September 30, 2006
The Many Follies of the House Republicans
The latest scandal to emerge from the House of Rep. Republicans, is quite a scandal. I have been debating posting about it, because it seems a bit too sensational, scandalous, and seedy. However, as I was reading the National Journal's write-up on the "Foley Follies" as they call it, something jumped out at me:
Is it really the regular practice of the House GOP leadership staff to keep the Speaker out of the loop when it comes to questionable conduct by Members?Hastert is notoriously slow when encouraging a wounded member of his party to get going. From Tom DeLay to Bob Ney, Hastert never seems willing to push members into what needs to be done. Now, in all three recent cases (DeLay, Ney and Foley), the member eventually did the right thing -- but at a politically painful pace.
This is a pretty good point. With all three cases, all three men did eventually resign, but not until there seemed little else to do. Unfortunately for them, these situations all happened during an election cycle, after primaries. Which has made three congressional races quite interesting. In Foley's case, his name cannot be removed from the ballot. His seat up until Thursday was a safe seat. Now especially, it seems that it will be a needless loss of a seat for the Republicans. While I don't see this particular incident carrying over into other races nation-wide, the overall sense of internal republican congressional problems won't be diminishing anytime soon. In all honesty, I hope this is the last of these scandals or investigations for a while. It would be nice for Congress to focus on legislation instead of continually having to put out these fires.
If you are interested in understanding exactly what happened to Foley, read about it at ABC News, the news group to break the story. If you want a less sensationalist article read the Time's article. It's interesting to see the amount of evidence that has surfaced since the story first broke out. This evidence is most likely why Foley resigned so quickly, since the initial charge was only that Foley was "overly friendly". That will be the most that will state about that situation.
Posted by ear14 at 09:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 01, 2006
Minimum Wage & The US Congress
NPR has a nice rundown about the minimum wage legislation, its estate-tax cut add-on, and the history behind it. So if you have any questions on the federal minimum wage read it. Those who don't know, I believe Ohio's in-state minimum wage is still lower than federal levels, unless things change in the fall (hint, hint - go out and vote).
check out the NPR story here
Meanwhile, the Plain Dealer Blog pointed out that both Brown & Strickland voted against party lines, FOR the minimum wage legislation. Many Democrats were voting against it because of the Estate Tax language. However, both Strickland & Brown cited the need to raise minimum wage and the upcoming focus on said issue in November as a reason for backing it.
read more at the Plain Dealer
Posted by ear14 at 02:27 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack