New York Assembly Majority Leader Joe Morelle Is Running To Replace Louise Slaughter

NY-25 is completely within Monroe County. It includes Rochester, the Rochester suburbs and the towns of Penfield, Henrietta, Brighton, Brockport, Greece and Irondequot. The PVI is D+8. Obama won the district by around 20 points both times he ran and Hillary beat Trumpanzee 55.5% to 39,1%, Trump's second worst performance, by one point, in upstate New York. Louise Slaughter had represented the district for 3 decades when she died last week.

The immediate frontrunner for the seat is the majority leader of the state Assembly, Joe Morelle, who officially announced his campaign yesterday. It looks like he'll be in a primary contest with Brighton Town Board Member Robin Wilt, Rochester School Board President Van White, former TV reporter Rachel Barnhart and Rochester businessman Andrew Gilchrist. Candidates have until April 12 to get 1,250 signatures from party members.

When Morelle announced Monday morning at the Plumbers and Pipefitters Meeting Hall, he said "I'm a progressive Democrat," which is borne out by his record. "I care about working men and women. I care about healthcare, making it affordable and accessible for everyone. Those are the kinds of things I've always believed in and I'm willing to go out and talk to people."

Governor Andrew Cuomo has to call a special election to fill the remainder of Slaughter's term, although he can set the special election for the same day as the November general election. The New York primary is June 26. Morelle can proudly step forward with an "F" rating from the NRA and an "A" rating from the AFL-CIO. Neurosurgeon Jim Maxwell is the only Republican in the race.

Ba-a-ad Republcans! Ba-a-ad Republcans!

"Not since my children were 3 or 4 years old," says NY Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter, "have I seen such obstinate inability to accept the facts."

by Ken

The Republican shutter-downers think they can hornswoggle American into believing that they're just trying to get a fair hearing from those Kremlin-red Democrats, including the president, for their noble ideas. Of course, they have no noble ideas, and there's a reason why they can't get a fair hearing. They're the ravings of lunatics and thugs. But I think they may do well persuading fact-deprived and reality-challenged Americans, who are likely to take the "plague on both their houses" approach.

Except in this case we know where the plague is.

The right-wing devils love, of course, to play the tune sounded by, for example, the Dunce of Georgia, Rep. Jack Kingston, about how that hyperpartisan President Obama "is proudly negotiating with the Iranians" but "will not negotiate with the Republicans." It never occurs to these buttwipes that they themselves are, quite properly, the butt of their imagined cleverness. Yes, by comparison with the House Republicans, the Iranians whom reasonable people can talk to.

"On the second day of the shutdown," Dana Milbank writes in his Washington Post column today ("Republicans are going to need a bigger lifeboat"), "House Republicans continued what might be called the lifeboat strategy: deciding which government functions are worth saving."

In: veterans, the troops and tourist attractions. Out: poor children, pregnant women and just about every government function that regulates business or requires people to pay taxes.

The lifeboat strategy was the brainchild of Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), the freshman who has become the de facto leader of congressional Republicans in the shutdown. On Tuesday, GOP House members introduced bills that would exempt three entities: the national parks, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the District of Columbia. On Wednesday, they added the National Institutes of Health and pay for National Guard members and military reservists.

And then there's all the stuff ruled ineligible for the lifeboats, which includes:

market regulation, chemical spill investigations, antitrust enforcement, worksite immigration checks, workplace safety inspections, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Internal Revenue Service's audit capabilities, communications and trade regulation, nutrition for 9 million children and pregnant women, flu monitoring and other functions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and housing rental assistance for the poor.

It's not hard to figure out the "strategy" at work here.

The pattern, it seems, is that House Republicans propose to rescue the most visible casualties of the shutdown, such as the national parks and trash collection in the capital. Efforts to help veterans, active-duty troops and reservists are popular but largely unnecessary because most of them were unaffected by the shutdown. The NIH's work isn't always visible, but the agency has powerful supporters who want research on their pet causes.

Perhaps more revealing were those who haven't earned a place in the conservatives' lifeboat: entities that check the power of industry and entities that protect workers and the poor. They may be the most hurt by a government shutdown, but they don't have a place in the conservative utopia as defined by the lifeboat strategy.

Dana quotes NY Rep. Louise Slaughter, the ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee: "Not since my children were 3 or 4 years old have I seen such obstinate inability to accept the facts." That sounds about right.

