Here at Jack’s blog, we’re going to take a couple of days off to enjoy the holiday with family and friends.
We would like to take this opportunity to wish you and yours a safe and happy holiday!
�
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had a bad week at the polls last week with moderates, worried that Ahmadinejad is pushing the country more and more towards isolation, making gains while Ahmadinejad’s allies lost ground. As Ahmadinejad continues his tirades against President Bush, it seems his fellow countrymen want him to concentrate on more domestic issues.
And President Bush, for one, is encouraged by the moderate’s gains.
�
Republican Congressman Paul Gillmor of Ohio has just joined a growing coalition of Members of Congress: A “Blawger” (as termed by National Journal’s Danny Glover).
I like this blog, and in many ways, it’s a model of what a blog needs to look like for a Member of Congress. It’s clean, easy to find from his homepage, looks to be “real,” offers easy navigation back to his homepage, has categories to help folks find the posts they’re interested in, and seems to have a comments option to let the community jump in to the discussion.
The guys over at the TechWeb Blog are taking notice of the Roll Call story on Congressman Gillmor’s blog and say that a blog “will probably turn into a key constituent-relations tool.”
We couldn’t agree more. Welcome to the Revolution Congressman Gillmor.
Now THIS is funny.
Unfortunately when it comes to full accountability on earmarks, the answer is no. Today’s Washington Post has an article on the millions of dollars in “tariff earmarks” that were buried in bills Congress passed last year.
Early Saturday morning, in the frantic final hours of the 109th Congress, lawmakers rolled 520 tariff suspensions into the must-pass bill. The provisions will reduce or eliminate taxes on imported products as varied as shoes, camcorders and boiled oysters.
While such suspensions have been around for decades, the flurry of provisions pushed this Congress to a record of nearly 800 for the year. Corporate lobbyists often craft such suspensions to apply to just one product imported by just one company. Many of those companies and their executives have given millions of dollars to political campaigns.
This week, leaders from both parties called for changes in the system.
As Jack says, “this is good old fashion pork.” For some background on this topic you can check out a previous post from September. And as we continue to work for full accountability, we must shine a light on ALL earmarks no matter what form they take.
As reported by CNN.com, “Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, serving life in prison in connection with the first World Trade Center attack, has fallen ill and the FBI is warning his death could lead to terror attacks against the United States.”
Open for your thoughts and a discussion: transparency.
Take a minute and read this New York Times editorial and then weigh in with your thoughts.
For all the worthy proposals for ethics reform being hashed out by the incoming Congress, a heavy dose of Internet transparency should not be overlooked in the effort to repair lawmakers’ tattered credibility. The technology is already there, along with the public’s appetite for more disclosure about the byways of power in Congress.
The Web is increasingly wielded by both campaign donors and bloggers clicking and tapping as wannabe muckrakers. Politicians would be wise to catch up. Local citizens were enlisted to track pork-barrel abuses in the last campaign by a new watchdog organization, the Sunlight Foundation, which enlisted Ms. Gillibrand’s disclosure pledge. It aims to have voters use the Internet as an engine of political information.
The liberals in hollywood the mainstream media just can’t control themselves.
Thanks to the good folks at the Media Research Center for pointing out that Barbara Walters has named Nancy Pelosi as the “most fascinating” person of 2006.
Walters celebrated Pelosi’s victory: “We picked our most fascinating person on election day this past November. Next month, Congress will get a Speaker of the House unlike any before. Our most fascinating person of 2006: Mother of five and Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi. In January, Nancy Pelosi will become the most powerful woman in America. She will assume office as the first-ever female Speaker of the House, two heartbeats from the presidency.” Walters soon pleaded to Pelosi: “You’ve talked about sometimes using your mother-of-five voice. Now I sit here, and you’re very gentle. Talk to me in the mother-of-five voice.” She also asked Pelosi to confirm that she thinks President Bush is “incompetent and irresponsible and not a leader?”
How many more fluff pieces must we endure?
Shhhhh…don’t let the Democrats know that we’re making some progress in “their” modern media. Check out the applause Kingston gets from the ColbertNation when he’s introduced as a “friend of the show.”
Share and embed this video via YouTube.
UPDATE (Dec. 14, 11:49 PM) Ivy Sellers picked it up at Human Events.
Over the last week there has been a lot of talk about “how long Congress works” and “how many days we will spend in Washington” next year. You might have heard what some news organizations think I said about this, but I wanted you to hear it from me.
This debate is less about how many days Congress works and more about where our focus should be and what issues we should be working on. I don’t know any Congressman, Democrat or Republican, who does not work 60 hours and six days a week at a minimum. That hard work will continue.
But I am very concerned that keeping Congress in Washington five days a week, 52 weeks a year, will widen the gulf between what Congress is interested in and what our constituents want us to work on. When Congress spends too much time in Washington, members get “Potomac Fever,” and the legislation we consider is conceived in the beltway and serves the beltway special interests. I think that is wrong.
For example, I believe the answers on education are best found by talking to teachers and parents, not Department of Education bureaucrats. If I need information about farm policy I know I will get better information by getting my shoes dirty visiting a working farm rather than waiting for special interest lobbyists to bring information to my office.
I hope you will read and discuss the letter I sent to the editor of the Savannah Morning News which I’ve posted on my blog ( http://kingston.house.gov/blog/?p=620). You can be sure that no matter how many days we spend in Washington, I will continue to work hard each and every day for limited government, fiscal discipline, strong national security and traditional American values.
Let me know what you think. I look forward to hearing from you!
Sincerely,
Jack
Click the “Read the rest of this entry” button to read the full text of Jack’s letter to the editor of the Savannah Morning News regarding the five-day work week.
The folks over at PeachPundit picked up on Jack’s letter-to-the-editor running in today’s Savannah Morning News regarding the five-day Washington work week.
We would link to the SMN directly but then you’d have to fill out a survey (which for some reason newspapers think we want to do).
That’s the question The Hill newspaper sought to answer (for some reason). A number of Members of Congress answered the question including Jack:
Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.): I’d say on any given day clearly half the members think about doing something else and the other half are lying about it. If I was back home selling shoes, I wouldn’t have the delight of dealing with the fair and balanced members of the press.
Our favorite answer has to be from incoming Republican Policy Chairman Thad McCotter of Michigan:
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.): Put it this way: Being a member of Congress is like a Jim Morrison line: The future is always uncertain and the end is always near.
If you’ve watched and read the liberal MSM over the past week, you’d notice that they’re calling Congress the “do-nothing Congress,” and leaving the impression that the only work worth doing is legislating in Washington, DC.
So we did a little research on whether “days in Washington” could compare to “number of bills passed” by the U.S. House. The results are pretty interesting:
109th Congress
2006 = 739 bills
2005 = 718 bills
108th Congress
2004 =748 bills
2003 = 673 bills
107th Congress
2002 = 623
2001 = 592
And the last time the Democrats were in power:
103rd Congress
1994 = 580 bills
1993 = 555 bills
So, it kinda looks to me like the 109th Congress did quite a bit. It just wasn’t working on passing the liberal agenda like raising the minimum wage and rolling back the tax cuts on middle-class Americans.