House of Representatives: Democrats in da house!

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[SilverBeach]

I'm disappointed in AOC and her happiness with Amazon deciding not to open a second headquarters in New York. That's 25,000 jobs and they would have been quickly filled. I hope Amazon comes to my state, Illinois. People need work. If you don't like Amazon's practices, then address that as a separate issue. But losing all those jobs out of some misplaced sense of idealism? No. It used to be politicians crowed about bringing jobs to their constituency, so I don't understand this at all. Not defending Amazon in any way, but I'm a realist and they are hardly the only humongous company with some shoddy business practices. Hopefully, she doesn't carry and I-Phone because Apple badly exploits workers in China. She can dial her crusading back a bit as far as I'm concerned, and think about the 25,000 people (that's a lot) who can scratch Amazon off their list of potential employers. I'm a Democrat and pretty liberal, but this rubbed me the wrong way.

[CTRLZero]

I frequent a website that deals with city development, job creation, infrastructure, transit, etc.  Someone posted an opinion from city-journal.org, which generated a lot of discussion regarding the Amazon NYC pullout.  I'm reposting the piece which laments the loss of jobs, just for another perspective from a pro-development standpoint.
 

Quote

 

Amazon’s announcement that it will cancel its plans to build a major office complex in Long Island City is a huge defeat for Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio, who staked their political capital on the high-profile deal. The collapse of the deal is a victory, though, for the anti-gentrification, anti-development Left, which assailed the plan as a giveaway to a trillion-dollar company and its billionaire owner. They claimed that Amazon would drive up rents, destroy the local community, create noise pollution, and increase wealth inequality in New York. A typical response came from law professor and three-time loser political candidate Zephyr Teachout, who exulted on Twitter, “!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! POWER OF THE PEOPLE. Speechless. Truth to power wins!”

What has “truth to power” won? It’s not as though Amazon was preventing the rise of sustainable, green, unionized, and well-paying manufacturing jobs in Long Island City, or stopping the construction of affordable low-income housing, along with schools and parkland. The area where the company planned to build its secondary headquarters has been the focus of economic development plans for decades. It is presently the site of parking lots, storage units, and empty, city-owned land. Now it will stay that way. Amazon was planning to rent 1 million square feet in the Citigroup Tower in Long Island City, which is largely vacant of tenants, and will now remain so.

Opponents claimed that the incentives offered to Amazon were unfair, and they have a point: most corporate subsidies are ineffective and wasteful. But Amazon wasn’t being offered anything obscene. Job-creation tax incentives are written into state law and are available to any company doing business in New York, and represent foregone taxes on income that otherwise wouldn't exist. And the local politicians crying loudest have never squawked about the $420 million in transferable tax credits that the state gives every year to the film and television industries. Why would they? Many take major campaign contributions from the studios based in their Queens districts. “I hope this is the start of a conversation about vulture capitalism and where our tax dollars are best spent,” city council speaker Corey Johnson, a 2021 mayoral hopeful, said in a prepared statement. He has received substantial contributions from film and television industry executives, too, and has never complained about the Empire State Film Tax Credit Program.

Opponents also argued that Amazon is not unionized, and that non-union companies are not welcome in New York, a “union town.” But the Amazon headquarters would have been built by union labor. The company was going to employ 3,000 unionized building-service workers in its 8 million square feet of office space, which is why local 32BJ was so enthusiastic about the deal. Those jobs are gone now, too.

Some progressives were angry that Amazon wasn’t promising to guarantee enough well-paying jobs to residents of the nearby Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing project in the United States. Decrying the “gentrification of jobs,” critics sneered that Queensbridge residents would get only a handful of entry-level positions and minimal training. Not to worry: now they won’t get anything.

Amazon critics bought wholesale the fiction that New York City is where everyone wants to be, so even the most draconian conditions will be acceptable to potential employers. Council Member Jumaane Williams, now running for public advocate, gave voice to this complacency when he said, “I expected this mayor to be a stalwart of deeply income-targeted affordable housing . . . You give away $3 billion? $3 billion? To the richest man in America? For a company that will most likely come here anyway?” So much for Gotham’s unbeatable appeal.

New York State can ill afford to thumb its nose at 25,000 well-paying jobs, which would have produced billions of dollars in tax revenues and contributed mightily to the local economy. The state is losing residents to out-migration and now faces a revenue gap of $2.3 billion from the exodus of high-earners to Florida and other low-tax states. Critics of the Amazon plan can rejoice in their success in having prevented economic development in a moribund area of western Queens. They have preserved stagnation and called it progress. Nice work, guys.

