Michael1942's Blog

Is It possible many other Americans who feel the same way can take initiative to remove ineffective legislators?.MA

Kaz Weida, Contributor
Freelance Writer & Blogger
An Apology Letter To All Americans — From The Constituents Of Jason Chaffetz
Utah’s District 3 here. We’re super sorry. Let’s talk.
02/17/2017 05:16 pm ET | Updated 11 hours ago

Dear America,
I’m writing tonight because I’d like to apologize for Jason Chaffetz.
To be fair, it’s not really my fault. I didn’t vote for him. But he’s my representative in Congress and he has my power and my voice. So Jason Chaffetz is my mess to clean up.
I’m sorry you have to deal with him. It’s no picnic for me either. This is a man who seems to place party before people, ambition before country. It’s embarrassing to have to lay claim to him but there it is. He’s mine.

Last week, I attended the town hall where Chaffetz belittled and taunted his own constituents. I thought that was about as egregious as it could get. But I was wrong, friends. So wrong. Now I get to sit on the sidelines and watch as my representative in Congress uses my power to prop up a would-be dictator. Hurray!
I took exception when Jason Chaffetz raised my voice in Congress to gut regulation that would protect public lands. I was furious when he used my vote to sign onto a bill to abolish the Department of Education. But today? Today, I think Mr. Chaffetz horrifies us all.
We’ve been assuming that in the face of facts and clear, irrefutable evidence our Congressman would be forced to take action. And he has. Mr. Chaffetz has been clear exactly whose side he’s on. I always knew he didn’t have my best interests at heart and that he wasn’t going to be representative of my ideals. But I never imagined that Jason Chaffetz would betray us all, that he would fail to hold up even the basic tenets of our democracy.
You have my deepest regrets, America, for the disaster that is my representative, Mr. Jason Chaffetz. Please know that thousands of Utahns join me in extending our apologies. But as is often the case, sorry isn’t enough. Sorry won’t save our country and our government from corruption. And apparently, neither will Mr. Chaffetz. So the resistance in Utah is going to do what it always does. We’re going to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
This will be Mr. Chaffetz’s last term in Congress. Jason’s constituents can’t send flowers to make the injury he’s inflicting better, but we can make sure we don’t send him back to D.C. to do more damage.
Sorry, America. We’ll persist. And we’ll fix this.
In love and solidarity,
Utah’s 3rd Congressional District
This piece was originally published on Rantt.

