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‘Imagine how much worse this would be’h
(double-check quote)

- Sen. Mitch McConnell on link between jobs and taxes, Dec. 5, 2010


Carolyn Maloney, representing Manhattan’s Upper East Side in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1992, was re-elected on Nov. 2, 2010, with 75 percent of the vote. Henry Waxman, repping Beverly Hills and Malibu since …, was returned to the House with 64 percent.

Along with them, Anna Eshoo, representing Palo Alto and other towns ringing Stanford University, received 68 percent; Ed Markey and Barney Frank, from Boston’s very rich western suburbs, took 64 and 54 percent, respectively; and Jim Himes, from Connecticut’s Fairfield County, 51 percent.

They represent six of the wealthiest congressional districts in America. The majority of their constituents generally vote Democratic. Before Himes, Fairfield voters regularly elected a moderate Republican until Bush administration policies became too radical for them.

If the people of Malibu, the Upper East Side and these other communities are so keen on keeping the Bush tax cuts, denying pay extensions to the unemployed and opposing an increase in Social Security outlays, why do they continue to elect these House members? Why would they want to be represented by politicians who persist in supporting initiatives to help vulnerable people from the other side of the tracks?



As November 2010 blended into December, U.S. Rep. Darryl Issa’s plans to expose waste were outlined in a New York Times piece.

Issa, who was re-elected with 51 percent of the vote, was slated to chair the House Oversight and Government Reform when Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January. He wanted to use committee investigations to “focus on places where money can be saved, where we can literally close agencies or sub agencies or programs.”

Easy to understand, impossible to take seriously. Republicans had six years to save money when they ruled Congress and conspired with President Bush to transform a … (how much?) surplus from the Clinton years into a $5 trillion (double check this) deficit.

Of course, the American people should keep close tabs on how government spends our money, every day. Issa must think we’re stupid to believe that they want to guarantee that our money is spent properly.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell even said, quite bluntly, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

Nothing is wrong with seeking the ouster of a president or any other officeholder. That’s what a democracy allows.

Our democracy was created to serve the public, but the early weeks of December were crammed with episodes illustrating why millions of Americans are violated by the very system established to protect and empower them. Certainly, this is a subjective determination.
Everything that could go wrong in the system, it seems, went wrong.

America’s economic mess was produced in large part by President Bush’s two costly wars, slashing taxes for the wealthy and awarding of billions of dollars in spurious contracts to firms friendly with the administration. With the collusion of the Republican-controlled Congress.

This is not to excuse the Democrats. Many Democratic members of Congress voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq and Obama’s expenditures have contributed to the deficit (better wording).

While the rent on my center city apartment continues to rise each year, my employer - the city of Philadelphia - just entered its 18th month without reaching a contract with nonuniformed employees. My income remains stagnant because the city is broke while sending far more tax money to the federal and state treasuries than it gets back.

Six subway stops north of City Hall, a dozen activists for an anti-poverty group marched into a state-run welfare office on Dec. 2 to protest congested conditions in the office that aggravate the problems of welfare applicants. A spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare confirmed to a Philadelphia Daily News reporter that financial constraints compelled caseworkers to interview applicants about sensitive family issues in a public area.

At least North Philly clients do not need to contend with rats, bedbugs and floods as do New York state employees and the jobless at a rented unemployment office near Yankees Stadium (check this) in the South Bronx, reports Joanna Malloy of The New York Daily News.

A photo spread in The Philadelphia Daily News, published just prior to Thanksgiving, depicted a line-up of people waiting in line for food underneath Interstate 95 early one morning. Bill Clark, president of Philabundance, said to a reporter that “we’ve seen the demand increase over 60 percent in the last two years.”

Also in November, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that 49 million Americans lived in homes without regular access to satisfactory food, the Times reported. Children lived in more than half-million households with “very low food security.”

One night in November, 1,000 children and 1,600 adults were living in Philadelphia’s emergency shelters, a group called Project HOME announced, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. That same night, 352 people sleeping on center city streets were counted in a survey. No doubt some of them made their homes along the two blocks between City Hall and my apartment building.

Across the country, 200 men and women lived in a tent city in 2009 on a grassed-over landfill along the American River in Sacramento, California’s capital city. A Los Angeles Times reporter interviewed people who a short time ago held jobs and owned homes or rented apartments.

Just north of Philadelphia’s border, a St. Louis-based company announced that it was closing a plant in Bensalem, Pa., leaving its 500 employees jobless after failed union negotiations. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the company, Express Scripts inc., made $827.6 million in profits in 2009.

(Hummus move from Queens)


Across the Delaware River, where state aid has been reduced to local towns, Newark and Atlantic City have already laid off 167 and 43 police officers, respectively, plus other employees, and police, fire and other positions are endangered in Camden and Jersey City, The Phildelphia Inquirer reported. Three suburbs, Cherry Hill, Collingswood and Winslow, let go either police officers or firefighters.

New York state plans to lay off 12 employees at the Bronx Psychiatric Center, where patient violence is already difficult to control. In states as diverse as Maine, Illinois and Oklahoma, law enforcement officers are increasingly carrying out emergency services for the mentally ill because of reductions in services traditionally operated by community mental health systems.

