Congressman Ted Poe had tough words for Pakistan yesterday: “Isn’t Pakistan supposed to be with us in this war in Afghanistan? And if they’re not our ally, why are we giving them billions of taxpayer dollars? Now, in light of the illegal release of classified documents, Pakistan also appears to be taking our money and supporting our enemy, the Taliban. Maybe Pakistan isn’t the loyal ally we pay them to be. We should not be giving money we need here at home to countries that are friends in public and thieves behind closed doors. As my colleague Louie Gohmert says, ‘We don’t have to pay these people to hate us. They will do it for free.’ And that’s just the way it is.”

Is that just the way it is, Representative Poe?

If that’s just the way it is, why didn’t Ted Poe vote for H. Con. Res. 301, a bipartisan bill that would require the withdrawal of the U.S. military out of Afghanistan?

Can you find the missing 8.7 billion dollars the Pentagon was supposed to be managing? That’s the amount of money in a batch that auditors have announced the U.S. military has lost track of in Iraq.

What did Congress do yesterday to deal with the problem? It voted to send the Pentagon tens of billions of additional dollars. Sure, this money hasn’t brought us the kind of victory we promised, but then, what do we have to lose? (besides the money, I mean)

The Republicans in the U.S. Senate (with the notable exceptions of Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe) voted last week against the extension of unemployment insurance for millions of American workers who lost their jobs and are out there looking for new jobs. This vote happened in two stages: first the Senate voted to stop a Republican filibuster against the unemployment benefits. Then, 30 hours later, the Senate voted to finally pass the unemployment benefits package on to the White House for President Obama’s signature.

The Republicans insist that they care about people who are unemployed and like the idea of an unemployment insurance extension, but just don’t want to spend money on accomplishing that goal. It’s a deficit thing, they say. We might be a bit dubious about this claim, considering how many Republicans in the Senate voted to start two wars in the last decade without considering the impact on the deficit, or how many Republicans in the Senate voted more recently to spend billions of dollars on subsidies for the record-profit oil industry and billions more on the construction of new C-17 transport planes that the Defense Department said it didn’t need or want.

We also might be dubious about this claim for a more procedural reason. Recall that there were two votes required in the Senate to pass the unemployment insurance extension bill, two votes separated by 30 hours. There’s a provision in Senate rules that allows a minority to delay final passage of a bill by 30 hours if they so choose. Usually this provision is waived. Last week, the provision was exercised by Senate Republicans.

The delay of final passage of the bill by 30 hours didn’t save the money for unemployment insurance from being spent. After the first vote occurred, final passage was guaranteed, so the insistence on a 30 hour delay didn’t further the supposed goal of deficit reduction. What the GOP’s delay did accomplish was a further 30-hour delay in laid-off American workers getting their unemployment insurance checks.

If the Senate Republicans really did care about unemployed American workers, then when it became clear the insurance extension bill would pass, they ought to have stopped standing in the way, stopped with their delays, and helped Senate Democrats expedite the arrival of the insurance checks in Americans’ mailboxes. But instead, the Senate Republicans (again, with the notable exceptions of Senators Collins and Snowe) exerted themselves to delay help’s arrival, with no effect whatsoever but the further passage of time. It is hard to reconcile the Republicans’ claim that they really do care with their callous behavior on the floor.

Global temperature this year is the hottest ever recorded. The United States is suffering its worst oil spill ever. Still, the Democratic Party, which controls the White House and both houses of Congress, can’t summon the wherewithal to create law to deal with the climate and energy crisis.

Barack Obama hasn’t done much of anything to push for the legislation’s passage. Democrats in both houses of Congress have spent the last year and a half breaking promises, crafting bills that would do more to channel public money to oil and coal companies than to create energy reform.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now says that he’ll stop working on climate legislation, and just pass a little bill that might tweak liability caps for offshore drilling… unless the Republicans object too much, of course, in which case Reid will abandon that effort too.