WASHINGTON — The Republicans’ ardor for investigations and oversight, on display throughout the Obama administration, has cooled off considerably with Donald Trump in the White House.
Each day seems to bring a new headache or near-crisis from Trump, the latest being the departure of his national security adviser under questionable circumstances involving Russia.
Yet if there is a line too far, at which point Republicans will feel duty-bound to call for an independent investigation of their president or his administration, Trump hasn’t crossed it yet.
Democrats are clamoring for a full-scale probe of the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, including demanding to know what Trump knew, and when, about Flynn’s pre-inauguration conversations with a Russian ambassador about U.S. sanctions. White House press secretary Sean Spicer disclosed that Trump was told in late January that Flynn had misled Vice President Mike Pence about those conversations.
Rather than go along with Democrats’ call for an independent outside investigation, Senate Republicans insisted Tuesday that the Intelligence Committee could look at the circumstances as part of an existing probe into Russia’s interference in the presidential election.
“The Intelligence Committee is already looking at Russian involvement in our election and they have broad jurisdiction over the intel community writ large and they can look at whatever they choose to,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., adding that “it’s highly likely they’d want to take a look at this episode as well.”
The intelligence panel’s chairman, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, told reporters that “aggressive” oversight would continue “privately. We don’t do that in public.”
House Republicans were even less interested, with some shrugging off Democrats’ calls for an investigation entirely. Rep. Devin Nunes of California, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said that the “real crime” is how Flynn’s phone conversations were leaked, echoing a complaint Trump himself made over Twitter.
“I think the situation has taken care of itself” in light of Flynn’s resignation, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told reporters. That’s a far different stance toward potential wrongdoing by the executive branch than Chaffetz took last year, when House Republicans issued more than 70 letters and subpoenas aimed at investigating Democrat Hillary Clinton over a period of less than three months after the FBI announced criminal charges weren’t warranted related to her use of a private email server as secretary of state.
Chaffetz did turn his attention to a different Trump administration matter later Tuesday, sending a letter to the White House seeking information about Trump’s discussion of a North Korea missile launch while dining al fresco with the Japanese prime minister at a resort in Florida.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., went so far as to counsel publicly against spending too much time investigating the White House, saying that doing so could only be counterproductive at a moment when the GOP faces a daunting legislative agenda on Capitol Hill.
“I just don’t think it’s useful to be doing investigation after investigation, particularly of your own party,” Paul said in an appearance on Fox News Radio’s “Kilmeade and Friends.” ”We’ll never even get started with doing the things we need to do like repealing Obamacare if we’re spending our whole time having Republicans investigate Republicans. I think it makes no sense.”
The relatively hands-off stance of the GOP toward the Trump White House angers Democrats, who are powerless to do much except fume from the minority in both chambers of Congress.
“Do you hear the silence? This is the sound of House Republicans conducting no oversight of President Trump. Zero,” Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, complained at a news conference Tuesday. “That is what it sounds like when they abdicate their duty under the Constitution. We’ve been asking for months for basic oversight.”
The GOP’s lack of enthusiasm about investigating the Trump White House comes as Capitol Hill Republicans struggle to come to terms with a new administration that has been engulfed in upheaval after upheaval. Republicans are trying to focus on their agenda despite the distractions. And for now, they appear to have concluded, going easy on Trump is the best way to achieve their goals, including confirming a Supreme Court justice and passing a new health care law and other legislation they want the president to sign.
“We know full well that there are issues that are going to come up on a daily basis that we’re going to get asked about and have to respond to,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 Senate Republican, “but we’re interested in repealing and replacing Obamacare, reforming the tax code, reducing the regulatory burden on businesses, confirming a Supreme Court justice, getting these Cabinet nominees through — that’s what our agenda is right now.”

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The article below is something we all should read especially our supposedly educated Legislators.MA

By Charlie Daniels | February 14, 2017 | 11:21 AM EST

A tattered and torn American flag blows in the wind with dark clouds overhead.
Over a century ago, the United States of America went through a divisive and bloody Civil War that separated the people of this nation bone from marrow. It split friends, families and eventually the nation itself as a line was drawn dividing the Union States of the North from the newly formed Confederacy of the Southern States.
Ostensibly, the war that followed was fought over the abolition of slavery, a devilish practice that never should have been allowed in the first place, and although it was the basic issue for the conflict – as is the case so much of the time – there were a myriad of other issues involved.
One – in my opinion – was just plain stubbornness and pride and the dogged determination that the South would not let itself be told what to do by the other half of the country, but trade, tariffs and different attitudes and beliefs about just how far a federal government could go in setting the tone and making laws to be obeyed by all the states were also involved.
The point I’m trying to make is that the feelings festered so long and ran so deep that men whose fathers had stood shoulder to shoulder in the war for independence faced off across fields of battle and killed each other.
The Civil War never should have happened, and had cooler heads prevailed on both sides, never would have. Southerners had to know that slavery was an abomination to the principles they had fought and died for in the Revolution.
No man has the right to own another man, to reap the fruits of his labor for nothing, to consider his children nothing more than commodities to be sold off or traded away on a whim, separating
families and breeding human beings like livestock.
But instead of acknowledging the very obvious evil of this situation, politicians from the South, convinced that the economy of the Southern States was dependent on slavery, chose to become a separate nation and soon after over six hundred thousand Americans lost their lives in a senseless war that would set the Southern States back a half century.
Surely, had it been approached by fair, level-headed men on both sides of the issue, abolition could have been achieved without war. But the rhetoric grew ever hotter. Brash young men on both sides, who had never fired a gun in anger, viewed a war as the pinnacle of romanticism, and implacable politicians refused to give an inch. Is this not the same attitude we see on the streets of America today?
I see young people interviewed on television who can’t even articulate the reason they are protesting. Others bent on destruction who probably espouse no cause but chaos.
I’ve seen hysterical protestors screaming about First Amendment rights which they seem to think only protects them and those who think like them and that the opposition has no first amendment protection and should be shouted down at all costs.
The rhetoric is becoming hotter and more nonsensical, the radical element more apparent, the violence and destruction of property more common place.
The pot is boiling and it’s only a matter of time before there will be blood on the streets.
Americans have the right to civil disobedience, a right to gather and demonstrate against some policy they feel is unfair or harmful to the country at large, but they do not have the right to interrupt commerce, break windows, burn cars or do bodily harm to those who disagree with them.
People who won’t listen to reason, who ignore the law of the land and who try to stifle the opinions of others tend to forget that there is an element of violence on the other side as well, a side that, thankfully, so far has not yet come forth.
But, should these conditions continue, someday soon the violent elements of both persuasions will find themselves on the same streets, and what will ensue will not be pretty.
Learn from history, or repeat it.
What do you think?
Pray for our troops, our police and the peace of Jerusalem.
God Bless America
— Charlie Daniels
Charlie Daniels is a legendary American singer, song writer, guitarist, and fiddler famous for his contributions to country and southern rock music. Daniels has been active as a singer since the early 1950s. He was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry on January 24, 2008.

