If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The only thing that scares politicians more than losing votes because of the sequester is actually doing some work to avoid losing those votes.
Regardless of region, age, party affiliation, or gender, Latino voters believe that balancing the federal budget should not come at the expense of families and children. If that is the case, then the sequester must go.
The attention span in Washington, D.C. these days is remarkably short, and multi-tasking is something at which Congress seems particularly inept. So right now the focus there is overwhelming on just one thing: scandals, while the real business of the American people goes largely unexamined.
From what I've seen, most homeless people aren't like everyone else because most of them care when everyone else gave up on them and they have learned to survive and even overcome situations others can't even imagine but for those who cling to their judgmental views, think before you speak.
A time-honored tactic of conservative lawmakers is to "starve the beast"by defunding government programs. In the case of food stamps--the quintessent...
We have to learn to set aside our pet issues like gun control and abortion, which are only used by the media and the politicians to keep people divided.
On the face of it, the Tea Party seems autonomous and even a thorn in the side of the GOP. But that façade masks the real truth about the Tea Party, which is that ultimately it is less a political organization than a contract killer working for the Republicans.
Within the first quarter of his final term, Barack Obama has chalked up two frustrating defeats: the sting of across the board budget cuts, followed by the bite of failed gun sales reform. And, now the specter of a triple faced scandal threatens to engulf his presidency.
It is most unfortunate that it takes a severe crisis to get anything done on Capitol Hill, but we fear that a new one will be required to effect material change.
It's as if the entire economic recovery is going into the pockets of the rich. And that's no accident. Here's why.
Even a minimal "vision" of an America that can still accomplish something would appear to be far more uplifting than the austerity snake oil the current crop of Republican politicians keep pushing.
Why does one governmental agency have 13 different cell phone plans for which it pays varied prices that are higher than commercially available rates? The one take away is that the government clearly is not leveraging its buying power and, as a result, is wasting taxpayer dollars.
Anyone despairing that Congress can't get anything done should note last week's swift vote to get furloughed air traffic controllers back to work. Congress can move very quickly and efficiently when it wants to and when their own comfort and that of constituents well-off enough to fly was affected. Reduced unemployment benefits, children dropped suddenly from Head Start programs, poor mothers and babies losing food supplements, teacher layoffs, and cancelled meal deliveries for seniors didn't move them -- but airport delays as members headed out of town for their April recess were apparently unacceptable.
The sequester is going to be painful but the pain that we will suffer from the type of severe spending cuts that Republicans want will be much worse, and the long-term damage to our economy extreme.
The preposterous legislative sideshow taking place around sequestration gives a pretty clear picture of how little the people who were elected to run the government actually know about it.
When a Laney Walker supermarket closed in Georgia, the store had arranged for a local church to pick up all of the store's food to give to the poor. But when the church never came by, the food was unloaded into the parking lot where hungry people gathered to take it back home to their families.
