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Chris Christie Rips House GOP For Blocking Sandy Relief

Congressman Laughs At Fox News' Fiscal Cliff Spin

The Fiscal Cliff Deal, By The Numbers

Justice

Thanks To Gerrymandering, Democrats Would Need To Win The Popular Vote By Over 7 Percent To Take Back The House

By Ian Millhiser posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jan 2, 2013 at 7:10 pm

America Wanted This Woman To Be Speaker of The House

As of this writing, every single state except Hawai’i has finalized its vote totals for the 2012 House elections, and Democrats currently lead Republicans by 1,362,351 votes in the overall popular vote total. Democratic House candidates earned 49.15 percent of the popular vote, while Republicans earned only 48.03 percent — meaning that the American people preferred a unified Democratic Congress over the divided Congress it actually got by more than a full percentage point. Nevertheless, thanks largely to partisan gerrymandering, Republicans have a solid House majority in the incoming 113th Congress.

A deeper dive into the vote totals reveals just how firmly gerrymandering entrenched Republican control of the House. If all House members are ranked in order from the Republican members who won by the widest margin down to the Democratic members who won by the widest margins, the 218th member on this list is Congressman-elect Robert Pittenger (R-NC). Thus, Pittenger was the “turning point” member of the incoming House. If every Republican who performed as well or worse than Pittenger had lost their race, Democrats would hold a one vote majority in the incoming House.

Pittenger won his race by more than six percentage points — 51.78 percent to 45.65 percent.

The upshot of this is that if Democrats across the country had performed six percentage points better than they actually did last November, they still would have barely missed capturing a majority in the House of Representatives. In order to take control of the House, Democrats would have needed to win the 2012 election by 7.25 percentage points. That’s significantly more than the Republican margin of victory in the 2010 GOP wave election (6.6 percent), and only slightly less than the margin of victory in the 2006 Democratic wave election (7.9 percent). If Democrats had won in 2012 by the same commanding 7.9 percent margin they achieved in 2006, they would still only have a bare 220-215 seat majority in the incoming House, assuming that these additional votes were distributed evenly throughout the country. That’s how powerful the GOP’s gerrymandered maps are; Democrats can win a Congressional election by nearly 8 points and still barely capture the House.

For two months, the nation has suffered through a “fiscal cliff” argument that threatened to plunge the nation into another recession. If the incoming Congress bore any resemblance to the one the American people voted for, however, this threat would have disappeared on Election Day because Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi would have no problem rounding up the votes to eliminate this so-called cliff and set America back on the path to economic growth.

Worse, top Republicans are already threatening to use the looming debt ceiling fight to torpedo the entire U.S. economy unless Congress agrees to slash Social Security or Medicare benefits for seniors. They will have the leverage to attempt this because the incoming House bears no resemblance to the one America actually voted for. And individual Republican House members will be able to engage in this political dangerous game of chicken comfortable in the knowledge that partisan gerrymandering makes many of them untouchable in a general election.

Partisan gerrymanders, like the one that now all but locks the GOP majority in place, have been the subject of repeated court challenges. America can thank the five conservative justices on the Supreme Court for allowing these gerrymanders to continue.

Justice

‘Armed Teacher Training Program’ Launches In 15 States

By Annie-Rose Strasser posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jan 2, 2013 at 6:20 pm

An Ohio gun owners’ group is launching an “Armed Teacher Training Program” to instruct teachers and school staff on how to shoot off firearms in the classroom.

Perhaps at the outlandish suggestion of the National Rifle Association, who last month called for armed guards in every school as a response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook elementary, such programs are popping up around the country. In Ohio, the Buckeye Firearms Foundation, along with a group called the Tactical Defense Institute, is crafting a curriculum specifically designed for teachers and school staff. A local Fox affiliate has details on who is signing up– they report that more than one third of the applicants are women, and that “more than half of the applicants work in high schools”:

As of Wednesday, the Armed Teacher Training Program has attracted more than 600 applicants from several states including Ohio, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and West Virginia.

“We knew this would be popular, but the response has exceeded out expectations,” said Jim Irvine, Chairman of the Buckeye Firearms Foundation. “People doubted if we would fill the first class. That happened in hours. This is something many in our schools have been asking about for a long time.” [...]

