Ohio 2nd Blog

Re: Democratic Plans For American Troops In Iraq

I don’t like the foundation of this thread.

The implication is that you have to be running for President for it to matter what your position on Iraq is. The race for the White House is a side show from the real crisis that is happening in Washington right now. Online punditry that focuses on that sideshow does serious harm in terms of making a positive impact on the real world problems that need to be resolved long before 2009.

We won control of Congress. We should act like it.

The fact that there is no consensus for resolution in Iraq from the Democratic leadership is a very real problem. Everyone wants to be a star. Everyone knows all the answers. Everyone is a genius. We don’t need geniuses, we need closers.

When I have time to worry about the race for the White House my vote will be based upon what they do now, NOT what they promise me they will do in some hypothetical future date.

Congresswoman Jean Schmidt is getting some real traction from her work on flight delays. This is a good example of how someone sitting in the minority position can use their office. While many Democrats are assuming that defeating her will be a cakewalk, I’m beginning to wonder if she’s getting a hang out of this whole politicing thingy.

She was recently quoted in Time magazine on the subject and yesterday she issued a press release documenting her getting tough with the administration over the issue:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Ben LaRocco

Thursday July 5, 2007 Phone (office) 202.225.3164

Schmidt Continues Work on Flight Data Reporting

Schmidt asks Secretary Peters not to wait for Congress to act

Washington, D.C. - With continued public outrage at airline flight delays, Congresswoman Jean Schmidt asked Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters to administratively implement H.R. 2662, her bill to collect data on cancelled and diverted flights.

Currently, flights which experience tarmac delays are not recorded as delayed if the flight is diverted to another airport, or the flight is cancelled before takeoff and returns to the gate. H.R. 2662 would require that all tarmac delays are reported to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. It is estimated that due to this reporting loophole, tarmac delays could be underreported by up to 50%.

“This is a serious problem that needs immediate attention. It seems every day a new story comes out about people who are trapped in a plane for hours on end or travelers who are stranded because of missed, delayed or cancelled flights,” said Schmidt. “Each one of those flights is full of parents trying to get home to their children, loved ones failing to connect, and thousands of dollars of lost commerce due reduced productivity or missed meetings.”

“While I am very pleased Chairman Oberstar included the language from my bill in H.R. 2881, the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization bill, but Secretary Peters does not need to wait for this legislation to pass. We need to act now to begin compiling the data to solve this problem, and alleviate these stressful and inconvenient delays,” concluded Schmidt.

One does wonder if this is purely a selfless move on te Congresswoman’s part given how often a sitting member of Congress has to fly.

Nevertheless, Back early on in the special when I was researching then candidate Jean Schmidt, I remember finding occasional glimpses of a competent politician that she seemed to need to hide under a cover of jingoistic parroting of the Republican agenda cum nightmare.

The problem is that while she’s hitting hard on the after taste of the rampant free market she so passionately champions, thousands of American soldiers or fighting and dying in Iraq. If only she could be as hard hitting on that issue, instead of just pinning it to her dress.

This year your humble editor has been slacking pretty bad when it comes to updating everyone with the latest news about the district. While much of it can be chalked up to I’ve got my own damned problems, part of it comes from the fact that the district is so hot as a target, and Schmidt so wonderful as a nemesis that it blogs itself. I’ve reached a sort of zen nirvana where by doing nothing everything happens. It is a thing of beauty.

You can tell that we are witnessing the blessed final collapse of the Reagan revolution by how voraciously Republicans are eating themselves alive. What in the 80s was cynical, masterful hypocrisy has two decades later become the moronic rantings of a horribly inbred lineage. Bereft of ideas, goals, or moral compass, those of us who have suffered through decades of being right now get to enjoy as the devil collects his interest on their collective Faustian bargain.

Case in point the perverse orgy of self cannibalism currently going on in Southern Ohio.

Lets start with The Banks project. Congresswoman Schmidt, desperate to be able to take credit for anything besides turning Jack Murtha into a household word, does what any good Representative does by trying to bring some much needed public works projects to her district. But instead of having the measly few billions rubber stamped like everyone else’s, she gets hit by a massive smack down by neighboring Congressman Steve Chabot, Minority Leader Leader John Boehner, and the White House itself in the form of the locally beatified Budget Director Rob Portman.

When an entity stands for nothing but power, it’s easy to interpret its actions. In the case of a loyal right wing trooper like Congresswoman Schmidt becoming the cheese that stands alone, it’s obvious that the action tells us that she is completely on the outs from her own Party. Believe what you will from the mouthpieces, but in 08 Jean Schmidt will be fighting this one without the help from the beltway black hats.

In terms of tactics, it’s pretty understandable. Ask yourself, would you rather dump another million dollars on the political sinkhole that Jean Schmidt has turned the 2nd district into, or instead invest it in knocking out a lightweight like Zack Space and gaining some much needed momentum?

The other example that I’ve been enjoying has been the falling out of Tom Brinkman with his once patron The Whistleblower. Brinkman’s crime? Voting for the Strickland budget. God forbid you try to actually accomplish something.