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9 / 20

The Washington Post
Kathleen Parker
2 hrs ago

Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not necessarily represent the views of MSN or Microsoft.

Good news: In two years, we’ll have a new president. Bad news: If we make it that long.
My “good” prediction is based on the Law of the Pendulum. Enough Americans, including most independent voters, will be so ready to shed Donald Trump and his little shop of horrors that the 2018 midterm elections are all but certain to be a landslide — no, make that a mudslide — sweep of the House and Senate. If Republicans took both houses in a groundswell of the people’s rejection of Obamacare, Democrats will take them back in a tsunami of protest.
Once ensconced, it would take a Democratic majority approximately 30 seconds to begin impeachment proceedings selecting from an accumulating pile of lies, overreach and just plain sloppiness. That is, assuming Trump hasn’t already been shown the exit.
Or that he hasn’t declared martial law (all those anarchists, you know) and effectively silenced dissent. We’re already well on our way to the latter via Trump’s incessant attacks on the media — “among the most dishonest human beings on Earth” — and press secretary Sean Spicer’s rabid-Chihuahua, daily press briefings. (Note to Sean: Whatever he’s promised you, it’s not worth becoming Melissa McCarthy’s punching bag. But really, don’t stop.)
With luck, and Cabinet-level courage that is not much in evidence, there’s a chance we won’t have to wait two long years, during which, let’s face it, anything could happen. In anticipation of circumstances warranting a speedier presidential replacement, wiser minds added Section 4 to the 25th Amendment, which removes the president if a majority of the Cabinet and the vice president think it necessary, i.e., if the president is injured or falls too ill to serve. Or, by extension, by being so incompetent — or not-quite-right — that he or she poses a threat to the nation and must be removed immediately and replaced by the vice president.
Aren’t we there, yet?
Thus far, Trump and his henchmen have conducted a full frontal assault on civil liberties, open government and religious freedom, as well as instigating or condoning a cascade of ethics violations ranging from the serious (business conflicts of interest) to the absurd (attacking a department store for dropping his daughter’s fashion line). And, no, it’s not just a father defending his daughter. It’s the president of the United States bullying a particular business and, more generally, making a public case against free enterprise.
To an objective observer, it would seem impossible to defend the perilous absurdities emanating from the White House and from at least one executive agency, the Agriculture Department, which recently scrubbed animal abuse reports from its website, leaving puppies, kittens, horses and others to fend for themselves.
In a hopeful note, a few Republicans are speaking out, but the list is short.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz recently got a taste of what’s ahead for Republican incumbents. Facing an unruly crowd at a town hall meeting in Utah, the House Oversight Committee chairman was booed nearly every time he mentioned Trump. Even if many in the crowd were members of opposition groups, the evening provided a glimpse of the next two years. From 2010’s tea party to 2018’s resistance, the pendulum barely had time to pause before beginning its leftward trek.
While we wait for it to someday find the nation’s center, where so many wait impatiently, it seems clear that the president, who swore an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution, has never read it. Nor, apparently, has he ever even watched a Hollywood rendering of the presidency. A single episode of “The West Wing” would have taught Trump more about his new job than he seems to know — or care.
Far more compelling than keeping his promise to act presidential is keeping campaign promises against reason, signing poorly conceived executive orders, bashing the judicial and legislative branches, and tweeting his spleen to a wondering and worrying world.
Trump’s childish and petulant manner, meanwhile, further reinforces long-held concerns that this man can’t be trusted to lead a dog-and-pony act, much less the nation. Most worrisome is how long Trump can tolerate the protests, criticisms, humiliations, rebuttals and defeats — and what price he’ll try to exact from those who refused to look away.
Read more from Kathleen Parker’s archive, follow her on Twitter or find her on Facebook