“No one will be forced to be armed if they choose not to. The strategy is the same as ordinary concealed carry. No one will ever know who is or is not armed. Those who seek to do harm in schools should be met with armed resistance, even before law enforcement shows up. Over time, schools will no longer be considered easy, risk-free targets.”

Arming teachers is illogical. More guns in classrooms, inevitably, will lead to accidents and unintended harm. Shootouts between teachers and gunmen is unlikely to be a net positive for students. But moreover, doesn’t get to the heart of the issue. America’s gun violence epidemic is not limited to classrooms. Gun deaths are set to outpace motor vehicle accident deaths by 2015, and the victims are diverse: Women with abusive partners, couples caught in crossfire, teens caught up in gangs, men carjacked while driving down the street, women mugged walking home through the park. The list is endless. Even in a world where arming teachers is the best solution for preventing a tragedy like Sandy Hook, it offers no hope to victims of gun violence out in the rest of society.

Alyssa

How To Change Pop Culture’s Reliance On Violence

By Alyssa Rosenberg posted from ThinkProgress Alyssa on Jan 2, 2013 at 5:28 pm

When the Motion Picture Association of America on December 20 came out in support of President Obama’s efforts on gun control in the wake of the Newtown, the organization simultaneously aligned itself with the productive side of a national conversation and set up a strategic trap that the National Rifle Association walked into the very next day. In a shocking and incoherent press conference that attempted to shift the conversation away from regulation of gun and ammunition purchasing and ownership, NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre blamed pop culture that was, in some cases, decades old, for America’s mass gun killings.

“There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and stows violence against its own people. Through vicious, violent video games with names like ‘Bullet Storm,’ ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ ‘Mortal Combat,’ and ‘Splatterhouse,’” he said. “I mean we have blood-soaked films out there, like ‘American Psycho,’ ‘Natural Born Killers.’ They’re aired like propaganda loops on Splatterdays and every single day.”

The absence of any evidence that Adam Lanza, the alleged Sandy Hook shooter, had consumed any of the cultural artifacts LaPierre brought up would have been enough to render LaPierre’s assertions ludicrous and diversionary. And that’s without taking into account in the question of what impact media consumption does and doesn’t have on the general public’s actions and social attitudes, rather than on people who are mentally ill or who might be predisposed to violence, a subject nicely and soberly summed-up by the media scholar Jason Mittell. But there’s a difference between suggesting that it makes more sense to regulate mass culture than to regulate our access to the weapons that make it possible to translate violent plans into mass killings, and talking about what it would take to shift our mass culture away from violence as a major subject and as a primary way of demonstrating competence and heroism. But the people who try to hide behind the former argument are almost uniformly uninterested in the policies and shifts in the market it would take to accomplish the latter without regulation or abridgment of freedom of speech.

1. Increase funding for public broadcasting: If you want to see more non-violent television on the airwaves, it makes more sense to treat it like an emerging product, like solar energy, that needs to be significantly subsidized until it can build the market that allows it to be self-sustaining. I imagine the NRA and other conservatives who spring to blame violent popular culture for American violence would never get behind massively expanding funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but that, rather than trying to regulate Sons of Anarchy and Game of Thrones, is probably the quickest way to make non-violent popular culture more competitive in the overall marketplace. What about funding levels that would allow PBS to start an HBO-like movie channel, buying the rights to buzzy, relevant films like Margin Call and producing features like Too Big To Fail? How about funding that would support the purchase of more British shows like Downton Abbey, letting PBS take on BBC America, or a foreign language network that would broadcast subtitled shows from Israel, like Hatufim, or Scandinavian noir shows that have become part of the competitive advantage for services like Hulu or networks like Link TV? Or simply funding that would let PBS advertise more of its programming more heavily, building the kinds of audiences that networks can with in-company ad slots? This will never, ever happen. But that it won’t shows how unserious conservative media critics are about building credible, mass-market alternatives to successful, and violent, commercial programming.
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Justice

New Obama Rule Allows Some Undocumented Spouses And Children To Remain With U.S. Family

By Nicole Flatow posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jan 2, 2013 at 4:30 pm

For undocumented immigrants, even those with a spouse or child in the United States, applying for legal residency can mean leaving the country for as long as ten years. A new rule issued Wednesday by the the Department of Homeland Security will ease the process starting March 4 for as many as 1 million of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, by allowing immigrants who can prove that time away from a parent, spouse or child will cause “extreme hardship” to return to the United States while they apply for legal status. The Los Angeles Times explains:

Once approved, applicants would be required to leave the U.S. briefly in order to return to their native country and pick up their visa. [...]

