Everything is political. Our long-running series of political quotes proves that–we think. We’re always on the lookout for quotes–contemporary and historical–that are pertinent to the current political environment.

Our illustrator is Christopher Burke, whose unique, quirky cartoons add a touch of whimsy–which we really, really need in today’s political realm

Ironically, the person who said this was John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, who was ousted in 2015 by the right-wing of his own party.

The post Political quotes: “Leaders” appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Every once in a while, we get a clear view of a major disconnect in the Republican Brain.This certainly is true with the responses of many GOP office-holders to the recent tragic crash of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia.

In terms of what happened, the train was going 106 mph in a 50 mph zone with a tight curve, as it headed north to New York.The train derailed,  leading cars to fall apart and tumble down inclines. Of the 238 passengers and 5 crew on board, 8 were killed and over 200 injured, 11 critically.

It has still not been determined if the cause of the crash was human error by the engineer, mechanical failure of existing equipment, or even the remote possibility that a projectile hit the engine window and disoriented the engineer.

Officials of the National Transportation Safety Board said that the crash might have been prevented by a computerized, speed-limiting system called Positive Train Control (PTC) that was operational elsewhere on the Northeast corridor.

When it comes to understanding why the PTC system was not in place on this stretch of track, we have a classic example of how Republican thinking tends to be illogical. Shortly after the crash, House Speaker John Boehner was asked if the crash was in part due to Amtrak not being well-funded. Boehner jumped on the question and said, “Are you really going to ask such a stupid question?” He went on to say:

“Listen, you know, they started this yesterday, it’s all about funding; it’s all about funding. Well, obviously it’s not about funding. The train was going twice the speed limit. Adequate funds are there, no money’s been cut from rail safety, and the House passed a bill earlier this spring to reauthorize Amtrak, and authorize a lot of these programs. And it’s hard for me to imagine that people take the bait on some of the nonsense that gets spewed around here.”

(21-second video)

Amtrak’s budget has been repeatedly cut by GOP lawmakers. Boehner is missing the obvious. Had more money been appropriated to Amtrak, it would likely have been spent it on installing PTC in that stretch of track.This action was already in Amtrak’s budget for 2015, and with a few more dollars, they could have completed this work much earlier, as well as many other necessary safety projects.

Boehner was not alone in his stance. Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which has oversight of Amtrak, said the crash “did not have anything to do with money.” His committee that bottled up requests for increased Amtrak spending on safety.

Rep. John Mica (R-FL) took it considerably further, saying that opening the commuter rail market to private investment was the solution to what he called a “third-world rail system …. run in a Soviet-style operation.” His memory seems to fail him. For years, passenger train service was in the private sector (with considerable government assistance). When airline business boomed in the second half of the twentieth century, passenger service plummeted.

Yet, in certain areas of the country, particularly the northeast corridor from Washington, DC to Boston, demand was still high. One only needs to drive from Washington to Boston to be convinced that it is good policy to have alternate forms of transportation that can take cars off the roads. That route is the bread and butter of Amtrak. For it to be sustainable, it must be safe.

Train fares alone do not provide that money for Amtrak. Since its inception. it has had federal subsides (as the private railroads previously had). It is in the national interest to keep Amtrak solvent, which means a combination of sales revenue and federal subsidies to make it safe, convenient, and effective.

Republicans can laugh all the way to the bank as they continue to pour government largesse upon our largest corporations, particularly in the financial industry. But for them to not see the connection between government assistance and safe rail service is not just poor public policy, it is a window into the curious and often malicious Republican brain.

The post Amtrak crash shows disconnect in Republican Brain appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Have you noticed how mainstream media fills up a whole lot of airtime sounding off about our current do-nothing Congress? Just this morning, while driving in my car, I listened to yet another report on public radio about how the 113th Congress is on track to be the least productive in history.

There’s no disputing the pathetic public record of this current Congress. But have legislators actually been doing nothing? It looks to me like the media once again is taking the easy way out. If reporters and commentators would bother to look closer, maybe they’d see that congressional Republicans have been doing a whole lot of something.