 

 

[milkteeth]

1 hour ago, SilverBeach said:

I'm disappointed in AOC and her happiness with Amazon deciding not to open a second headquarters in New York. That's 25,000 jobs and they would have been quickly filled. I hope Amazon comes to my state, Illinois. People need work. If you don't like Amazon's practices, then address that as a separate issue. But losing all those jobs out of some misplaced sense of idealism? No. It used to be politicians crowed about bringing jobs to their constituency, so I don't understand this at all. Not defending Amazon in any way, but I'm a realist and they are hardly the only humongous company with some shoddy business practices. Hopefully, she doesn't carry and I-Phone because Apple badly exploits workers in China. She can dial her crusading back a bit as far as I'm concerned, and think about the 25,000 people (that's a lot) who can scratch Amazon off their list of potential employers. I'm a Democrat and pretty liberal, but this rubbed me the wrong way.

In this case, AOC really was listening to her constituents on this issue, and it was truly a grassroots movement of people in the community that would be effected by Amazon's new HQ who killed this deal. NYC is not the Rust Belt or other parts of the country that need jobs badly, they are facing entirely different issues. New York has been dealing with problems of gentrification, rising cost of living and crumbling infrastructure for decades, and the new HQ would have just been pouring gasoline on a raging fire. I can speak to this as someone who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, but had to move away because of astronomically high rent and cost of living after the rise of the big tech companies in Silicon Valley. Amazon is a global company, and there was nothing in the contract that stated they could only hire people in Queens or the surrounding burrows for their high paying jobs. They would be bringing people from all over the world to this community and pushing out the people who live there now - just like what happened in San Francisco.

The community that Amazon was trying to move into said that they were not going to subsidize their new HQ to the tune of billions of dollars in corporate welfare when they're making billions of dollars in profit and paying zero in taxes. They said that they were not going to allow a company that exploits it's employee's labor to do so in their community. Amazon could have chosen to listen to this community and agreed to pay their fair share, engage in true community development and respect their worker's right to organize. Instead, they took their ball and went home because they didn't get their way. 

 

[AmericanRose]

As someone who has so far spent longer in the Rust Belt than out of it, the idea of 'throwing away' 25k jobs seems dumb.

As a resident of Seattle, however, I would say that Amazon should be dealt with carefully.

[SilverBeach]

42 minutes ago, milkteeth said:

In this case, AOC really was listening to her constituents on this issue, and it was truly a grassroots movement of people in the community that would be effected by Amazon's new HQ who killed this deal. NYC is not the Rust Belt or other parts of the country that need jobs badly, they are facing entirely different issues. New York has been dealing with problems of gentrification, rising cost of living and crumbling infrastructure for decades, and the new HQ would have just been pouring gasoline on a raging fire. I can speak to this as someone who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, but had to move away because of astronomically high rent and cost of living after the rise of the big tech companies in Silicon Valley. Amazon is a global company, and there was nothing in the contract that stated they could only hire people in Queens or the surrounding burrows for their high paying jobs. They would be bringing people from all over the world to this community and pushing out the people who live there now - just like what happened in San Francisco.

The community that Amazon was trying to move into said that they were not going to subsidize their new HQ to the tune of billions of dollars in corporate welfare when they're making billions of dollars in profit and paying zero in taxes. They said that they were not going to allow a company that exploits it's employee's labor to do so in their community. Amazon could have chosen to listen to this community and agreed to pay their fair share, engage in true community development and respect their worker's right to organize. Instead, they took their ball and went home because they didn't get their way. 

 

I hear all of this. I'm an native Chicagoan and live in the metro area now. There are similar issues with gentrification and all of that. I was poor one time myself. As a minority, I am concerned with high unemployment among my people, especially youth. My people need jobs. I wonder how many of those grassroots constituents are unemployed. It's easy to be idealistic when you have a job. I doubt Amazon was going to import people for all 25,000 jobs, many of which likely don't pay a helluva lot.

I would feel better about AOC if she presented her plan for for bringing jobs to the area along with her glee in shutting down Amazon, which is an easy target. Amazon isn't going anywhere, just like Walmart isn't.  It just seemed a bit like grandstanding to me, showing how bad-ass she is. Which is fine, but there needs to be substance behind the bad assery. I know she is popular right now, but I don't care, I call it like I see it. Like I said, I hope those jobs come to metro Chicago, so New York's loss can be our gain. YMMV and to each her own. I still wonder if she uses an I-Phone.

Edited February 16, 2019 by SilverBeach

[AmazonGrace]

 they lied because of course they did

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Okay so now I'm going to marry Maxine Watters, Jamie Raskin, John Lewis and Ted Lieu.

[47of74]

Some Republicans have entirely too much time on their hands.

Quote

First, it was her clothing. Then her dancing. Not to mention her credit score, her apartment, her hometown. Maybe it was only a matter of time before conservatives went after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s love life.

The fast-growing conspiracy seems to have originated from a few would-be sleuths who found her boyfriend’s name, Riley Roberts, listed in online House directories with a “mail.house.gov” email address. Thus, he must be on her staff.

Well, they’re partly correct. Roberts does have a House email address, but, as a spokesperson for the chamber’s Office of the Chief Administrative Officer explained, that does not mean he’s an employee.

“From time to time, at the request of members, spouses and partners are provided House email accounts for the purposes of viewing the member’s calendar,” the spokesperson said.

If our side had called out any Refornicatelicans over this practice the whining over how mean we were being to their spouses would be never ending.  These people whining about AOC's partner having access to her calendar can go fornicate themselves.

[fraurosena]

10 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

Okay so now I'm going to marry Maxine Watters, Jamie Raskin, John Lewis and Ted Lieu.

I'm fine with that as long as you leave George Takei for me...

Although I think I will have to fight @GreyhoundFan for him 

[AmazonGrace]

Is Adam Schiff still available? 

 

[fraurosena]

The House Committee on the Judiciary and the House Committee on Homeland Security are demanding answers from the NRA about their connections to Russians and their December 2015 trip to Moscow.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Audrey2]

5 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Maybe the Evangelicals really love Trump because he's going to bring on Armageddon, which will lead to the Apocalypse.  We know they can hardly wait for the Rapture. In my opinion, though, Trump is the Anti-Christ, not the Great Orange Savior.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"To get Trump’s tax returns, Democrats just need to send a letter"

Spoiler

There were widespread expectations when the Democrats took control of the House that an early, if not the first, order of business would be to go after President Trump’s tax returns.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said this month that the House would pursue the returns, something she noted Americans overwhelmingly support. But she added, “We have to be very, very careful as we go forward. It’s not an issue of just sending a letter. You have to do it in a very careful way."

Actually, it is more or less an issue of just sending a letter. Pelosi, and House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.), are being unduly skittish.

Neal has declined even to offer a timeline of when he would seek the returns. He has suggested that the request will provoke a “long and arduous” court case, analogous to the subpoena battles that Congress in recent years has waged to at best checkered results.

But there is a critical difference in the legal authorities governing a request for tax returns and a general congressional subpoena.

The law that permits Neal, as head of Ways and Means, to receive Trump’s returns is simple and clear: 26 U.S.C. §6103(f) specifies that “upon written request from the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives … the Secretary [of the Treasury] shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request.” The return is furnished in closed executive session.

“Shall” means, well, shall. The language is the well-established norm, across a range of legal settings, used to denote an absence of discretion on an official’s part. It leaves no room for quibbles by the secretary.

The distinction between discretionary and mandatory action actually originates from Marbury v. Madison, the fountainhead of U.S. constitutional law. In that case, Chief Justice John Marshall explained that Secretary of State James Madison had no discretion to refuse to deliver judicial appointee William Marbury’s commission, which the law specified he “shall make out and record, and shall affix.” (Famously, the court held that it lacked jurisdiction to provide a remedy, establishing the vaunted constitutional power of judicial review.)

The straightforwardness of the command in §6103(f) is clear from the neighboring section, §6103(i), employed by prosecutors to inspect tax records, which “shall be open” to inspection or disclosure based on an ex parte order from the court. The practice is entirely routine and swift, usually taking less than a week. I know of no attempt by the secretary of treasury ever even to argue discretion not to comply.

Similarly, there is not a single case suggesting that the secretary has discretion not to comply with such a written request by the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Some scholars have opined that the request should demonstrate that Congress is pursuing a legitimate oversight objective, rather than, say, just engaging in political harassment. The law does not provide for even this much, however; in any event, it would be easily satisfied by a request for the president’s taxes given the valid legislative concerns about the possible implications of Trump’s financial entanglements.

Compare this state of affairs with the law governing enforcement of congressional subpoenas. Congress’s power to issue subpoenas, an adjunct to its need to legislate effectively, is broad. But it is nevertheless subject to limitations that can trigger prolonged court battles. In brief, challengers can move to quash on the grounds that Congress hasn’t shown that the subpoena seeks pertinent, admissible and specific information.

Of course, the “shall” language can’t prevent Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin from attempting to resist Neal’s request, and to tie it up in the courts, with exotic arguments or absolutist claims about the immunity of the president.

Moreover, the committee would still be subject under 6103(f) to strict restrictions on not disclosing the returns to the public, though it could vote under another provision of the law to submit the information to the full House.

Regardless, the basic point remains: Neal could request Trump’s returns tomorrow, and Mnuchin would have no apparent legal basis for refusal or delay.

 

[formergothardite]

14 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Regardless, the basic point remains: Neal could request Trump’s returns tomorrow, and Mnuchin would have no apparent legal basis for refusal or delay.