The new procedures could reduce a family’s time apart to one week in some cases, officials said. In recent years a few relatives of U.S. citizens have been killed in foreign countries while waiting for their applications to be resolved. […]

Until now, many immigrants who might seek legal status do not pursue it out of fear they will not receive a “hardship waiver” of strict U.S. immigration laws: An illegal immigrant who has overstayed a visa for more than six months is barred from reentering the U.S. for three years; those who overstay more than a year are barred for 10 years.

The move is the latest by the Obama administration to ease harsh immigration policy through the executive branch. An August initiative, which allows eligible young people to apply for temporary permits to stay in the United States, has already succeeded in temporarily blocking deportation of more than 4,500 immigrants, with some 150,000 other applications pending. Overall, however, the Obama administration has continued to set records in the total number of people deported, saying that it is obligated to continue robust deportations until Congress reforms immigration policy. Among those deported over the past two years were more than 200,000 undocumented immigrants whose children were U.S. citizens. More than 5,100 children landed in foster care as a result of parent deportations, and that number is projected to increase to 15,000 if the current rate of deportations continues. Obama has promised to introduce comprehensive immigration reform in 2013 that includes a “path to citizenship” for 11 million undocumented immigrants.

As Univision’s Ted Hesson points out, this latest rule change Obama initiative will not apply to same-sex couples so long as the Defense of Marriage Act remains in effect.

Economy

The Fiscal Cliff Deal, By The Numbers

By Pat Garofalo posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Jan 2, 2013 at 3:20 pm

Last night, the House of Representatives passed the Senate’s compromise bill to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff.” The bill, dubbed the “American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012,” raised taxes on (some of) the wealthiest Americans, while punting several other budget decisions down the road, including whether or not the so-called “sequester” spending cuts will occur. Here are some important numbers from the bill’s resolution of the fiscal cliff’s tax side:

– The first major tax increase for the wealthy in 20 years. Allowing the expiration of some of the Bush tax cuts amounts to the first major tax increase for the wealthiest Americans since the 1990s.

– The Bush tax cuts expire for just 0.7 percent of taxpayers. The expiration will occur on income in excess of $400,000 (or $450,000 for a couple). This translates into “a little over 1 million Americans” according to the Tax Policy Center. The capital gains and dividend tax will also increase to 20 percent for wealthy earners.

– The top 1 percent will pay an average of $73,633 more in taxes. Bloomberg News noted that, “among households with incomes between $500,000 and $1 million, taxes would go up by an average of $14,812.”

– 77 percent of households will see a tax hike. Due to the expiration of a cut in the payroll tax, most workers will see their taxes increase slightly in 2013. The expiration of the payroll tax cut will deal a significant blow to the economy.

– $4 trillion in deficits and $600 billion in revenue. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill will increase the deficit by around $4 trillion over the next ten years compared to a world in which all of the Bush tax cuts expired. However, it raises about $600 billion more in revenue compared to the policies that were in place in 2012.

– $2.50 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue. As Americans for Tax Fairness noted, “This bill raises $620 billion over 10 years, but $1.5 trillion in budget cuts were already enacted last year; that means for every one dollar in new taxes there have been 2.5 dollars in spending cuts to reduce the deficit.”

– Two million unemployed workers see benefits saved. Without the extension included in the fiscal cliff deal, millions of workers would have seen their federal unemployment insurance pulled out from under them.

– Estate tax giveaway costs billions. The estate tax rate will increase slightly to 40 percent this year with a $5 million exemption, but it would have gone to 55 percent with a $1 million exemption in the absence of a deal. As the Atlantic’s Matt O’Brien noted, “Only 3,730 households will pay the estate tax next year if the exemption is set at $5 million, versus 47,170 if it’s set at $1 million.”

The bill also extended provisions of the farm bill that will prevent milk prices from spiking and included an important provision to help underwater homeowners.