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© Kevin Sieff/The Washington Post Mohammed Rashid teaches an English class in the Dadaab refugee camp.
DADAAB REFUGEE CAMP, Kenya — He had become a minor celebrity in the world’s biggest refugee camp, the small man staring at his battered cellphone, who had somehow managed to become an expert on America from inside his tiny hut in the desert.
His fame was attached to one particularly arcane category of knowledge. Mohammed Rashid, a refugee since age 14 and now 38 years old, had become an authority on the U.S. process of screening and resettling refugees. It was a niche that begot his nickname, which stirred some mixture of pride and sadness in him each time he heard it: “Mr. Resettlement.”
Now, in the wake of President Trump’s executive order suspending admission of refugees, Rashid’s expertise had become even more vital to the people of Dadaab, a sprawling agglomeration of tents and stick huts the size of 12,000 football fields. It was his role to translate Trump’s policy to those who had been waiting years for their flights to the United States. About 14,500 people in the camp are in the U.S. refugee pipeline, including Rashid’s family of five.
“What will happen with Trump?” Rahma Noor Farrah, a 25-year-old with bright purple eye shadow and a pink headscarf, asked Rashid. It was three days after the executive order had been issued, and she had spotted him in the camp’s market, a dusty street lined by corrugated metal stalls.
“We are going to have a rough time together,” he said.
Rashid had applied for resettlement in 2010. Farrah had applied in 2007. They had inched forward in the process, interview after interview, promising that they weren’t terrorists, recounting the horrors that had broken their families.
“There’s no hope as long as Trump is there,” Farrah said.
“We need to see what happens after 120 days,” Rashid said, feigning optimism. That was how long Trump had said he would suspend the refu­gee program, while U.S. officials reviewed its anti-terrorist provisions. The order also banned most visitors from seven majority-Muslim countries for 90 days.
Rashid had stayed up late over the weekend, reading about the new policy on his 5-year-old Nokia phone, a quest he began by typing “Trump News” into Google.
He read about travelers stuck at U.S. airports and protests at arrival terminals, trying his best to imagine those places, even though he’d never been on an airplane. He read @SenJohnMcCain criticizing the order. He read @realDonaldTrump saying the United States was now safer. He tried not to curse.
At night, during the few hours of electricity in the camp, Rashid watched CNN on his television, a gift from his brother, who had been resettled in Seattle four years ago and told Rashid upon arriving there, “We are behind the world, brother.”
Now, Rashid waited for any indication that the airport protests had been successful. He would fall asleep in front of the TV, then wake up and check his phone.
“All day with him it is news, news, news,” said his wife, Dahabo Abdulahi, shaking her head.
***
Dadaab is a constellation of four camps, separated by bursts of thorny acacia trees and wide expanses of orange sand. Some areas remain as empty as they were when Rashid fled Somalia in 1992, as it was devoured by a civil war that left his mother and two sisters dead. But much of Dadaab is now a vast city of mud huts, tents, market stalls and U.N. offices. Nearly 300,000 refugees live here, most of them Somalis.
The Kenyan government has threatened for years to close the camp. Its new deadline is May.
Rashid grew up in the camp, attending school in white tents donated by foreign aid groups. But even after 25 years, it doesn’t feel like home. His wife was raped here in the late 1990s when she went to collect firewood. His father was beaten and robbed while transporting food on a donkey cart. Rashid secures his hut, made of mud, sticks and corrugated metal, with a makeshift fence of tree branches and a metal door with a padlock.
In 2010, the United Nations acknowledged his family’s procession of traumas with a one-page letter — they had been chosen for resettlement in America.
Rashid learned as much as he could about the U.S. refu­gee screening system, a labyrinthine process that involves eight federal agencies, six security databases, five background checks and four biometric security checks. His family got their medical exams. They sat for interviews with American caseworkers, who asked whether he had ever been a terrorist. Rashid said no. He said he was an English teacher.