Reid says that he isn’t really giving up completely on the effort to pass climate legislation. He says he’ll try again, with a completely new bill in the autumn… two months before Election Day… as he focuses on his campaign to keep his job.

Rumors are that, while the new bill won’t have a carbon tax, or cap-and-trade provisions, or anything else to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are actually causing global warming, it might include a half-million grant program to provide Americans with parasols that they could use to protect themselves from the hot sun as they walk from their front doors to their sport utility vehicles… or… not.

Republicans are poised to make significant gains in both houses of Congress this November. That makes this year the last chance for climate legislation for probably at least another decade. Our nation has been waiting for climate legislation since the 1980s.

We can’t afford another generation of inaction. The biosphere is cooking. But then, what’s the biosphere, when there are other legislative priorities to take care of?

After all, just yesterday, Congress passed a law which will give the post office at 100 Orndorf Drive in Brighton, Michigan a new name. Isn’t that what voters brought the Democrats into power for in 2008?

Yes we… sigh.

Rhetorically speaking, nobody can match the Republicans for sheer frequency in utterance of the words America, American, Americish, Americanicity and just plain ‘merica. Republican Party politicians publicly obsess over who is and who isn’t wearing an American flag lapel pin.

But this is talk. When it comes to action on America, where do the Republicans stand?

The Buy American Caucus in the House of Representatives and H.R. 4553, the Buy American Act, have been created to promote a policy by which the United States government would buy products made in the USA when possible in order to promote American industry and preserve American jobs.

These are the cosponsors of the Buy American Act:

Rep. Christopher Murphy (D-CT, District 5) — principal sponsor
Rep. Christopher Carney (D-PA, District 10)
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT, District 3)
Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA, District 51)
Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC, District 3)
Rep. Steve Kagen (D-WI, District 8 )
Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL, District 3)
Rep. Dan Maffei (D-NY, District 25)
Rep. Donald Manzullo (R-IL, District 16)
Rep. Michael Michaud (D-ME, District 2)
Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA, District 8 )
Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA, District 38)
Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV, District 3)
Rep. Mark Schauer (D-MI, District 7)
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI, District 1)
Rep. Betty Sutton (D-OH, District 13)
Rep. Charles Wilson (D-OH, District 6)

Two Republicans, sixteen Democrats.

These are the members of the Buy American Caucus:

Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK, District 2)
Rep. Christopher Carney (D-PA, District 10)
Rep. Jerry Costello (D-IL, District 12)
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT, District 3)
Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD, District 4)
Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL, District 17)
Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC, District 3)
Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL, District 3)
Rep. Christopher Murphy (D-CT, District 5)
Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA, District 8 )
Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV, District 3)
Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH, District 17)
Rep. Mark Schauer (D-MI, District 7)
Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC, District 11)
Rep. Betty Sutton (D-OH, District 13)
Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-IN, District 1
Rep. Charles Wilson (D-OH, District 6)
Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA, District 6)

One Republican, seventeen Democrats.

If the Mellman Group’s recent poll is accurate when it indicates high levels of concern about keeping American manufacturing jobs among Tea Party supporters, then Tea Party organizations may want to think again about the party label of the politicians they support. If you want a government that issues contracts to American manufacturing, you’re more likely to get a politician who supports that goal if you vote “D.”

After 87 days, BP finally may have succeeded in plugging the rupture of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico caused by the fatal explosion and sinking of its Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig. Whether the plug will last is not yet clear.

What is clear is that even as BP was at long last plugging the current oil spill, three U.S. Senators were maneuvering to attempt to prevent protection of the U.S. coastline from similar oil spills in the future. Yesterday, senators David Vitter, Roger Wicker and John Cornyn introduced S. 3588, a bill to place limitations on the current temporary moratorium on new offshore drilling in American waters.

Even after everything that’s happened in the Gulf of Mexico since Earth Day 2010, these Senators are still serving the interests of Big Oil above all else.

While most members of the House of Representatives used their summer vacation last week to meet with lobbyists and gather big amounts of money from the corporations and elite financial interests that those lobbyists represent, Representative William Lacy Clay did something with much more significant. Congressman Clay joined the coalition against the expansion of offshore drilling.

