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Our newly elected (Democrat) Congressmembers have been making us proud lately with their thorough, intelligent, principled calling out of the malefactors of great wealth and power. For example, here is district 48’s Harley Rouda yesterday at the Michael Cohen hearings. Doesn’t it make you wish we still had Dana Rohrabacher representing us? NOT
The 45th district’s Katie Porter‘s masterful questioning of the CEO of Equifax over privacy concerns caused MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell to call her “a rising star” of “the most impressive freshman class of Congress members that I for one have ever seen.” And here he explains why…
I don’t have a video of Gil Cisneros, but I did recently get this e-mail from him:
REP. GIL CISNEROS DEMANDS STRATEGY FOR
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE MISSION ON SOUTHERN BORDER
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Gilbert R. Cisneros Jr. (CA-39) joined Anthony Brown (MD-04), Vice Chair of the House Armed Services Committee, and 11 of his colleagues in sending a letter to Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan demanding a strategy and justification for the active duty servicemember deployments to the border, as well as the use of Department of Defense (DOD) resources to build the wall through the President’s use of a national emergency declaration.
In the letter, Rep. Cisneros and the Members note that, over the past 18 years, “no administration – Republican or Democratic – has found it necessary to deploy active duty personnel to secure our borders.” The Members also assert that, “troop deployment levels appear to have been chosen not based on an assessment of an actual threat, but instead based on the status of negotiations for a border wall,” arguing, “this haphazard use of active duty military personnel leaves one guessing what the true motives behind this deployment are, and what mission our men and women in uniform are actually being asked to perform.” This assertion rings particularly true in the wake of reports that the President is sending another 1,000 troops to the border after declaring a national emergency, bringing the number of DOD personnel on the border to about 6,000, with no clear objective or long-term strategy.
The Members of Congress also state that the President is declaring a national emergency, despite ample evidence that, “there is clearly no national emergency on the southern border,” citing Congressional testimony and apprehension data from the past 25 years. They also point to recent reporting that even senior officials in the Department of Defense believe the deployment is, “an expensive waste of time and resources.”
The full text of the letter is here,
We did good electing these three. If I run into anything decent from Mike Levin I’ll add it on here.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.thecoastnews.com/rep-mike-levin-task-force-to-address-san-onofre-safety-challenges/&ved=2ahUKEwjGkvWnud_gAhWTJzQIHQtEBDcQFjAIegQIBRAB&usg=AOvVaw2jN0mP-AEkdbQdz95DQ_Ym&cshid=1551392064855
Wonder if the Building Trades will go after him.
*We couldn’t be more pleased with all the newly elected Dem’s….and their abilities….at this point. The Harley interview of Cohen was awesome. We love that Katie Hill too. She really has her stuff together. Katie Porter and Mike Levin are also doing “the business” and we couldn’t be happier with their efforts to get things right. “Take Back America!”
What is most impressive: Accessibility. They send out fund raisers, but send out info
to change stuff too! Guess The Republicants never thought of that idea, without adding
gross invective and/or rabid dog tactics.
I do hope the Republican Party eventually comes back as a more humane and honest fiscally conservative party, leaving all the haters partiless. I don’t want to live in Mexico under the PRI.
“More humane”??? I know what you mean, although it is hard to accept that some of the current GOP policies have been humane.
The article linked below reflects well the values of our good conservative friends, and some of its lessons may apply to us as well.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/i-left-gop-because-trump/581965/
BTW, OC before the blue wave felt like living with a PRI.
*Answer? ZERO Tolerance folks! They are not doing anything with Homelessness, Immigration, Healthcare or the Price of Prescription Drugs.
They won’t bite the bullet and ask for Mandatory Drug Testing for all New Firearm Purchase or Transfers. So, what might the Republicants offer us right now? Just wondering!
“They won’t bite the bullet and ask for Mandatory Drug Testing for all New Firearm Purchase or Transfers.”
Gun control is odd: one side is masterful at controlling the discourse, and has been ever since the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban (itself a major factor in the Gingrich Red Wave). Feinstein & friends were arguing that letting it expire ensured that assault weapons would be used by terrorists in America, not to mention our own crazies (presaging both the San Bernardino and Vegas attacks). The other side used gun control activism to flip it (take ‘Bowling for Columbine’ – and publicly fixate on the fact that the ban didn’t prevent that atrocity…distracting from the whole point that the AWB was about reducing the frequency of that sort of attack).
For ‘mandatory drug testing,’ remember, Obama wanted to insert a term where a person who self-identified as too mentally impaired to work (for SSI and other benefit purposes) would be flagged during a background check: Republicans killed that by presenting it as ‘big govt administrators taking your rights away.’ The right ate that up and turned out. The left? Bogged down into how mean Hillary was to Bernie.
*This all goes back to our key issue: Mandatory Drug Testing for all
NEW Firearm Purchases and Transfers, utilizing TSA Glove Swab instant check technology for Class II Drugs and above. Any FFL Dealer could use the system and report the findings on the Application. It will not get all of the crazies, by any imagination, but what it will do is to easily disqualify the really bad ones. If these folks have Mental Disabilities or any Domestic Abuse issues over the prior 18 months….those also should be reported. The idea is not to put people on a data base, but to simply put a chill on outright abuses of the system. Don’t forget the TSA Glove Swab Technology is currently used of Flight Crews, NTSB Rail, Bus and Trucking…..as well as certain Public Safety Officers. Of course, there are still those that think they will never ban smoking on Commercial Aircraft…so, just a thought if you have a relative that comes back from Syria with a severe case of PTSD. All these findings should be quasi-procedural and simply verifiable per regulation. The new testing could be done simply by taking the thumbprint of the applicant at the same time! Watch them clean the surface, then put your thumb on the machine – take the test, and print your thumb all at the same time. Teachers have to pay $45 bucks a year to be sure they are not on the Child Molester list…add the Drug
Test….throw it in for free!
rw
Cisneros has done a fair bit on reversing the Trump anti-transgender story as well…and I think every Dem has already had town halls and public meetings – unlike their Republican predecessors for the most part.
I think everyone knows that 2018-2020 is about preparing the stage for ’20 elections. That’s doubtless why the rightwing media is sponsoring anything to do with AOC (and now Bernie): they know Trump is vulnerable, but are confident that the AOC/Bernie story will position them well in PA, FL, OH, etc., showing Dems as extremists, when in fact, the OC Congressional brigade is mostly demanding oversight, accountability, good governance, and a modicum of fairness rather than race-gay baiting.