Dear Members of Congress:
Wishing you the merriest of holidays while you still draw your taxpayer-financed salary, and hoping you’ve learned to tip well through the holidays.
Because that person serving you at your insular country club or at the swanky restaurant barely hanging on by a thread? It isn’t just some poor schmoe from the other side of the tracks that you can just ignore.
It might be a former big-time political crony or donor:
Well-paid professionals like lawyers and architects are joining the rapidly expanding unemployment rolls in New York City, according to a new unemployment study.
The report, scheduled for release by the Fiscal Policy Institute, shows that the effects of the financial crisis have spread well beyond Wall Street to other white-collar jobs, as well as construction, retail and service jobs.
And, unlike poor folks who have no real means of contacting you because you avoid them like the plague — all those former donors and lobbyist-hiring contractors? They’ve got your campaign staffers on speed dial.
They know where you hang out because they used to buy you drinks and meals at your favorite watering holes. Hell, some of them used to be your staffers:
It’s a bear market for Republican job seekers in a Democratic town, and even the best of the best — soon-to-be-unemployed chiefs of staff and committee directors — are uncertain about where their next paycheck will come from.
All those folks — former staffers, lobbyists, lawyers, deal-makers — certainly know how to be the squeaky wheel. You can’t ignore them for long without risking a very…big…public…stink about where your skeletons are hiding in all those quid pro quo closets.
Poverty, it’s not just for people you can ignore any longer.
So, enjoy your holidays after helping to sink the nation’s auto industry. And failing to consider relief for and the needs of folks who are out of work, or about to be out of work as the effects of these failures ripple outward in ever larger concentric circles of crappy economic implications. Because I’m sure folks will be talking with you about it everywhere you go.
And I do mean everywhere…
(YouTube — a little Judy Garland from Meet Me In St. Louis singing "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.")
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But Christy, I thought in Republican land that people weren’t unemployed unless they were worthless no-accounts trying to take the hard working taxpayers for a free ride vacation? /s
CHS, thanks for a poignant reminder to the people responsible for overseeing the financial geniuses that got us into this mess. They’ve gotten their Christmas bonuses, why worry about the little people?
RRRAAAWWW!!!111 git em CHS!
The golden parachute under my Christmas tree will be a cheap import made of toxic plastic. Fa, la, la.
Guess there will be several rethug staffers looking for work starting Jan 5. I remember when that vile Delay was in his hey day he put out word to their new congresscritters not to hire former dem staffers.
Well how about Reid? Did he force those who wanted to filibuster into doing so? Hell no! He had 1 vote, and 32 rethugs signed on with 3 ideologs who want to destroy the big 3 and the UAW. I want to know, where the hell was the filibuster? Reid caves every single time someone says “filibuster” oooh, scare word. The repigs know this and will hold it over him next congress. Threaten filibuster and Reid caves right away. I say tell these a**holes to call home and tell everyone that they will be in DC for however long it takes. Thru Xmas? Well if you are so damn serious about keeping the country out of a depression, then HELL YES!!! Bring in the cots, bring it on! Oh, I forgot, Reid, the coward with no spine and no balls is in charge. Well, we can look foreward to much of the same for the next 2 years as the repigs will do anything, even destroy the economy, to regain power. and the dems will just sit back and nod their heads and say, “look, our colleagues on the republician side are being obstructionists again-yawn-we must do something(cry)”. No balls, no spines.
Congress is being Penny wise and Pound foolish. 700 billion for banksters – they barely batted an eye. 14 million for auto mfgers and its a huge problem.
Union Busting all around. False Information abounds.
From wiki on filibusters:
Bottomline is, the rules don’t require the old fashioned form of filibuster (think Mr Smith Goes to Washington) and haven’t required it since the rules change after the Civil Rights filibusters by Strom Thurmond in the ’60s.
I think the bottom line is that the guttless one could have called for it if he wanted
Two things are true.
1. The leader at his option can require an actual filibuster.
2. Leaders can be replaced.
So this is on Reid. But it is also on every single Democrat in the caucus who perpetuates his leadership.
I am not positive but I don’t think there has been a ‘traditional’ filibuster in the Senate since the Rule 22 was changed back in the late ’60s or early ’70s.
And at this point, I doubt if any of the potential Dem replacements for Reid would do anything differently on filibusters and cloture.
Don’t forget, this is an institution where they all address each other as “My esteemed and honored colleague” even when they hate each others guts.
This is the reality of the Senate today.
OT sorta
Now that almost all accumulated funds have been savaged to feed the Chicago School of Economic Machine, the only remaining accumulated funds are those of the hyper-wealthy to be targeted. That has begun…:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7781086.stm
I have nothing against collegiality but there are times where the issues need to take precedence over their club rules.
I’d love to see former Republican staffers in rags, selling pencils and apples at 14th and K. Motherfuckers.
We can blame all the people in the congress all we want but it is the people that are to blame because they keep electing these people. You don’t need a super brain machine to see what the people in congress have done to the country the people and the economy. All our problems are caused by what congress does or doesn’t do. Yet we and the media treats them like they were exhaulted rulers and listens to their every word. I actually believe people like having all this countries problems. Things won’t change until the people get bad enough off they march on Washington.
Stick around, you’ll be seeing some reckoning for these scum. This country’s econ pressure cooker can stand a lot, but only so much before it gives way and spills the scalding water out. Mary McConnell will need her biggest golf bumbershoot. Won’t cover your large ass though, Mary, nor that of the others.
Book Salon a couple of flights up with Jane hosting Ed Begley, Jr.
Those homeless people you see on the streets? Those are the people who gave up on becoming a millionaire, isn’t that right neocons? Spit.
What with the riots in Greece being more against economic policies than the death of a student, and the success of the Furniture Co unionists in Illinois, if I were a Rep or Senator, I would be getting very afraid. The pressure cooker noted above is REAL and if it blows, then Bush’s homeland military force will be useless. I worry about DC liquor outlets being open 24/7 during Obama’s inauguration with all the crowds. I think the Bushies are setting us up for an awful winter! And with over 100,000 auto jobs being lost in Texas, I doubt Bush’s new home would be off-limits for squatters. And those Rep Senators in Southern states will soon know the real meaning of hospitality! There’s got to be someplace for all the out-of-work and/or homeless millions to live!