While he was waiting for his final approval in 2015, Rashid and his wife had a third child. According to U.S. policy, American officials would have to meet the baby before Rashid’s family got on a plane. The visit still hasn’t happened, because of the limited number of caseworkers and the many people waiting for the relatively few refu­gee approvals each year.
On his Nokia, Rashid checked his status on the U.S. refu­gee resettlement website every other day. The words never changed.
“Security status: currently clear,” it said.
“On hold.”
“Please be patient.”
***
On Tuesday, four days after Trump’s travel ban announcement, Rashid rode his bicycle, a clunky brown contraption with a red plastic flower on the handlebars, to the Horyaal Primary School.
On the blackboard he wrote: “The eye is a sense organ. It is used for seeing.”
The students read the line aloud. Rashid walked around the room, where 40 children, all native Somali speakers, were crammed onto eight benches.
He was trying to focus on the lesson, but his mind was on Trump’s new policy. While the children copied notes from the board, Rashid pulled out his Nokia.
He read on CNN.com that the protests were gaining strength.
He read on Facebook that more than 100 Somali refugees, whose flights were scheduled for the following week, were stuck in Nairobi.
After class, he walked outside.
“Mr. Resettlement,” Abdi Nasir Abukar, another teacher, called to him from a bench. “You’re going to go crazy thinking about America. You’re going to become a mad old man picking rubbish from the ground.”
Abukar, 29, had a different plan. He was going back to Somalia. The United Nations was offering about $400 as humanitarian assistance for each person who returned to parts of Somalia it considered relatively secure.
Rashid thought a move back to Somalia was too risky. In late January, al-Shabab militants had set off a car bomb at a hotel in Mogadishu, killing 28. Weeks earlier, they had attacked the city’s port, leaving 16 dead.
“You made your own choice,” he said to Abukar.
Out of earshot, Rashid said softly:
“He’s the crazy one.”
***
During a lunch break, Rashid went to a restaurant in the camp with sky-blue wallpaper and a television playing a Somali-language news channel.
“Put on CNN,” Rashid said.
A waiter slid a metal plate of rice on his table as the television flashed to a reporter at an American diner, asking a bearded man what he thought about Trump’s travel ban.
“There’s a lot of bad people in those countries,” the man said.
Rashid looked down at his rice.
“Some Americans don’t seem like they know anything about the world,” he said.
Behind him, at a different table, an old man recognized Rashid.
“What can we expect to happen?” the man asked. “Will the Europeans take us?”
“I am advising everyone to be patient,” Rashid said, and then he thumbed his phone again.
A stream of pictures and headlines passed in front of him. White House press secretary Sean Spicer had said the executive order wasn’t a Muslim ban. The Somali-born British track star Mo Farah had been detained at an airport. On Facebook, Rashid’s friends in Seattle had posted a photo in front of the Space Needle.
“Look at them enjoying,” he said.
Then he pulled up the U.S. refugee resettlement website. It took a long time to load. His hands shook.
“Please be patient,” it said.
***
As the week continued, it appeared to Rashid that the world’s interest in the refugee suspension was fading.
On his phone, he read that the protests were shrinking. On television, the coverage shifted to Trump’s Supreme Court pick.
He was running out of answers for the people who stopped him in the camp.
“People keep asking me, ‘What do you think?’ ” Rashid said, his expression suddenly severe. “But I’m just a refugee like them.”
But then Saturday morning, he woke up to a flurry of news articles about a judge’s decision to halt the executive order. He read as much as he could. Then he went to the monthly food distribution, where he and hundreds of other refugees waited for bags of donated corn and beans in the 100-degree heat.
While they waited, people kept coming up to Rashid, he recalled.
“I told them: ‘It’s finally good news. The judge has stopped Trump.’ ”
He knew the court order was tenuous. He kept checking his phone to see whether the news had changed again. But by late afternoon, he read that passengers from the seven banned countries were allowed to board their fights to the United States.
The door had cracked open again. This time, Rashid hoped, it would last long enough for his family to pass through.
“That’s one of the things I love about America,” he explained over the phone. “No one is above the law.”