And that something has cost taxpayers a bundle of change.

So let’s ask the obvious question: What have House Republicans been doing down there on the Potomac anyway? Well, for one thing they fought long and hard in court to defend the Defense of Marriage Act. You know, that was the act that was struck down by the Roberts court in a 5-4 decision. By the time they’d lost that battle, House Republicans managed to drain a tidy $2.3 million from the public coffers.

And how about the bogus blame game surrounding the tragic events at the American embassy in Benghazi? Republicans just can’t stop wasting time and treasure on whipping up trumped-up charges. Establishing the Select Committee on Benghazi to keep the finger pointing in the news already has cost $3.3 million. This year alone the House Benghazi panel is on track to send another $3 million down the hole. And the IRS has reported that it has  spent more than $14 million in taxpayer money accommodating Republican requests, turning over more than 600,000 pages of documents.

Remember the debt-ceiling battle and the fiscal-cliff debacle? Please don’t tell me Americans have forgotten that bit of theatre. The Republican lie was that voting against raising the debt ceiling was the fiscally responsible thing to do and would strengthen the economy. Way to go, House Republicans. How did that work out for us? That nifty tactic, along with just the threat of a government shutdown, resulted in the first downgrade of America’s credit rating in history. And the price tag to taxpayers? Just a drop in the bucket, folks, at $1.3 billion. (And what, you may ask, does that chunk of change buy these days, anyway? How about some badly needed infrastructure repairs that would create a ton of jobs in the construction industry.)

And don’t forget the government shutdown itself—a tactic heralded by right-wingers as a godsend to the good old Republic. That idiocy pulled a cool $24 billion straight out of the coffers.

And let’s not overlook the fifty symbolic votes by Republicans in the House to repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act—amendments House members knew would be doomed if ever they reached the floor of the Senate. So far, Republicans have squandered $79 billion on that fight. But who’s counting? Republicans are banking on the fact that we’re not paying attention to the price tag.

And just in time for the midterm elections, here comes another wasteful tactic from Speaker of the House Boehner and House Republicans. With all of the economic challenges facing the middle class, young people, the working poor, and the elderly here comes a meritless and wasteful lawsuit, suing President Obama for his legally sound executive action delaying a requirement for employers to provide health-care coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

How much is that debacle going to cost? The perennially irresponsible John Boehner and House Republicans don’t have a clue or won’t tell us. And, if their behavior and official statements are any indication, they don’t care. It appears there isn’t a dirty tactic that Boehner and House Republicans can resist when it comes to sticking it to Obama, and they couldn’t care less that the taxpayer is picking up the bill. The trouble is that in their frenzy to sink the Obama presidency, they’re not just sticking it to Obama but sticking it to the rest of us as well.

Unfortunately, most of us are letting them get away with it because we’re too trusting, or too confused, or too tired, or too busy, or too poorly informed to figure out what’s going on.

So here we go again. Boehner and House Republicans are rolling out the lies. The fiction goes something like this: “This is for you, America. Trust us. We know what we’re doing.”

Really? Are we really going to believe them and hand them another term in office?

The post How much does our do-nothing Republican Congress cost taxpayers? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

There’s an adage that all politics is local. It makes a lot of sense; most issues are bread and butter ones that occur in the neighborhoods and the households where we live. But like all aphorisms, it’s not always true.

The current dispute between House Speaker Boehner and President Obama about who is most faithful in carrying out his responsibilities to follow the Constitution lends itself to another maxim: “All politics is politics.”

Boehner started it all with a threat to sue the president because he [the President] is issuing too many executive orders where Congress has not passed legislation authorizing him to do so. Boehner outlined his reasoning in an op-ed that he penned for CNN.

Too often over the past five years, the President has circumvented the American people and their elected representatives through executive action, changing and creating his own laws, and excusing himself from enforcing statutes he is sworn to uphold — at times even boasting about his willingness to do it, as if daring the American people to stop him.

