can’t afford to maintain an adequate educational system. College tuition costs go up, classes are cut and secondary school teachers are laid off while many of those who remain find themselves using their own money to buy reading materials and school supplies. More than 2.3 million homes have been repossessed by banks and mortgage lenders over the past three years; more than one million American households expected to have been foreclosed upon this year 2010.
About 40 percent of families facing eviction are renters whose landlords were foreclosed upon and the number of children displaced from their homes, schools and neighborhoods steadily increases.

Continue reading Alarmed & Angry at Christmas Time →

TOM BREEN,Associated Press

Watch Ed Show segment on benefits here.

Extended unemployment benefits for nearly 2 million Americans begin to run out Wednesday, cutting off a steady stream of income and guaranteeing a dismal holiday season for people already struggling with bills they cannot pay.

Unless Congress changes its mind, benefits that had been extended up to 99 weeks will end this month.

That means Christmas is out of the question for Wayne Pittman, 46, of Lawrenceville, Ga., and his wife and 9-year-old son. The carpenter was working up to 80 hours a week at the beginning of the decade, but saw that gradually drop to 15 hours before it dried up completely. His last $297 check will go to necessities, not presents.

“I have a little boy, and that’s kind of hard to explain to him,” Pittman said.

The average weekly unemployment benefit in the U.S. is $302.90, though it varies widely depending on how states calculate the payment. Because of supplemental state programs and other factors, it’s hard to know for sure who will lose their benefits at any given time. But the Labor Department estimates that, without a Congress-approved extension, about 2 million people will be cut off by Christmas.

Congressional opponents of extending the benefits beyond this month say fiscal responsibility should come first. Republicans in the House and Senate, along with a handful of conservative Democrats, say they’re open to extending benefits, but not if it means adding to the $13.8 trillion national debt.

Continue reading 2 million to lose jobless benefits as holidays arrive →

NEW YORK | Tue Nov 30, 2010 10:57am EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The New York State Assembly on Monday gave final approval to a six-month moratorium on a controversial method of natural gas extraction while state and federal agencies review its possible health impacts.

The moratorium — which calls for no drilling permits to be issued until at least May 15, 2011 — was approved by the state Senate in August.

The legislation now heads to Governor David Paterson, who leaves office in January and has until the end of this year to sign the measure into law.

In an interview last week on a local radio program, Paterson indicated support for the bill, saying the state would not “risk public safety or water quality.”

Continue reading New York State Assembly Approves Moratorium on Fracking →

A huge win for clean energy in Kentucky

Clean energy activists are elated over a big victory in the heart of coal country, where a Kentucky power cooperative has agreed to cancel plans to build a new coal-fired power plant.

The East Kentucky Power Cooperative struck a deal with an alliance of grassroots activists and others to halt plans for the proposed coal-burning unit at Smith Power Station in Clark County, Ky. The agreement involves the grassroots citizens group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth along with the Kentucky Environmental Foundation, Sierra Club, the Kentucky attorney general and Gallatin Steel, the EKPC’s biggest industrial customer. Also involved in the agreement were individual co-op members including noted Kentucky author and farmer Wendell Berry, a member of the Shelby Energy co-op.

Besides canceling the plant’s construction, EKPC will also commit $125,000 to working with the public interest groups and its member co-ops to come up with ideas for new energy efficiency programs and clean-energy options.

“Renewables and demand-side management programs will play increasingly important roles in the energy industry,” said EKPC Chief Financial Officer Mike McNalley. “This collaborative will help EKPC gather ideas and feedback to explore the realistic potential of renewables and demand-side management here in Kentucky.”

Continue reading Power Company Cancels New Coal Fired Plant in Kentucky →

Dan Froomkin froomkin@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting Become a Fan

Turkey Spared — But Obama’s Compassion For Humans Comes Up Short

First Posted: 11-24-10 12:26 PM | Updated: 11-24-10 12:26 PM

In one of the White House’s sillier annual rituals, Barack Obama on Wednesday pardoned the second Thanksgiving turkey of his presidency.

He has, however, yet to pardon a single human.

A president’s power to grant clemency is broad, unilateral and absolute. Obama, a constitutional lawyer by training, and the first African-American president, could issue pardons and commutations that make a powerful statement about the justice system past and present.

Indeed, presidents have a responsibility to use their pardon power to correct the excesses and errors of a system that is inevitably imperfect, often overloaded, and especially in this era of mandatory sentences, overly rigid.

Continue reading Zero Presidential Pardons by Obama: Shameful →

“The number of foreclosures initiated on residential properties has soared from about 1 million in 2006, the year that house prices peaked, to 2.8 million last year.

Over the first half of this year, we have seen a further 1.2 million foreclosure filings, and an additional 2.4 million homes were somewhere in the foreclosure pipeline at the end of June.

All told, we expect about 2.25 million foreclosure filings this year and again next year, and about 2 million more in 2012.

While our outlook is for filings to decline in coming years, they will remain extremely high by historical standards.

Currently, almost 5 million mortgage loans are 90 days or more past due or in foreclosure.”

Testimony

Governor Elizabeth A. Duke

Foreclosure documentation issues

Before the Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C.

November 18, 2010

http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/testimony/duke20101118a.htm

Eisenhower on the Opportunity Cost of Defense Spending

 

Gen. Eisenhower speaks with soldiers of the 101st Airborne on the eve of D-Day

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron…

Is there no other way the world may live?

–Dwight David Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953.

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