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02/04/2017 11:40 am ET | Updated 20 hours ago
Richard Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

María Elena Durazo
Vice Chair, Democratic National Committee; General Vice President, UNITE HERE

The American people have faced stagnant wages and rising inequality for decades. Many Americans voted for Donald Trump or decided not to vote at all because Democrats failed to communicate effectively with working people and turn out the vote – end of story. The fact is that shouldn’t have happened. The Democratic Party has long been the Party of working people, and needs to do a better job of making that case. No one knows this better than Keith Ellison, and we are proud to endorse him as the next Chair of the Democratic National Committee.
These are extremely challenging times. President Trump has put forward a nominee for Labor Secretary who openly disdains workers. Congressional Republicans are readying plans to roll back worker protections, repeal the Affordable Care Act and end Medicare as we know it. And in state capitals across the country, the assault on workers and unions has been fierce and swift. Now more than ever, working people need public servants who will stand up and fight for better jobs, higher wages, good benefits and a voice at work.
Keith knows how to win elections, and has a track record of defeating anti-worker forces wherever they are. When Keith was first elected to Congress in 2006, his district had the lowest turnout in Minnesota. Voters just didn’t feel engaged. They didn’t feel like they mattered. Keith decided to do something about it: he organized. He knocked on as many doors as possible. With labor at his side, he talked about the issues that mattered to people. It worked. Since Keith began his grassroots voter turnout campaign, his district is the highest performing in the state. And on top of all this, he’s been getting pro-worker candidates elected from the school board to the U.S. Senate, traveling to nearly 30 states just last cycle.

When nurses went on strike to keep their health insurance, Keith was there. When communications workers went on strike to protest pension cuts, Keith was there. When hotel workers went on strike for a decent wage, Keith was there.

He hasn’t done this alone. Keith has always organized alongside working people. He’s marched on our picket lines and offered support to our members. When nurses went on strike to keep their health insurance, Keith was there. When communications workers went on strike to protest outsourcing and pension cuts, Keith was there. When hotel workers went on strike to stand up for a decent wage, Keith was there.
Each and every time, he’s pounded the pavement, not for some sort of political benefit, but to stand in solidarity with those who want a better life for ourselves and our families.
That’s who Keith is, and that’s precisely why he’s long been a friend of labor – especially in the halls of Congress. He’s voted to increase the minimum wage, advocated for better working conditions and proposed a bill to make union organizing a civil right. As Co-Chair of the Progressive Caucus, he’s used his microphone over and over again to speak up when unions or working people have come under attack. Simply put, labor has the strongest possible ally in Keith-someone whose primary focus is to create opportunity for all and grow the middle class, regardless of what you look like, where you were born, or who you are.
And now that he’s running for DNC Chair, he’s not wavering in his commitment to us—not one bit. He understands that many working people voted for Donald Trump because the Democratic Party didn’t make a compelling enough case. He understands we are hungry for political leaders that listen to us and work with us, and that labor’s agenda will always lead our politics, not the other way around. With Keith at the helm of one of America’s two major political parties, working people will be in a much better position to have our issues advanced and our concerns heard.
Both of us have been a part of the labor movement for decades, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. But we’re not in the business of mincing words. Tough days lie ahead for working people. And so, it is more important than ever that we have a leader who will stand up, fight, organize and win.
There is no doubt in our minds: Keith Ellison is the person for the job. He has our strong support. We encourage you to give him yours, as well.
Richard Trumka is president of the 12.5 million member AFL-CIO, America’s labor federation.. Maria Elena Durazo is a Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, and a General Vice President of UNITE HERE.
Follow Richard Trumka on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/RichardTrumka
Follow María Elena Durazo on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/@LALabor
More: Dnc Democratic Party Keith Ellison

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