Boehner feels, perhaps justifiably, that the president is not paying proper homage to Congress. As far as Boehner is concerned, it should not matter that the current 113^th Congress has passed virtually no meaningful legislation. He does not like the president taking executive actions to clarify and streamline immigration, to raise and expand the minimum wage, to clear up uncertainties in the Affordable Care Act, etc. But Boehner acts as if Barack Obama is the first president to use executive orders. That is far from true.

Obama has enacted 182 executive orders; hardly an “imperial president” when compared to others. His predecessor, George W. Bush enacted 291. Republicans Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower had 381 and 484 respectively. And Republican Theodore Roosevelt, in less than two full terms, enacted 1,081. His distant cousin, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt issued 3,522 in three plus terms.

So, if Boehner is making a constitutional argument (against a president who is a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago), he [Boehner] seems to be overlooking much of history. Barack Obama is acting well within the bounds of custom in the number of executive orders that he has issued.

It may not matter how much or how little Boehner knows about the Constitution. Like virtually every politician, he has never been known to fight a constitutional battle that would not give him political gain. And as Boehner has chosen to engage in this legal battle, Republican strategists are thinking about making it their main issue in the 2014 general election. Make no mistake about it, this is a political issue.

In defense of the President, Sally Kohn writes in CNN about Boehner:

Think about this for just a second: House Republicans are using taxpayer dollars to fund a lawsuit against a President who has literally done not only what every president before him has done but has done it less often and is doing so now only because House Republicans repeatedly refuse to even vote on legislation, let alone pass anything.

And you have the gall to accuse the President of being the one in violation of the Constitution?

Even more frustrating is how your repeated attacks on the President fall factually flat. In your essay for CNN, you write: “After years of slow economic growth and high unemployment under President Obama, they are still asking, ‘where are the jobs?’ ”

This is a particularly laughable assertion given last week’s jobs report, which noted our economy added 288,000 jobs in June, marking 52 straight months of continuous job growth. Overall, under President Obama’s leadership, the private sector has added 9.7 million jobs and an economy that was in free fall when he was elected is now in a steady recovery.

Kohn makes a familiar point: It’s likely that, because Boehner’s House has refused to act on so many legislative proposals,  he is as derelict in following his constitutional duties as the president might be. The bottom line is that if either Boehner or the President has a legal case on the other not fulfilling his oath of office, the adjudication of the issues would be: (a) extremely difficult to make, (b) subjective in substance, and (c) basically political in nature.

The tendency to “vote” politically has been repeatedly shown by the U.S. Supreme Court since Bush v. Gore. As many legal observers have said, the rulings on recess appointments, Hobby Lobby, and a host of other cases show the justices voting along both party and partisan lines. It’s time that we get over it. The Supreme Court, the Congress, and the President all tend to bend in the direction of their political views. It’s hard to say that any of us would not do the same.

What we need to do now is to name it [political decision-making], acknowledge it for what it is, and get used to seeing it this way. If the Constitution was as pure as some might want us to believe, then perhaps that wouldn’t be so. But the framers of the Constitution were human and were also political [clearly biased in favor of the white landed gentry]. Let’s accept this and move on from there.

The post Suing over executive orders: Politics as usual appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Conservatives are balking at the budget deal. Plus links to other issues featured on progressive blogs. See today’s full Progressive Blog Digest here.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/can-paul-ryan-put-down-a-revolt-from-the-right-20131210
Can Paul Ryan Put Down a Revolt From the Right?

http://prospect.org/article/conservative-anger-over-budget-deal-now-purely-save-face
Conservative Anger Over Budget Deal Now Purely to Save Face

John Boehner blows up: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/boehner-finally-loses-temper-on-tea-party
“You mean the groups that came  out and opposed it before they ever saw it? They’re using our members and they’re using the American people for their own goals. This is
ridiculous.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/12/john_boehner_goes_after_heritage_action_and_club_for_growth_house_speaker.html

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/12/john-boehner-slams-conservative-groups-this-is-ridiculous.html