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Southern Man... Don't Forget What Your Good Book Says

My sister didn't move far from where we grew up. She and her family live in Manhattan Beach, a very narrow spit of land in Brooklyn between Sheepshead Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. She's been in Florida since right after SuperStorm Sandy inundated her home. Her husband and two kids have moved into hotels while they renovated the house and my brother-in-law's business, also wiped out by the storm. Manhattan Beach was almpst completely devastated by the storm. My sister's refrigerator was last seen floating down the street towards Sheepshead Bay and her car drowned too. Her insurance company has already replaced the car but, like most of her neighbors, she had no flood insurance and FEMA... well, this is the longest time in history that natural disaster victims have been made to twist in the wind waiting for assistance. Rotten reactionaries from the South, who are calling aid "pork," are getting even with the North for freeing the slaves and disrupting their unique way of life down there-- and they're as worked up into a blood lust today as the Tuaregs in Mali are and for the exact same reasons.

Last night the Southern sociopaths who control the House Republican Caucus tried again to prevent federal aid from reaching the survivors of Sandy, primarily in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The setting was a Rules Committee meeting in which Confederate obstructionists offered dozens of amendments to a bill to get aid to the victims. The craziest amendments by die-hard Confederates like Paul Broun were all disallowed, although some of the Southern assholes and hatemongers like John Fleming (R-LA), Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), Bill Flores (R-TX) and Jeff Duncan (R-SC) got their bullshit through the committee. Long Island Republican Peter King was flipping out and told the media that "the amendment free-for-all goes counter to assurances" Boehner made to him on Jan. 2 that the bill would be given expedited treatment. 

Boehner made assurances to King and other northeast lawmakers after pulling a $60.4 billion Sandy appropriations bill from the floor in the waning hours of the 112th Congress.  King and other Republicans, including Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.), publicly denounced Boehner for withdrawing the bill, and some lawmakers hinted they would not vote for Boehner when he came up for reelection as Speaker the next day.

House leaders in the new Congress split the bill up, allowing a $9.7 billion flood insurance measure to pass.

...“We were told the bill was coming up as is,” King said. By Friday, 92 amendments were filed to the bill.

“Obviously some of them would kill the bill,” King said.

Louise Slaughter (D-NY), the committee's ranking member, denounced the tactics the anti-North reactionaries are using. “It’s time to deliver long-overdue emergency assistance for victims of Superstorm Sandy without further delay or dysfunction. Instead of simply considering a clean measure, the Majority has submitted over 45 amendments to the Rules Committee to cut, hinder or offset the aid found in this package. Never in the modern history of the United States have victims of a natural disaster waited this long-- 78 days and counting-- to receive federal aid. The only difference is today we have a faction in Congress that regularly uses self-imposed crises to hold the interests and the people of this country hostage to their ideological demands."

Here are some of the nonsensical amendments proposed by Republicans:

Amendment #4: Proposes an across the board cut of 1.63 percent to all discretionary appropriations for fiscal year 2013 in order to offset $17 billion in Sandy aid.

Amendment #78: Zeroes out all foreign aid and assistance except for Israel and Pakistan.

Amendment #86: Prohibits funds from being used to restrict the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.

Amendment #7: Strikes $19,500,000 in funding for a study to address future flood risks.

Amendment #9: Strikes $25,000,000 in funding to “improve weather forecasting and hurricane intensity forecasting capabilities,” among other things.

Amendment #11: Strikes $8,500,000 in funding for “improvements to weather forecasting equipment and supercomputer infrastructure.” [John Bircher Paul Broun (R-GA) has introduced a number of amendments like this that seek to cut funding for climate change mitigation efforts. Even other Republicans in The South think Broun, a former drug addict, is certifiably insane and dangerous.]

Amendment #12: Strikes $13,000,000 in funding to “accelerate the National Weather Service ground readiness project.”

UPDATE: Confederate Obstructionists Overruled by Congress

Extreme right-wing South Carolina secessionist Mick Mulvaney introduced an amendment that would have forced the government to pay for $17 billion in SuperStorm Sandy aid by cutting social programs right-wing freaks like himself don't like. Although virtually all the worst Confederates in the Republican caucus supported it, all but 5 right-wing Democrats opposed it (Blue Dogs Jim Cooper, Jim Matheson, Colin Peterson, and Kurt Schrader plus New Dem John Carney) and they were joined by 71 Republicans, enough to shut the Confederates down, killing the amendment 162-258. True to form, Eric Cantor (R-VA)-- who the DCCC gave a free pass to reelection last cycle-- stuck with his Confederate allies and voted for Mulvaney's amendment.