There has been every indication that Brinkman will take on Schmidt again since he’s being term limited from his gig as State Rep. A bloody, I’m more right wing than you, three way slugfest will be the perfect prelude for liberals looking forward to the general: Jean Schmidt once again the Republican standard bearer holding a cool quarter of a million dollars of additional debt.

Brinkman is one of the tragic figures of the 2nd district. There’s a fine line between being an idealistic maverick and an opportunistic gray hat. Time and time again Brinkman has overplayed his hand placing him squarely in with the gray hats. And any follower of westerns knows what happens to gray hats.

It will be interesting to see what sort of career opportunities an unemployed, ineffective professional homophobe like Tom Brinkman might have in Southern Ohio. I hear they might be hiring in Piketon.

My favorite con that a member of Congress has is that of “introducing legislation.” They can introduce a bill that advocates anything. They can take credit for fighting to cure cancer, saving cute little puppies, or providing us with shelter from global warming on the moon. The cool thing is that they can take credit for all this knowing full well that their bills don’t have to actually accomplish anything or even a snowballs chance in hell of actually passing. (I’m a big fan of creating performance metrics for politicians and government agencies.)

The key tell of the con is the fact that the Representative is bragging about it in the press before the legislation has ever passed. Case in point:

Enquirer > Rep. Jean Schmidt introduces bill on nuke waste

If anyone has any doubts about Rep. Jean Schmidt’s plans for the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, a bill she and two colleagues introduced on Friday should clear that up.

That bill - the Nuclear Waste Storage Prohibition Act - would ensure that no funds from the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) may be used for the creation of a permanent storage facility for spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste.

The complaint by Piketon community members has never been that they are planning to create a “permanent” nuclear storage facility in Piketon, but to instead to turn it into a “temporary” waste recycling and storage facility.

She knows this. This is a con. Congresswoman Schmidt has fought long and hard to bring nuclear waste to her district.

One does have to say that your humble editor is impressed that the Congresswoman has learned to use the power of any Representative to introduce any legislation even though they know that it will have no effect on anything and is just for show. Even better, she’s gotten Democratic Congressman Zack Space to join her in the con:

With such economic potential, it just makes sense to assure our Ohioans from the outset that this project will be a safe, secure facility - never anything like a Yucca Mountain-type nuclear-waste dump.

Well played, Congresswoman Schmidt.

The talk has never been about turning Piketon into a replacement for Yucca Mountain. The complaint has always been that they want to use Piketon as a “temporary” storage facility because they can’t find a permanent home for the junk. Since no one knows when a permanent home will be found the waste would be in Piketon for an unspecified amount of time… rusting away… just like it has been for decades on the existing cleanup site. Before they should ever consider bringing more nuclear waste to Piketon they should clean up the site that’s already contaminated.

Congresswoman Jean Schmidt proudly sent out a press release Wednesday announcing that the House Armed Services Air and Land Forces Subcommittee has restored funding for the Joint Strike Fighter “alternate engine” program. The $480 million authorization tasks Rolls-Royce with building the parts and GE assembling them in Cincinnati.

There’s just one problem… as DefenseTech’s Christian Lowe points out, the Pentagon doesn’t want it:

Every year, the Pentagon zeros out funding for the costly earmark, and each year lawmakers representing districts that have a vested interest re-insert the cash. It would be one thing if the pork could swim around the bloated defense bill as an eight-figure vote-getter, losing itself in a myriad of such programs inserted into the bill without a Pentagon request. But the alternate engine program is on a nearly half-billion dollar life support system that sucks a chunk of funds away from needs the Air Force claims are more urgent.

How many more MRAP vehicles could the Pentagon buy to protect forces in Iraq with the $480 million Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) says will result in “lower acquisition costs; reduced development and operational risk; and long term savings in life cycle costs?”

That’s right - at about $1 million a pop, the Army and Marine Corps could use that money to buy nearly 500 of the IED-resistant vehicles. Not to mention how that money could be put to use in the Air Force’s $17 billion unfunded priorities list – like A-10 upgrades ($37 million) and force protection equipment for Airmen ($250 million).

According to the Congressional Research Service report advocating the end of the project by National Defense Specialist Christopher Bolkcom, the idea of creating multiple engines from competing contractors stems from what he calls “The Great Engine War” that ran from 1984 to 1994. (The name cracks me up.) The idea was that forcing contracts to compete would create better engines and save money in the long run. There has been no evidence to back up this billion dollar experiment.

The idea that Congress has to force the military to duplicate the manufacture of items from multiple contractors is one of the most insane things I have ever heard of. There’s got to be better ways of putting 2nd district people to work then assembling British made parts for an engine that the Air Force doesn’t want.

Now advocates of the program are forced to fall back on the argument that because we’ve already wasted so much money on the program it would be a waste to not waste more by finishing it… creating a sort of logic death spiral.

Between The Banks and this so much for her claims of being a “fiscal conservative”.

WCPO > Local Soldiers Must Pay Back Money

Local soldiers from the 216th Engineering Battalion were given notice they were overpaid by the government and must pay the money back.