Still learning more about the fine print in the deal

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2013/12/11/deal_limits_senate_gops_ability_to_block_tax_hikes.html
Deal Limits Senate GOP’s Ability to Block Tax Hikes 

Interpreting the GOP “civil war”

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/what-s-really-going-on-with-the-republican-civil-war

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_12/ikes_not_coming_back048152.php

Here’s the fact: the Republicans — with a big assist from the Obama admin — have largely succeeded in winning the discussion on deficits and budget
cuts

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/12/11/republicans-are-winning-the-debate-on-discretionary-spending/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein&clsrd

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/12/war-over-austerity-over-republicans-won

The post The budget deal: Progressive Blog Digest appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Many of us fancy ourselves as political strategists who have the wherewithal to break the Congressional gridlock that is keeping much of the federal government shut down. One idea that has been proposed is to use a discharge petition in the House of Representatives. At the Maddow Blog, Steve Benen explains the discharge petition this way:

As a rule, the only bills that reach the House floor for a vote are the ones House leaders allow to reach the floor. But there’s an exception: if 218 members sign a discharge petition, their preferred legislation is brought up for a vote whether the majority party’s leadership likes it or not.

However, Sarah Binder of the Washington Post wrote on Day 2 of the shutdown how difficult the procedure can be:

First, the mechanics. Under the House discharge rule, a majority of the membership (218 lawmakers, even if some seats are vacant) can sign a petition to dislodge a bill or resolution from a House committee. With the requisite number of signatures (made public here), a majority can extract any bill that has been stuck in a committee for more than 30 legislative days. Members can also target special rules that are stuck in the Rules Committee, so long as the rule has been before House Rules for more than seven legislative days and so long as the rule targets a bill stuck at least 30 days in committee. Once 218 members sign on, motions to discharge land on the House discharge calendar. If you are a bill in a hurry for a vote, don’t tread there.  The House considers motions from the discharge calendar on only the second and fourth Mondays of the month.

Time lags built into the discharge rule are bound to frustrate lawmakers if they seek to open a shuttered government. Even if an aspiring lawmaker bones up on the House rule book and today introduces a CR and a discharge motion to dislodge it, the earliest the motion to discharge would make its way onto the discharge calendar after securing 218 signatures would be November. (I am assuming that the House’s calendar and legislative days run roughly in tandem this month). If the motion doesn’t make it onto the calendar until after the second Monday of the month, the bill would be discharged at the earliest in late November. Procedural details make the discharge rule ill-suited for swift enactment of a clean CR.

If it was determined that a discharge petition was the best way to try to break the gridlock, it would still require close to two dozen Republicans to sign, even if all 200 Democrats supported the petition. Parlor room estimates of how many Republicans are wavering from the Tea Party’s rigid position range from a low of two up to a high of 152. Chances are that if the President remains solid, each day will bring a few more Republicans who see it as “game lost” and will support a vote on a clean budget bill.

However, as Binder points out, signing a discharge petition is just the beginning. It must then clear a series of legislative hurdles to come to the floor, perhaps in November.

There is at least one other option to consider. John Boehner is speaker of the entire House, not just the Republicans. The majority is there; it consists of most or all Democrats and the more moderate or “institutional” Republicans. That group could form a coalition on the budget, and subsequent debt limit, votes and allow American to be governed in a somewhat adult fashion. That new working majority in the House would have a more conservative center than the Democrat-controlled Senate.

But imagine how wonderful it would be to resume a process in which each house passes legislation to the liking of a majority of its members and then compromise is worked out in committee. That could happen if Mr. Boehner decided to emulate some to the great historical leaders of the House such as Henry Clay (DR-KY), Joseph Cannon (R-IL), Champ Clark (D-MO), Sam Rayburn (D-TX), and Tip O’Neill (D-MA). Those speakers were bold and actually led. They followed only after the forged a working majority from all members of the House. If John Boehner would do that now, he would break the gridlock and by many be seen as a hero. He might have to sacrifice his Speakership in January, 2015, but he would have ended his term in a fashion in which he would be highly regarded by history. Finally, this approach would pass the all-important giggle test, because both Jon Stewart and John Oliver announced support for it on Day 2 of the shutdown.

The post The Speedy way to break gridlock is just too slow appeared first on Occasional Planet.

After bragging a little too much about his business successes, former Illinois Senator Charles Percy said, “If only I could see myself as others see me.” He truly had a sense of humility, one which included a willingness to listen to what others said about any blind spots that he might have.

It’s easy to see blind spots, such as Anthony Weiner’s denial that his sexual peccadilloes impact upon his ability to be an effective public servant. We tend to think of him as the exception rather than the rule. However, it’s quite possible that the rule is “almost all human beings have blind spots.”

San Diego Mayor Bob Filner has a similar blind spot to Weiner; he has lost the confidence of his constituency because he refuses to recognize the gravity of his sexual harassment, particularly with his own female staff members.

But how about others in politics who do not engage in problematic sexual behavior? Aren’t they capable of having blind spots? Let’s take a relatively easy example, House Majority Leader John Boehner. Let’s first identify those topics to which he is not blind, because he talks about them. Then we’ll examine the issues that he tends to ignore. Those are where his blind spots lurk.

Boehner has said something that probably has never been said before by a Congressional leader, “This Congress should be judged on the laws that it repeals rather than the ones that it passes.” Perhaps that is why he has had the House fruitlessly vote forty times to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act (sometimes called Obamacare). He wants to lower taxes, which in this economy will have the impact of reducing government revenue. In turn, that will limit the money available to fund vital programs. Boehner favors across-the-board cuts to virtually all federal departments (including Defense). This means less resources for education, health care, infrastructure development, school lunches, job training, virtually everything. He’ll talk about foreign policy when given guidance from senior Republicans such as Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

He seems to be blind to the basic principle upon which the progressive movement is built: empathy. When he talks about the country’s problems, he focuses on taming the budget, eliminating waste and fraud, increasing patriotism, and cutting entitlements. There is rarely any mention of the people, of the collection of more than 300 million Americans, all of whom to one extent or another need the help of the federal government. He talks about fairness as if we had a level playing field. He seems to lack the awareness that millions of Americans and billions of global citizens do not earn a livable wage and those people’s lives are often characterized by misfortune and even misery.

All of us tend to have blind spots. Noteworthy are baseball players like Ryan Braun and Alex Rodriguez, who have such difficulty in coming to terms with blatant offenses that they committed. Progressives can frequently be blind to the economic benefits that a development that might bring, while doing damage to the environment. A parent may not see how he or she is spoiling a child; a boss may not recognize that he or she is ignoring a group of workers.

Generally in “proper company” we don’t point out one another’s blind spots. It’s a personal issue that needs to be addressed with caution and sensitivity. There often will be denial, as evidenced so clearly with Weiner and Filner.

But with someone like John Boehner, who is holding millions of Americans hostage because of his inability to empathize with them, an intervention is essential. Unfortunately. he does not listen to Democrats. or even most of the mainstream media. In his case, our hope has to be that enough moderate Republicans come forward and help him connect the dots. Unfortunately for the country, moderate Republicans are an almost extinct species. So we’re back to ourselves; trying to better understand our own blind spots and hope that that will help improve the country and world.

The post We need to call out politicians’ blind spots appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The U.S. Senate has managed to pass an immigration reform bill. Now it goes to the House of Representatives, where conservative Republicans, obstructionists, anti-immigration zealots, John Boehner and his band of meanies will undoubtedly do everything they can to stymie it. But there is, in fact, a way to get the bill through, even without the “majority of the majority” that Boehner is insisting on.  The strategy is called a discharge petition.

At the Maddow Blog, Steve Benen explains the discharge petition this way:

As a rule, the only bills that reach the House floor for a vote are the ones House leaders allow to reach the floor. But there’s an exception: if 218 members sign a discharge petition, their preferred legislation is brought up for a vote whether the majority party’s leadership likes it or not.