In New York City, both city and state leaders are threatening to lay off more employees. The Metropolitan Transportation Agency has already dismissed … employees and will raise fares on Jan. 1, following the lead of Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. New Jersey Transit jacked up the round-trip commuter-rail cost of riding from Trenton to Manhattan from $21.50 to $31.

Pittsburgh’s transit board voted to cut service by 35 percent on the day before Thanksgiving when they eliminated 47 routes and 400 jobs. Transit officials blamed the loss of state funds while local critics accused the agency of mismanagement, according to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

In the Jamaica section of Queens, the 130-year-old Wonder Bread plant is slated to close in January, which could put up to 200 employees out of work; the -based owner, Hostess, may offer some employees jobs in Wayne, N.J., Philadelphia or Biddeford, Maine, the NY News reported.

Yahoo Inc. in northern California announced less than two weeks before Christmas that it is laying off 600 employees to increase its earnings.

Back east, the Philadelphia Housing Authority faces investigations over spending practices involving repairs, contracts and purchases. Carl R. Greene was fired as the PHA’s executive director in September 2010 after the board learned that Greene secretly settled three sexual-harassment complaints against him, which he denied. (PDN 1/7/2011)

The city’s school system has been under fire for failing to protect Asian students from severe assaults at South Philadelphia High School and facing a possible $500 million deficit after foolish appropriations of stimulus funds (PDN, 1/5/2011, Phil Goldsmith column)

Ninety miles to the north, six consultants hired to design a project to computerize time sheets for New York City’s work force were charged on the ides of December with bilking the $700 million-plus program of $80 million. They reported to Joel Bondy, who headed the Office of Payroll Administration, and Bondy reported to Mayor Bloomberg.

Bondy resigned two days later, and Bloomberg…he’s still Mayor Bloomberg.

The city’s Department of Education was authorized to spend $200 million on consultants between 2008 and 2010, just as class size is rising, after-school programs are jeopardized and the department cannot keep track of its teacher evaluations. Nydn - 1/7/11

Meanwhile, prostitutes have been hanging out next door to a Bronx elementary school. Seven-year-old Karina Castro told the Daily News 1/7/11 that she cannot enter the school playground without taking notice of street people across the street hanging out on a large rock just below the No. 2 and No. 5 elevated trains.



Immediately after Christmas, Bloomberg became the most detested person in New York City when a 2-foot snowfall paralyzed the town. Bloomberg’s people did not bother to call a snow emergency early enough and waited late before seeking private haulers to help plow the snow. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority ignored its own procedures to minimize transit problems.

Bloomberg on Wednesday, Dec. 29, even promised to plow all streets by 7 a.m. Thursday, leading to Friday’s New York Daily News headline of “White Lie.”

In Pennsylvania, state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille regularly accepts dinners, plane rides, tickets to sporting events and rounds of golf from attorneys and businessmen. It is legal for nearly all Pennsylvania judges, according to the Inquirer.



The month before, former President Bush admitted in his book “Decision Points” that he approved waterboarding of CIA detainees, which is generally considered a form of torture that would make Bush vulnerable to prosecution.

After 17 years, on Dec. 18, the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy is repealed in the Senate. Before homosexual Americans were granted the right to openly serve their country, more than 14,000 military careers were ruined and millions of dollars were wasted on their training before they were expelled.

The same day, 55 senators vote for the Dream Act to offer a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought into America while they were young children. Whatever one’s view of this legislation, a majority is once again insufficient to pass the bill.

While New York and California hemorrhage after sending far more to the federal treasury than they get back, federal spending for Alaska was 38 percent higher than the national average in 1996, according to the Times. By August 2010, the expenditures rose to 71 percent above the national average.




NBC anchor Brian Williams dubbed it a “Mr. Smith goes to Washington moment.”

When I returned from dinner at 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 10, Bernie Sanders was still filibustering the tax-cut deal after eight hours on the Senate floor.

He would never have had to filibuster this bad bargain if not for the filibuster as we knew it on that day. For the past two years in particular, Republicans exploited the Senate rule to block legislation sought by President Obama and the Democratic majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Already that week, Republicans prevented repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law which subjugates gays and lesbians in the military, and blocked passage of the $7.4 million Zadroga bill to compensate emergency workers who were sickened while cleaning up the World Trade Center site following the 9/11 attacks.

Under the filibuster rule, 60 votes are needed to end debate on any issue before a vote allowing a majority to pass a measure. This 60-vote act has been dubbed “a super-majority.“

In other words, a puny-minority can obstruct legislation backed by a majority of senators. That week, the filibuster rule was employed to offer tax relief to wealthy Americans.

President Obama and Senate Republicans bartered for a deal that would extend all Bush-era tax cuts, including those for couples making $250,000 yearly - in exchange for the 13-month unemployment pay extension.

Many Democrats were furious and Sanders - actually, he’s an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats - took his platform in the Senate to fight fire with fire - or, to fight filibuster with filibuster.

City are in danger of dismissing poli

At my office six blocks from


people of this country are eason.

exactly that. Americans have been striving to eliminate leaders from office for more than 220 years.

This can be used elsewhere…

Thomas Jefferson did exactly that to John Adams. Theodore Roosevelt pushed out … (who?) when he ran as a spoiler candidate. Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered a knockout punch to Herbert Hoover in 1932. And, Thomas Dewey edged out Harry Truman in 1948. Oops, I almost relied upon that Chicago Tribune headline.