Economy

Chris Christie Rips House GOP For Blocking Sandy Relief: ‘Shame On You’

By Igor Volsky posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Jan 2, 2013 at 2:35 pm

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) — a rising star within the GOP — tore into the Republican-controlled House of Representatives for failing to vote on a Hurricane Sandy aid package before the end of the 112th Congress on Tuesday night. “Our people were played last night as a pawn,” Christie said, adding that residents of New Jersey and New York have been treated as second-class citizens.

Noting that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle provided relief for victims of past national disaster at a greatly expedited pace, Christie charged that Republicans put politics “before our oaths to serve our citizens.” “Last night, the House of Representatives failed that most basic test of public service and they did so with callous indifference to the suffering of the people of my state,” he said.

“There is only one group to blame for the continued suffering of these innocent victims: the House majority and their Speaker John Boehner (R-OH),” Christie declared. Historically, “disaster relief was something that you didn’t play games with, but now in this current atmosphere everything is a subject of one-upmanship,” he continued. “It is why the American people hate Congress.” Watch a portion of his remarks:

Christie said that he called Boehner four times after 11:20 PM “and he did not take my calls” or explain why he pulled a vote on the measure, which had passed the Senate earlier in a bipartisan vote. 62 Senators supported the $60 billion relief measure and a House Appropriations Committee had approved a $27 billion bill.

“Sixty-six days and counting. Shame on you, shame on Congress,” Christie said. “My hope is that the good people in Congress will prevail upon their colleagues to finally put aside the politics and help our people now.” The New Jersey governor explained that he was given assurances that some version of the relief package would come to the floor as late as 9:00 PM last night and claimed that nobody has given him a “credible reason” as to why the bill wasn’t voted on. GOP House members from New York like Reps. Peter King and Michael Grimm are also publicly questioned the reason behind Boehner’s decision.

Responding to Republican criticism that the relief bill wall full of wasteful projects, Christie explained that he and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) thoroughly substantiated the size of the package. “Those guys should spend a little more time reading the information we sent them and a little less time reading political talking points put together by their staff,” he said. Christie also left the door open to campaigning against certain House Republicans. “We’ll see,” he said. “Primaries are an ugly thing.”

In the last few years, House Republicans have embraced the practice of holding disaster relief hostage in exchange for Democratic concessions on spending cuts, but in each instance they have ultimately backed down and passed relief aid. The federal flood insurance program is expected to run out of money by the end of next week.

A spokesman for Boehner insisted in an email to Reuters that “The Speaker is committed to getting this bill passed this month,” but believed that Tuesday night “was not a good time” to vote on relief.

Update

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is telling reporters that Boehner will now allow a vote on $9 billion for flood insurance on Friday. On Jan. 15, the chamber will vote on an additional $51 billion in relief.

Update

The New York Daily News reports that Boehner “yanked the bill to provide $60 billion in emergency aid to states ravaged by Hurricane Sandy to get back at a top lieutenant who defied him over the Fiscal Cliff fix.”

Politics

Leading Conservative Religious Organization Warns That Christians Will Soon Be Treated Like Blacks In Jim Crow Era

By Scott Keyes on Jan 2, 2013 at 1:34 pm

The American Family Association, a top conservative Christian organization, emailed members today with a dire warning that, within 50 years, Christians will be treated like African Americans during the Jim Crow era.

In an email entitled “What will religion look like in the year 2060?”, the AFA warned about the coming onslaught against Christians, who currently make up over three-quarters of Americans. The group’s predictions include that Christians will be brutally discriminated against like blacks in the Civil Rights Era, government will take children from parents at birth, and any city with “Saint” or other loosely-religious name will be forced to change.

The full email:

What will religion look like in the year 2060?

Conservative Christians will be treated as second class citizens, much like African Americans were prior to civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

Family as we know it will be drastically changed with the state taking charge of the children beginning at birth.

Marriage will include two, three, four or any number of participants. Marriage will not be important, with individuals moving in and out of a “family” group at will.

Churchbuildings will be little used, with many sold to secular buyers and the money received going to the government.

Churches will not be allowed to discuss any political issues, even if it affects the church directly.

Tax credit given to churches and non-profit organizations will cease.

Christian broadcasting will be declared illegal based on the separation of church and state. The airwaves belong to the government, therefore they cannot be used for any religious purpose.