Congresswoman Schmidt has reportedly launched another one of her infamous “investigations”:

A spokesman for Rep. Jean Schmidt said the Clermont County Republican has launched an investigation. “We called the Department of Defense and asked them to launch an investigation as to if this is a bureaucratic snafu or what is the source of the alleged debts, and they’re doing this as we speak,” said Schmidt spokesman Barry Bennett. Schmidt’s office expects to receive a reply from the Pentagon by the end of this week.

I don’t know… if you ask me calling up another branch of government and asking them to launch an investigation isn’t a very substantive investigation. I guess no one told her that Congress has power to launch their own investigations, and that it’s actually part of the job of being a member of Congress.

What cracks me up in all this is that the Pentagon is the most corrupt bottomless sinkhole of our tax dollars and the people they’re billing for overpayment are soldiers who’ve served in the nightmare that is Iraq instead of the contractors who rake in billions. Support our troops… what a laugh.

Also, the CQPolitics blog has picked up on the potential Schmidt / Wulsin rematch, but does some piss poor analysis of the race:

Wulsin’s campaign is an indication that she is not deterred by the district’s 64 percent vote share for President Bush in 2004 and is determined to give Schmidt yet another tough test. Yet Schmidt’s first campaign finance report for the 2007-08 campaign cycle does not suggest an overwhelming sense of urgency in her camp. She raised a modest $20,065 in this year’s first quarter and had $17,000 cash on hand as April began.

Guys, the reason why Schmidt has raised so little cash is that she is incredibly unpopular with Republican power brokers. The Ohio 2nd has turned from being one of the jewels in the Republican Congressional crown to an embarrassment that brings down the whole caucus.

From the rumor mill…

Word is that Wulsin already has some DCCC muscle working with her: one for message, and one for finance. It seems that she’s already working the phones hard locking up the prized early bird cash.

Also, many are giving Vic props for the early declaration move stifling primary competition. That hasn’t stopped several potential players from considering a stab at it. Personally, your humble editor feels that the state house races offer greater potential gains than a single term Dem in the House and wonders if some of the talent couldn’t be distributed all along the ticket. Ted could definitely use some help out there in Columbus.

The big question has to be about what the landscape will look like in a Presidential year. Turnout is going to be high… that means Republican turnout is going to be very high. Will the person the Dems serve up be able to draw away straight thinking Republicans? Will Republicans be thinking that the Schmidt they know is better than the…?

Finally, on the Schmidt front, word has it that a dark horse local blue blood is considering a run in an attempt to restore dignity to the house that Rob built. With Brinkman chumming up the waters it’s difficult to see how anyone can take the Congresswoman in the primary. Nevertheless, many Dems are concerned that their beloved foe won’t be available to kick around come November. One can only hope.

p.s. it’s good to see that Barry Bennett reads our humble little publication.

From the controversial PowerPoint presentation given by Karl Rove’s deputy Scott Jennings before the GSA.

Rove gets it… I wonder if the DCCC finally will? How about the Hamilton County Dems? Is third time the charm?

(via Political Talk For And By Political Junkies)

The Enquirer’s got the latest, what little of it there is.

Meanwhile, this story has got me steaming:

NYT > As Power Shifts in New Congress, Pork May Linger

Meet the new cardinals, as the chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations subcommittees are known on Capitol Hill. Many have a lot in common with the Republicans they will succeed.

All have worked for years to climb to their posts, where the authority to grant earmarks puts them among the most powerful lawmakers in Congress. Like Mr. Inouye and Mr. Stevens, many have developed unusual bipartisan camaraderie while divvying up projects. By longstanding, informal agreement, the majority typically doles out about 60 percent of the money for earmarks and lets the minority pass out the rest. And they form a united front against limitations on the earmark process.

“What is good for the goose is good for the gander,” Senator Patty Murray, the Washington Democrat who is set to become chairwoman of the transportation subcommittee, said last fall in a speech defending an Alaska Republican’s allocation of more than $200 million in federal money for a bridge to remote Gravina, Alaska, with a population of 50. It became notorious as the “Bridge to Nowhere.”

Thousands of people on the ground didn’t bust their humps so that these pigs could get their turn at the national trough. The Federal Reserve is not their petty cash drawer. Oversight, transparency, and accountability need to be the new watchwords in the corridors of American power and any politician who thinks otherwise should feel Uncle Sam’s boot kicking their fat asses to the curb.

It takes one Democrat to pull a Duke Cunningham before the right wing harpies collectively string up the Democratic Party and use it as a giant pinata. Democrats won the majority not on how well they distribute pork but on how corrupt and incompetent the Republicans were. Any Democrat who doesn’t realize this needs to retire now while the Party is still in the majority.

BTW, it looks like Emanuel gets it. I sure hope so.

• TPM Muckraker > Watergate Subpoenaed in Hooker Probe
• AP > Intelligence Committee chairman not surprised by prostitution allegations in Cunningham case

I wonder what would surprise the chairman?

(via Wonkette)

UPDATE: TPM’s got more details.

UPDATE 2: Direct Hit… CIA Director Porter Goss Resigns. Could it be Watergatehookergate?!

AP | video