In terms of specific numbers, there are 201 Democrats in the House caucus. If literally all of them are prepared to support the bipartisan Senate bill, they would need 17 House Republicans — just 7% of the 231 GOP House members — to join them on the discharge petition. If, say, 10 conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats from Southern states balked, they would need 27 Republicans to break party ranks.

Just last week, we were told they were as many as 40 House Republicans who consider themselves moderates, unhappy with their party’s far-right direction. Is there a chance half of these alleged centrists might sign a discharge petition and get immigration reform done? Sure there is.

I’m usually not a fan of legislative and procedural tricks, but for this worthy cause—immigration reform—I’d made an exception.  It’s hard to be against the tactic that enabled the 1964 Civil Rights Act to pass, right?

Unfortunately, people smarter than me are pessimistic about the chances of a discharge petition this time around. Over at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum says:

I’m not a believer. Here’s why: it actually makes sense. If Republicans really do want to pass immigration reform just to get it over and done with, but they want to do it without getting their fingerprints all over it, the discharge petition is easily their best bet. As Steve says, all it requires is 20 or 30 Republicans in safe seats to vote for it, while the entire rest of the caucus gets to continue railing against it while secretly breathing a sigh of relief. That’s totally logical.

And that’s why it won’t happen. Logic is simply not the GOP’s strong suit these days, and frankly, neither is Machiavellian maneuvering. The only thing they know how to do is yell and scream and hold votes on endless doomed repetitions of bills designed to demonstrate their ideological purity.

I can only hope that Drum is wrong.

The post How to pass immigration reform, without a majority of the majority appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In a shameless demonstration of feigned ignorance and pandering, some climate-change denying Republicans, like Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California, and Speaker John Boehner, have sneered their way through public pronouncements about global warming that belong less in a press conference on Capitol Hill and more in a scene from a raunchy bro flick.

A few years ago, Rohrabacher did himself and his state proud when he joked about past temperature variation and “dinosaur flatulence.” Boehner, not wanting to be outshone by Rohrabacher on the global-warming sneer scale, joked that cows doing “you know, when they do what they do you’ve got more carbon dioxide.”

Well, the joke’s on the not-so-eminent Speaker. Boehner’s gaseous cows and America’s bloated, industrialized beef industry turn out to be central players in global warming.  In fact, those with more serious and disciplined minds than the Representative’s and the Speaker’s—you know, real scientists conducting real scientific studies—have released some startling conclusions.  If you can stop laughing long enough, take a look at a video recently released by the Center for Investigative Reporting.

A note to meat eaters out there: The next time your longing for a greasy burger sends you out to your local junk-food emporium, perhaps you’ll recall what you see here and toss together some beans and veggies instead.

The post Beefing up the facts on global warming appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Go figure. Republicans have made a bogus issue out of the September 11, 2012 incident at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.  They sabotaged the nomination of Susan Rice to become Secretary of State even though she is eminently qualified.  As tragic as it was, the number of Americans killed in Benghazi was four.

On December 14, 2012, a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and killed close to thirty people, including his mother as well as eighteen to twenty children.

He didn’t do it with a knife; he didn’t do it with his fists; he didn’t do it with illegal biological or chemical weapons. He did it with a gun. Yet, what do we do?  John Boehner tweeted that flags at the U.S. Capitol will be lowered. I’m sure that will prevent further gun carnage.

Even Democrats, including President Barack Obama, have been reluctant to take on the gun lobby. During the administration of President Bill Clinton, eleven kinds of assault weapons were banned. The law was allowed to expire, and assault weapons are back on the streets. Now we have Sandy Hook to add to the lists of Aurora, Columbine, Tucson, and others.

Is there something wrong with this picture? Boehner and others can’t let go of Benghazi. No public figure pontificating on it had his or her “feet on the ground” there. They don’t know what really happened. At the same time, we have hundreds of witnesses to the shooting massacres within the U.S.

Our priorities are way out of whack, even for Democrats. Let’s grow some cajones and at least ban assault weapons.

The post Benghazi and Newtown appeared first on Occasional Planet.