In the end the Sandy relief bill passed 241-180-- but with only 49 Republicans voting for it. The only Democrat voting NO was Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN). Carol Shea Porter (D-NH), like every Member endorsed by Blue America, voted for the aid. “There is a long tradition in Congress," she explained to her constituents after the vote, "of passing disaster aid and I am glad that we were able to continue that today. There is no place for politics when helping our communities recover from a disaster.”

House GOP Decides-- On A Strictly Party-Line Vote-- To DeFund NPR

In violation of his own 72 hour rule, Boehner forced through a vote yesterday to defund National Public Radio, using as a pretext the doctored, trumped up, and utterly irrelevent tapes manufactured by a discredited (even by Glenn Beck!) far right-wing stalker. As easy as it may be to take in eager acolytes like Boehner and Cantor and their dysfunctional caucus, House Rules Committee Ranking Member Louise Slaughter (D-NY) refused to be distracted by their circus:

“This bill has not received one iota of input from the American public. Instead Republicans are rushing a bill through what they describe as an emergency meeting of the Rules Committee and violating their own pledge to allow 72 hours for members to ‘read the bill’. There have been no committee hearings or markups. This is hardly the open and deliberative process we were promised by the majority.”

“NPR plays a valuable role in providing millions of Americans with in-depth reporting and is often the only source of reliable news in rural parts of the country. NPR doesn’t try to blur the line between opinion, fact and political agenda. It is under attack in the name of fiscal responsibility and yet a preliminary report by the Congressional Budget Office has determined the legislation does absolutely nothing to reduce the deficit. With millions of Americans still unemployed, we can’t afford to fritter away valuable time pandering to a few far-right ideologues.”

Although NPR is crucial to under-served rural communities across the country where radio is a vast wasteland of nothing but religious indoctrination and Hate Talk hysteria, it was Manhattan's Jerry Nadler who put forward the most cogent analysis yesterday of what the GOP was up to:

“Today’s action by House Republicans to defund NPR is absolutely outrageous. NPR provides critical news and information to millions of people throughout the country, and federal funding to maintain its programming is supported by the vast majority of Americans. 
 
“This is just the latest assault by the House Republicans to cut funding based NOT on what will save the most money, but on what will score the most political points. It is reckless, irresponsible, and shameful. In fact, the Republican assault on accurate information is simply breathtaking. The Republican Party is clearly acting in response to politically motivated vendettas against perceived pillars of liberal strength.
 
“The Republicans are not trying to create jobs, they are not acting in the best interests of the middle class, and they are not focusing on the economy. Instead, they are running the House based on a severely regressive and narrow-minded ideology. Shame on them.”

This was the statement the White House released just before the vote:

The Administration strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 1076, which would unacceptably prohibit Federal funding of National Public Radio (NPR) and the use of Federal funds by public radio stations to acquire radio content. As part of the President’s commitment to cut spending, the President’s Budget proposed targeted reductions in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which provides a small amount of funding for NPR, and the Administration has expressed openness to other spending reductions that are reasonable. However, CPB serves an important public purpose in supporting public radio, television, and related online and mobile services. The vast majority of CPB’s funding for public radio goes to more than 700 stations across the country, many of them local stations serving communities that rely on them for access to news and public safety information. Undercutting funding for these radio stations, notably ones in rural areas where such outlets are already scarce, would result in communities losing valuable programming, and some stations could be forced to shut down altogether.

In the end the Democrats offered a motion to recommit that failed-- strictly along party lines-- 184-235 and then Doug Lamborn, the radical right congressman from Colorado Springs, presented his defunding resolution, H.R. 1076 (no cosponsors) which passed 228-192. Every single Democrat plus seven lonely Republicans, primarily from rural districts with a great deal of NPR-listenership-- Sean Duffy (WI), Chris Gibson (NY), Richard Hanna (NY), Steve LaTourette (OH), Dave Reichert (WA), Patrick Tiberi (OH) and Rob Woodall (GA)-- voted NO and teabagger Justin Amash (R-MI) voted "Present." Is this what voters thought they would be getting when they made their decisions in November? Here's Anthony Weiner mocking the GOP for their inability to do anything for the country other than partisan bullshit like defunding... Click & Clack: