Blue Dogs: The Democrats TEA Party?

by DA Morales on Aug. 02, 2011, under Education, Environment, Headline news, Native American

In Arizona a clear divide can be found in the Democratic Party and this state can be used as a microcosm of what is going on nationwide.

Blue dogs vs Progressives.

Before the 2010 election, the two progressives, Raul Grijalva who is also the co-Chair of the Progressive Caucus, and Ed Pastor guaranteed a decade of rule under Arizona 8-seat US Congress.

Of the three self-proclaimed “Blue Dog Democrats,” who coincidentally just happen to also be the non-minorities:

• Kirkpatrick got beat big time despite spending millions and having the incumbent advantage, and squandered DCCC money to become a one-term loser.
• Harry Mitchell is out after just two terms.
• Gabrielle Giffords was the only winner, barely pulling off a ticket to her third term by beating a newbie by less than 2 points, which may have been due to Jesse Kelly’s dumb move of ignoring the importance of advertising in Cochise county.

Should one be proud of being a Blue Dog?

A brief history of Blue Dogs from Time magazine:

When the Democrats lost Congress in 1994, some Representatives blamed the defeat on a party they felt had shifted too far to the left. These disgruntled Democrats decided to form a coalition to stand against their more liberal party members.

They held meetings in the office of former Louisiana Representative Billy Tauzin, who reportedly had one of Cajun artist George Rodrigues’ famous Blue Dog paintings hanging on his wall. The Blue Dog Coalition’s website also lists as an inspiration the 1928 term Yellow Dog, used to refer to a Southern Democrat who was more likely to vote for a dog than for a Republican. Instead of being blinded by party loyalty, this new group complained that it had been “choked blue” by its own party.

Originally comprising just 23 members, mostly from Southern states, the Blue Dogs supported the Republicans’ Contract with America, complained that the Clinton White House was too liberal and called for a balanced federal budget.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1913057,00.html

In case you have forgotten, the new GOP leader 1994 and the Contract with America was due to Newt Gingrich, and Blue Dogs felt that President Clinton was too liberal and sided with Gingrich instead.

Something to be proud of?

The Time article also adds that “Blue Dogs tend to come from conservative areas of the country, where voters see them as a nonthreatening alternative to Republicans.”

It’s a thin red line between love and hate…

Blue Dogs will continue to lose

With the exception of Giffords, who as any reader can agree is in a special category due to recent events, the rest of the Blue Dogs will continue to lose and continue to not regain the seats they lost, such as Ann Kirkpatrick in CD1.

Why vote for a Democrat who feels they are being “choked blue” by liberals when you can vote for a conservative?

Why vote for a weak Blue Dog Democrat when you can just vote Republican?

If you really don’t want any reform for immigration, why vote for Kirkpatrick, who failed to vote for the DREAM Act, when you can just vote for the TEA Party?

If you are conservative, the Blue Dogs are no match for the TEA Party… but if you are a Democrat or a liberal, the question becomes:

Why vote for the Blue Dog when a Progressive is running?

Progressives will remain true to Democratic principles, while Blue Dogs venture out into GOP territory. Consider the issue of environmental racism, where mines are being built in spite of opposition from the Native Americans who live next to the mines and have to deal with the pollution and exploitation that will take place, just for non-American mining corporations to make off with our country’s natural resources.

The “before” image of where the Resolution copper mine, as it looks now.

A bill to clear the way for development of North America’s largest copper mine, near Superior, was approved Wednesday by a deeply divided House Natural Resources Committee.

The party-line vote by the committee was 26-19, with Republicans supporting the federal land swap needed to facilitate the Resolution Copper Mining project and Democrats opposing it.

Wednesday’s vote pitted U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., the bill’s main sponsor, against Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz. Both Arizonans serve on the Natural Resources Committee. The mine would be in Gosar’s 1st Congressional District.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2011/07/14/20110714superior-copper-mine-project-advances.html

Paul Gosar is TEA Party, Raul Grijalva is Progressive. Republican vs. Democrat.

But why is Grijalva opposed and does he have alternatives?

Grijalva said the bill threatens sacred Apache lands and could shrink the region’s already-scarce water supply. The Democratic congressman, who blocked the bill from passage in the previous Congress, acknowledged he is fighting a losing battle now that Republicans have the House majority.

“They’ve got a clear path to get it done,” Grijalva said. “I hope we don’t end up in a position where we have buyer’s remorse later on.”

Grijalva offered four amendments to Gosar’s bill, but they were all defeated. The amendments included requirements that Superior residents be given preference for mine jobs over out-of-state residents and that the U.S. Geological Survey assess the impact of the mine on the region’s water resources before the land swap can be completed.

Continue reading How Progressive Democrats Can Beat Republicans: Arizona Case Study →

Capitulation

By Robert Borosage

The raw deal on the budget ceiling has been cut. The Tea Party terrorists – the extremist faction willing to hold the economy hostage to get their way – have won. The Republic, common sense and decency have been trampled.

With the economy deeply depressed, 25 million people in need of full time work, the raw deal will impede any recovery. It precludes any serious action on jobs from the federal government. It will cost jobs as spending is cut. Instead of getting serious about a plan to revive this economy and put people back to work, Washington will remain fixated on what and how much to cut. From the President to the Tea Party zealots, politicians will tell Americans that this agreement is “important to our economy.” Yes, it is important – important in the way a virus is important to a sickly patient. It will make things worse.

Continue reading Campaign for America’s Future: Extremists Won →

The President Surrenders

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Progressive America Rising via NY Times

A deal to raise the federal debt ceiling is in the works. If it goes through, many commentators will declare that disaster was avoided. But they will be wrong.

For the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.

Start with the economics. We currently have a deeply depressed economy. We will almost certainly continue to have a depressed economy all through next year. And we will probably have a depressed economy through 2013 as well, if not beyond.

The worst thing you can do in these circumstances is slash government spending, since that will depress the economy even further. Pay no attention to those who invoke the confidence fairy, claiming that tough action on the budget will reassure businesses and consumers, leading them to spend more. It doesn’t work that way, a fact confirmed by many studies of the historical record.

Continue reading Paul Krugman: Deal Disaster for Working People →

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said early reports of the new deal appeared to be “a sugar-coated Satan sandwich.”

The Missouri Democrat said the CBC hadn’t yet made a formal declaration that the group would oppose it, “but this is a shady bill.”

There has been some talk that the President can act unilaterally to raise the nation debt limit based on Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which provides that “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law .. . shall not be questioned”.

The argument has been made that since Congress has ALREADY authorized BY LAW each obligation represented in the national debt, by appropriating the funds for various expenditures, any overall “debt limit” is artificially redundant. It would be like writing a bunch of checks and then refusing to deposit the funds in your account to cover them. While a constitutional challenge of the debt limit law may be a defensible argument in the spirit of the 14th Amendment it is not unequivocally compelling, as the 14th Amendment does not expressly authorize what proponents are asking the President to do.

In this context, it is astonishing that apparently nobody has bothered to read the text of Public Debt Law of 1941 itself, embodied in 31 USC 3101, which is what codifies a national debt limit. That law states that:

“The face amount of obligations issued under this chapter and the
face amount of obligations whose principal and interest are
guaranteed by the United States Government (except guaranteed
obligations held by the Secretary of the Treasury) may not be more
than [some arbitrary huge number] . . .except guaranteed obligations
held by the Secretary of The Treasury”.

Continue reading Debt Crisis Sham: 31 USC (United States Code) 3101 & 3102: President Is Authorized to Pay Debt Incurred by Congress →

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 31, 2011

Media Contact: Adam Sarvana (202) 225-2435

(202) 573-2562 cell

Washington, D.C. – Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, today released the following statement on the emerging debt deal:

“This deal trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it. Progressives have been organizing for months to oppose any scheme that cuts Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, and it now seems clear that even these bedrock pillars of the American success story are on the chopping block. Even if this deal were not as bad as it is, this would be enough for me to fight against its passage.

This deal does not even attempt to strike a balance between more cuts for the working people of America and a fairer contribution from millionaires and corporations. The very wealthy will continue to receive taxpayer handouts, and corporations will keep their expensive federal giveaways. Meanwhile, millions of families unfairly lose more in this deal than they have already lost. I will not be a part of it.

Continue reading Congressional Progressive Caucus: No to cutting working families to pay ransom to millionaires →

photo from http://www.beavercountian.com

Nurses and Union Activists Demonstrate Against Medicare Cuts at Rep. Jason Altmire’s Office

Congressman Jason Altmire is a Blue Dog Democrat who has consistently provided decisive votes for the Republican slash and burn social agenda since the 2010 election. The Republican plan to cut Medicare will devastate healthcare services in Beaver County where many elderly and disabled people rely on it. The plan also includes cuts to Social Security.

Progressive Democrats, labor, and community groups are lobbying Altmire to vote against any cuts that would hurt the people of his district. Will he provide the winning vote for the Republicans as he has done this year over and over? Be sure to call and let him know your position.

In one of the largest Congressional districts in the nation, stretching across the rural heartland of eastern Arizona from the Four Corners region to the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, the historic candidacy of Wenona Benally Baldenegro for the Democratic nomination for Congress is marking a new era in Western politics.

For Arizonans exhausted by the extremist Tea Party machinations of freshman Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who many view more dedicated to the Tea Party’s beltway defiance of the Obama administration than the creation of jobs or protecting health care and investments in education, the hands-on rural American experience and Main Street platform ideas of public interest attorney Benally Baldenegro have galvanized a bipartisan campaign across the district’s diverse constituency.

“We’re extremely disappointed in Rep. Gosar,” said Vera Skorupski, a long-time registered Republican from Sedona, Arizona and a campaign supporter of Benally Baldenegro. Citing Gosar’s lack of support for Medicare and health care reform, Skorupski praised Benally Baldenegro for not ignoring the “compassionate conservative” tradition abandoned by “radical” Tea Party activists like Gosar and bringing together Democrats, Republicans and Independents.

Raised in the mining town of Kayenta on the Navajo Nation, the Harvard-educated attorney Benally Baldenegro will also become the first female American Indian member of Congress, if elected.

Continue reading Progressive Democrat Runs for Congress in Arizona →

Friends, family mark 100th birthday of a Florin hero

smagagnini@sacbee.com

Published Monday, Jul. 25, 2011

More than 150 relatives, friends and neighbors filled Florin Community Center on Sunday to celebrate a true American war hero.

Bob Fletcher – who officially turns 100 on Tuesday – didn’t see combat in World War II. But he was shot at for being a Japanese sympathizer when he quit his job to save three local Japanese American farms whose owners were sent to internment camps.

Most of Sacramento’s 3,000 Japanese Americans who were shipped off to barbed-wire camps from 1942 to 1945 lost everything – even though most were U.S. citizens. Their farms and homes were stolen or foreclosed on by the banks.

But Fletcher, a UC Davis-trained agricultural inspector, knew many Japanese farmers throughout Northern California and hated to see their hard work and life savings disappear.

“They were the same as everybody else – it was obvious they had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor,” Fletcher said.

At his neighbors’ request, he agreed to work three farms – 90 acres of flame Tokay grapes on Florin-Perkins Road – while the Tsukamotos, Okamotos and Nittas were locked up.

Continue reading An American Hero Celebrates 100th Birthday →

VIGIL IN SUPPORT OF
SOCIAL SECURITY & MEDICARE

MONDAY
JULY 25TH at 3:30
REP ALTMIRE’S OFFICE
2110 McCLEAN STREET, ALIQUIPPA

Service Employees International Union HAVE RECEIVED WORD THAT
ALTMIRE INTENDS TO VOTE IN FAVOR OF
CUTS TO SOCIAL SECURITY & MEDICARE.

LET’S JOIN THEM TOMORROW AT ALTMIRE’S ALIQUIPPA OFFICE.