We will have, or have had, a Muslim president.

Cities with a name from the Bible such as St. Petersburg, Bethlehem, etc. will be forced to change their name due to separation of church and state.

Groups connected to any religious affiliation will be forced out of health care. Health centers get tax money from the state, making it a violation of church and state.

Get involved! Sign THE STATEMENT.

Sincerely,

Donald E. Wildmon

As absurd as they may be, these 2060 predictions may not even rank among the AFA’s most extreme ideas. The group’s spokesman has called for kidnapping the children of same-sex couples through a modern-day “Underground Railroad” system. When one man heeded this advice and aided a woman in kidnapping the daughter of a lesbian woman, the group advised him to flout American laws and flee the country. AFA also organizes against any individual or company that shows the slightest tolerance for LGBT people, including Office Depot, Urban Outfitters, Home Depot, JC Penney, and Google.

The AFA’s ideas may be fringe, but their level of support is anything but. The group remains influential among both conservative grassroots and Republican politicians. The AFA’s former leader was heavily courted in the 2012 Republican presidential primary, ultimately endorsing Newt Gingrich and helping dissuade concerns about his multiple marriages and past infidelities.

Justice

Arizona Losing Millions As A Result Of Anti-Immigration Law

By Annie-Rose Strasser posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jan 2, 2013 at 12:31 pm

Phoenix Convention Center

As President Obama starts off 2013 with a goal of enacting comprehensive immigration reform, states that have tried to pass their own laws on the issue are suffering the ill effects of a broken immigration system. The latest example? Officials in Phoenix, Arizona are having a hard time attracting new businesses to the city, and they say Arizona’s harsh immigration law is a big part of the reason why.

The Arizona Republic has a long story exploring the suffering convention center in Phoenix, and the quotes from some local politicians show serious dismay over SB 1070, the anti-immigration law that was partially struck down by the Supreme Court last year. The law gained infamy for its ‘show me your papers’ provision, which allows law enforcement to ask for proof of residency from anyone stopped for any other reason.

Phoenix officials blame the law for the slowdown in business activity:

Projected bookings for the Phoenix Convention Center are down by as much as 30 percent for the current fiscal year compared with 2009. The city projects about 184,300 convention guests, down from a high of about 275,400 in the 2009 budget year — a difference of about $132 million in direct spending, according to the city.

Meanwhile, other cities with comparable convention facilities, including San Diego, Denver, San Antonio and Salt Lake City, have experienced a different trend. In those locales, guest counts are slowly rebounding or relatively flat.[...]

“The misperception that our city does not value diversity continues to be an impediment to attracting national convention groups,” said Scott Dunn, a spokesman for the Greater Phoenix Convention and Visitors Bureau. “In some cases, the damage from what happened in 2009 or 2010 won’t wash ashore until 2013 or 2014.” [...]

Tracking losses tied to SB 1070 is difficult. But convention and tourism officials say it has been a frequent issue in discussions with prospective convention groups, including several that have said they will not consider Arizona because of the law.

In 2010, right after Arizona’s immigration law passed, the Center for American Progress estimated the economic losses, brought on by companies abandoning the conference industry in Arizona in the wake of SB 1070, would be $141 million for the first few months alone. It also estimated that, “Arizona businesses will lose $76 million in direct revenue from decisions not to book in Arizona in the future.” These estimates are proving true.

Other factors are influence business at the Phoenix convention center, but the losses at the Phoenix convention center just add more evidence to the argument that harsh immigration laws are, simply, bad economics.

Justice

Study: Rick Scott’s Long Voting Lines Cost Obama A Net 11,000 Votes In Central Florida

By Ian Millhiser posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jan 2, 2013 at 11:23 am

Credit: Joe Skipper/Reuters

Credit: Joe Skipper/Reuters

Thanks in large part to a law signed by Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), which cut early voting opportunities in that state, many Florida voters endured six hour lines simply to cast a ballot. These lines did not wind up costing Obama Florida’s electoral votes, but, according to an Ohio State University study, they reduced the president’s margin of victory by thousands of votes in central Florida alone:

[A]s many as 49,000 people across Central Florida were discouraged from voting because of long lines on Election Day, according to a researcher at Ohio State University who analyzed election data compiled by the Orlando Sentinel.