They really need to stop being afraid of Trump. Yes, he will rant and scream and Tweet that this is a biased attack on him, but the second they can get them, see what is in them and vote to release them Trump will crumble. He is terrified of his tax info being public. 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, formergothardite said:

They really need to stop being afraid of Trump. Yes, he will rant and scream and Tweet that this is a biased attack on him, but the second they can get them, see what is in them and vote to release them Trump will crumble. He is terrified of his tax info being public. 

It could be that they are awaiting Cohen's testimony next week. You can be sure that his testimony will raise an abundance of legitimate concerns that necessitate a closer look into presiduncial finances, including tax returns. It will be up to the Committees if they disclose them publicly or not. 

Pelosi is nothing if not incredibly calculating and smart. She knows that she will have to show good reason to go after those tax returns that leave no reasonable doubt that the presidunce and his cronies could use to attack her and the Dems. Not that they won't, mind you, but it won't be reasonable. And it will help in any court case that arises from their request: it will be irrefutable that they're just doing their jobs on oversight of the Executive.

 

Edited February 21, 2019 by fraurosena
removing extraneous the

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

An excellent op-ed: "Adam Schiff: An open letter to my Republican colleagues"

Spoiler

This is a moment of great peril for our democracy. Our country is deeply divided. Our national discourse has become coarse, indeed, poisonous. Disunity and dysfunction have paralyzed Congress.

And while our attention is focused inward, the world spins on, new authoritarian regimes are born, old rivals spread their pernicious ideologies, and the space for freedom-loving peoples begins violently to contract. At last week’s Munich Security Conference, the prevailing sentiment among our closest allies is that the United States can no longer be counted on to champion liberal democracy or defend the world order we built.

For the past two years, we have examined Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and its attempts to influence the 2018 midterms. Moscow’s effort to undermine our democracy was spectacularly successful in inflaming racial, ethnic and other divides in our society and turning American against American.

But the attack on our democracy had its limits. Russian President Vladimir Putin could not lead us to distrust our own intelligence agencies or the FBI. He could not cause us to view our own free press as an enemy of the people. He could not undermine the independence of the Justice Department or denigrate judges. Only we could do that to ourselves. Although many forces have contributed to the decline in public confidence in our institutions, one force stands out as an accelerant, like gas on a fire. And try as some of us might to avoid invoking the arsonist’s name, we must say it.

I speak, of course, of our president, Donald Trump.

The president has just declared a national emergency to subvert the will of Congress and appropriate billions of dollars for a border wall that Congress has explicitly refused to fund. Whether you support the border wall or oppose it, you should be deeply troubled by the president’s intent to obtain it through a plainly unconstitutional abuse of power.

To my Republican colleagues: When the president attacked the independence of the Justice Department by intervening in a case in which he is implicated, you did not speak out. When he attacked the press as the enemy of the people, you again were silent. When he targeted the judiciary, labeling judges and decisions he didn’t like as illegitimate, we heard not a word. And now he comes for Congress, the first branch of government, seeking to strip it of its greatest power, that of the purse.

Many of you have acknowledged your deep misgivings about the president in quiet conversations over the past two years. You have bemoaned his lack of decency, character and integrity. You have deplored his fundamental inability to tell the truth. But for reasons that are all too easy to comprehend, you have chosen to keep your misgivings and your rising alarm private.

That must end. The time for silent disagreement is over. You must speak out.

This will require courage. The president is popular among your base, who revel in his vindictive and personal attacks on members of his own party, even giants such as the late Sen. John McCain. Speaking up risks a primary challenge or accusations of disloyalty. But such acts of independence are the most profound demonstrations of loyalty to country.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III may soon conclude his investigation and report. Depending on what is in that report and what we find in our own investigations, our nation may face an even greater challenge. While I am alarmed at what we have already seen and found of the president’s conduct and that of his campaign, I continue to reserve judgment about what consequences should flow from our eventual findings. I ask you to do the same.

If we cannot rise to the defense of our democracy now, in the face of a plainly unconstitutional aggrandizement of presidential power, what hope can we have that we will do so with the far greater decisions that could be yet to come?

Although these times pose unprecedented challenges, we have been through worse. The divisions during the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement were just as grave and far more deadly. The Depression and World War II were far more consequential. And nothing can compare to the searing experience of the Civil War.

If Abraham Lincoln, the father of the Republican Party, could be hopeful that our bonds of affection would be strained but not broken by a war that pitted brother against brother, surely America can come together once more. But as long as we must endure the present trial, history compels us to speak, and act, our conscience, Republicans and Democrats alike.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

Edited February 22, 2019 by AmazonGrace

[Cartmann99]

 

[WiseGirl]

Ot felt so wrong to put this with the other senators.  I wasn't sure where to put it tbh.