AZ Congressional Delegation

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Washington Post reported on Saturday, White House finds unlikely alliance in business community:

President Obama, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and senior adviser Valerie
Jarrett spoke to nearly 150 business executives on a conference call
Friday with an update on their efforts to avoid a default, according to a
White House summary of the call.

When the call ended, Jarrett entered the Roosevelt Room of the White
House to meet with lobbyists for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the
National Association of Manufacturers, the Financial Services Roundtable
and other business groups representing aerospace and technology
companies. During the meeting, Jarrett and Brian Deese, deputy director
of the Office of Management and Budget, asked the business groups to
encourage their member companies to communicate with lawmakers on the
urgency of finding a negotiated solution[.]

* * *

[T]he U.S. Chamber is doing research on key states where it can battle
back against tea party candidates willing to use the country’s debt
repayments as a bargaining chip.

“I do think we need to act. We
need to combine and concentrate our efforts to succeed,” said Bruce
Josten, the U.S. Chamber’s executive vice president for government
affairs, noting the interest he and others have in exploring primary
challenges of tea party candidates. “But the equation is complicated and
requires very good information.”

by David Safier

There's what happens and what the media says happens. Sometimes they're pretty close to the same, other times, not so much. The most important thing to watch in the reporting of the shutdown isn't the purely factual reporting. That's reasonably straightforward. It's whether coverage follows the false equivalency viewpoint — a pox on all their houses for the shutdown, no matter who bears the brunt of the blame — or points out that the Republican party, led by its far right wing, has created the messwe're in.

My verdict based on coverage I'm seeing in the Star and a few other papers: false equivalency is still rearing its ugly head, but lots of the commentary, especially editorials, is getting it right.

The AP story the Star put on its front page is pure false equivalency. It actually lets the Republicans draw first blood, saying in the second paragraph, "Republicans said it was [Obama's] fault, not theirs, and embarked on a strategy — opposed by Democrats — of voting on bills to reopen individual agencies or programs."

But then you turn to the editorial, which tells the story correctly.

[T]here are times, as we have reached now, when a small number of elected officials — this time a fundamentalist subset of the Republican Party — can monkey-wrench the legislative process and hold the country hostage to their unreasonable demands.

The bottom line, to our mind, is one of practicality: One cannot reason with bullies. Any attempt to do so presupposes a position of good faith that we have yet to see in the tea-party Republicans who are putting their beliefs and political aspirations above the law of the land.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

A new
CNN poll finds Congress’ approval rating is now all of … 10
percent. Perhaps the reason is things like this:

I received an end of third quarter fund raising email captioned "On The Brink" from Congressman Ron Barber this morning (after the midnight September 30 deadline) in which the congressman's pitch to contribute to his campaign read as follows:

That's what the Tea Party extremists who are threatening to shut down our government have on their agenda—targeting me for defeat because I won’t give in to their
demands.

If you are as outraged as I am with these extremists and their irresponsible political games that threaten our economic recovery then please stand with me now.

This poorly timed fund raising email came after Congressman Barber voted last night — twice! — to stand with the "Tea Party extremists who are threatening to shut down our government have on their agenda." "I won't give in to their demands"? You most certainly did, congressman. Imagine the choice language I used when I opened your email.

In an act of political cowardice, you voted for the second attempt by the Tea-Publican economic terrorists yesterday to delay the individual mandate of "ObamaCare" for a year — so that the GOP can run on "repeal ObamaCare" for the third election in a row — which also included a GOP spending plan that would cut support for victims of domestic violence:

Republican members of the House tossed
in an amendment to the spending bill that would not only delay
implementation of the new health law known as Obamacare but also allow
certain employers and insurers to opt out of specific provisions of the law based on moral or religious grounds.

Specifically, the continuing resolution says:

“Section
2713(a)(4) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 300gg-13(a)(4))
shall not be effective for any period before January 1, 2015, with
respect to the requirement for specific coverage for any sponsor of a
group health plan (or, in the case of student health plans, the
institution of higher education offering such plans), health insurance
issuer, or individual opposing such requirement for coverage based on
religious or moral objections.