About 30,000 of those discouraged voters — most of them in Orange and Osceola counties — likely would have backed Democratic President Barack Obama, according to Theodore Allen, an associate professor of industrial engineering at OSU.

About 19,000 voters would have likely backed Republican Mitt Romney, Allen said.

This suggests that Obama’s margin over Romney in Florida could have been roughly 11,000 votes higher than it was, based just on Central Florida results. Obama carried the state by 74,309 votes out of more than 8.4 million cast.

In the wake of the long lines triggered in the wake of Scott’s law, several top Republicans admitted the entire purpose of this legislation was to keep Democrats from the polls. Indeed, one GOP consultant explained that “cutting out of the Sunday before Election Day [from early voting] was one of their targets only because that’s a big day when the black churches organize themselves.” African-American voters overwhelmingly favored Obama last November.

Politics

GOP Rep. Says Boehner ‘Put A Knife In The Back Of New Yorkers’ By Blocking Vote On Sandy Relief

By Josh Israel on Jan 2, 2013 at 10:20 am

Rep. Peter King (R-NY)

Rep. Peter King (R-NY)

A furious Rep. Peter King (R-NY) took aim at his own party in a Fox News interview Wednesday, a day after House GOP leaders broke their promise to hold a vote on a Hurricane Sandy relief bill. King said the decision by the House Republican leadership to scrap a planned vote on a multi- billion aid package amounted to a “knife in the back” of those hit hardest by the bill. The Senate had approved a $60.4 billion aid bill last Friday, but the House move appeared to scuttle any chance of a bill before the new Congress begins Thursday.

King said that after the move, he feels no obligation to vote with his leadership and suggested that East Coast residents who contribute to the GOP are insane. King complained that Speaker John Boehner reneged on his promise to hold a vote on the package, without explanation:

In his explanation of the events of Tuesday night, he noted that Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) offered no explanation for the broken promise:

KING: No one even told us, the Speaker walked off the floor, told an aide to the Majority Leader that the Congress was finished. There were no votes and they come back and told us. Listen, I’m not taking this as personal offense. I’m talking about the thousands of people in my district, hundreds of thousands of people throughout the New York-New Jersey area. Within 10 days after Katrina, $60 billion was appropriated. Nine weeks after Sandy, not one penny has been appropriated. And let me just make this one point. These Republicans have no problem finding New York when they’re out raising millions of dollars. They’re in New York all the time filling pockets with money from New Yorkers. I’m saying anyone from New York and New Jersey who contributes one penny to Congressional Republicans is out of their mind. Because what they did last night was put a knife in the back of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans, it was an absolute disgrace. …

Why the Republican party has bias against New York, this bias against New Jersey, this bias against the Northeast. They wonder why they’re becoming minority party. Why we’ll be party of the permanent minority. What they did last night was so immoral, so disgraceful, so irresponsible. They’re supposed to be the party of family values. And you have families that are starving, families that are suffering, families that are spread all over living in substandard housing. This was a disgrace. They are inexcusable. And they have had it. As far as I’m concerned I’m on my own. They’re going to have to go a long way to get my vote on anything.

Watch the interview:

King noted that while national Republicans were all-too-happy to put Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) out as a surrogate during the 2012 campaign, with this move they “knifed him in the back.”

In a separate interview on CNN, he added that Boehner refused to meet with him and yelled at Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), “I’m not going to meet with you people.”

A fellow New York Republican, Rep. Michael Grimm, echoed King’s remarks, calling the leadership’s move a “personal betrayal,” and noting that “the people of this country that have been devastated are looking at this as a betrayal by the Congress and by the nation, and that is just untenable and unforgivable.”

Update

In a joint statement, Christie and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) blasted the “dereliction of duty” by the House Republican leadership, writing “inaction and indifference by the House of Representatives is inexcusable. When American citizens are in need we come to their aid. That tradition was abandoned in the House last night.” In a his own statement, President Barack Obama urged Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) to “bring this important request to a vote today, and pass it without delay for our fellow Americans.”


Update

After King repeated his criticism of the GOP leadership in a House floor speech, a Boehner spokesman told Politico that the Speaker will meet with Republican Republican members of the New York and New Jersey delegations on Wednesday afternoon and that “the Speaker is committed to getting this bill passed this month.”

Politics

GOP State Senator: Kwanzaa Is A Leftist Plot ‘To Destroy’ America

By Aviva Shen on Jan 2, 2013 at 9:21 am

While outrage about the so-called war on Christmas has died down for another year, Wisconsin state Senator Glenn Grothman (R) has launched a new war on Kwanzaa, claiming it is a fake holiday invented by racist radicals who want to “divide America.”

In a press release entitled “Why Must We Still Hear About Kwanzaa,” Grothman ranted that Kwanzaa is a holiday celebrated by “left wing nuts” because “they don’t like America and seek to destroy it.” Grothman is comforted by his belief that “almost all black people ignore” Kwanzaa, but is deeply troubled by the fact that schools are teaching the holiday:

Irresponsible public school districts such as Green Bay and Madison (and who knows how many others…) try to tell a new generation that blacks have a separate holiday than Christians…But why do they do it? They don’t like America and seek to destroy it by pretending that its values as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, don’t apply to everyone. Mainstream Americans must be more outspoken on this issue. It’s time it’s slapped down once and for all…Be on the lookout if a K-12 or college teacher tries to tell your children or grandchildren it’s a real holiday.

Kwanzaa, which occurs from December 26 to January 1, was created in 1966 as a way for African Americans to connect to their heritage and culture. It has been widely accepted as a legitimate holiday. While Grothman believes the holiday divides America, Kwanzaa centers around the seven principles of unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith. Its founder, Ron Karenga, whom Grothman calls a “violent nut,” explained, “People may celebrate either or all of the year-end holidays” as Kwanzaa is a cultural holiday focusing on sharing a “special cultural truth” with the world. Former President George W. Bush praised the holiday as “an opportunity to focus of family, community, and history.”

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Economy

Democratic Congressman Laughs At Fox News’ Fiscal Cliff Misinformation

By Igor Volsky posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Jan 2, 2013 at 8:24 am

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) schooled the hosts of Fox & Friends on the details of the deal to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff” during an appearance to explain his opposition to the Senate-passed compromise on Wednesday morning. Smith also laughed off the network’s suggestion that President Obama has not offered specific spending cuts.

Smith said he voted against the “American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012” because the measure locked in low revenue levels that could necessitate dramatic spending cuts in the future. The Fox News hosts appeared incredulous, however, arguing that Obama failed to put any spending cuts on the table or show leadership on entitlement reform. Once Smith pointed to Obama’s proposal to change the growth of Social Security benefits, co-host Steve Doocy quickly dismissed the plan as a “nonstarter.” The Congressman laughed at the network’s attempt to criticize Obama and then debunked its claim that the GOP offered more specific spending reductions than the president:

DOOCY: Congressman, it’s great that you’re worried about spending and taxes, but you know, there are a lot of people who are watching this and they see the president and he really took no leadership when it comes to cutting spending with the budget and with this latest crisis, so it seems like….

SMITH: I don’t actually agree with that. The president put on the table cuts to entitlements. He put on the table the chained CPI issue, among other issues.

DOOCY: Wait, but that was a nonstarter for a lot of people in your party.

SMITH: [Laughs] Here is the thing, I mean you can say, ‘well, he’s not showing leadership.’ But now what you’re saying is he showed leadership, but nobody else was willing to. So it’s really hard to blame the president … As long as we’re talking about the president, let me also make the point, Speaker Boehner, the Republicans, what have they put on the table in terms of specific spending?

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Look at the Ryan plan. Look at the budget they passed.

SMITH: No. A budget is not an appropriations bill, Brian. The budget said across the board, we will cut 10%. We’re not going to tell you what, we’re not going to tell you where. We’re just going to imagine that it’s going to happen. In terms of specific spending cuts, the president had actually put more on the table during this last negotiation than the so-called fiscal conservatives leading the House.

KILMEADE: Really? Because I don’t know anything that he wanted to cut besides defense.

SMITH: I just told you! I just told you!

Watch it:

“I’m concerned that revenue has been sort of taken off the table at this point,” Smith said. Ninety-percent “of the Bush tax cuts are now locked in permanently, so any effort to deal with the very large debt and deficit that we have going down the road here revenue is pretty much off the table and we didn’t get much. Those are my concerns and that’s why I voted no.”

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