Clay signed his name as a co-sponsor of H.R. 5248, the No New Drilling Act. That legislation, if it becomes law, would ban the federal government from issuing new leases of offshore drilling for any form of mineral wealth, including crude oil and natural gas.

Thank you, Representative Clay, for your commitment to protecting America’s shores from an increased risk of another Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling disaster.

Imagine that you could save a cute animal and help prevent climate change at the same time. That’s just the opportunity that’s being missed by the United States Senate.

Last year, the House of Representative passed the Southern Sea Otter Recovery and Research Act, H. R. 556. The legislation, if passed, would spend the modest amount of 5 million dollars per year on research and projects to advance the protection of the sea otter along the Pacific Ocean coast.

Sea otters are cute, yes, but what do they matter to you, other than that level of superficial aesthetics?

Saving the sea otters would provide a financial savings as well, it turns out. According to a new study of the ecological role of sea otters in maintaining the kelp forest off the coast of California, the sea otters provide 700 million dollars worth of carbon sequestration, by preventing sea urchins from devouring the kelp, the largest underwater plant known anywhere in the world.

700 million dollars of service for 5 million dollars of investment sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Unfortunately, Senator John Rockefeller of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation doesn’t see things that way. As chair of the committee, Rockefeller has blocked consideration of the Southern Sea Otter Recovery and Research Act for over a year now.

It’s been a long time now since I wrote my Master’s thesis on the issue of corporal punishment in education. My research focused on identification of the arguments, both in favor and in opposition to corporal punishment, used by students seeking to become teachers. The thesis also included a literature review of other research into the topic, of course, and that included studies of corporal punishment’s efficacy. Back then, there were a few studies suggesting that corporal punishment had negative effects, but there wasn’t yet a solid body of research on the subject. There were, however, a good number of studies that showed no possibility of positive effects from corporal punishment, without a single peer-reviewed study showing a positive impact.

Nonetheless, across much of the United States, corporal punishment remains legal in public schools. That means that teachers and school administrators in many states are allowed to physically strike out at students, and use methods of inflicting physical pain as a form of punishment. In short, much of the USA still allows public schools to engage in low-grade forms of torture against students. In private schools, the regulations are even more lax.

Since I completed my degree, additional research has been conducted, and the results show that corporal punishment is associated with negative outcomes, such as lower IQ and involvement in sexual violence. Still, corporal punishment has remained legal across much of the United States. Despite the evidence of corporal punishment’s negative impacts, many Americans have an ideological attachment to the idea of using physical punishment.

It’s not the job of public schools to cater to citizens’ sadistic ideologies, however. It’s the job of public schools to provide students with an effective education. To that end, U.S. Representative Carolyn McCarthy has introduced the Ending Corporal Punishment in Schools Act, H.R. 5628, in Congress.

The legislation would ban the federal funding of educational institutions that have policies allowing corporal punishment for the purpose of punishment or behavior modification. Temporary physical restraint of a student, when necessary to prevent physical harm to other students, would still be allowed.

So far, 18 members of the House of Representatives have signed on as cosponsors to the Ending Corporal Punishment in Schools Act. They are:

Robert Andrews
Mike Capuano
Joe Courtney
Susan Davis
Raul Grijalva
Phil Hare
Ruben Hinojosa
Mazie Hirono
Rush Holt
Dennis Kucinich
Christopher Murphy
Bill Pascrell
Donald Payne
Jared Polis
Bobby Scott
Joe Sestak
Carol Shea-Porter
Lynn Woolsey

Yesterday, I started looking into a new Republican National Committee website called “Pelosi’s Puppets.” The website purports to disclose the names of 14 members of the House of Representatives “who take marching orders from their Puppet Master, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.” In a perverse twist, we learned that the very website accusing Democrats of puppetry commands its Republican followers to send out a series of text messages verbatim from a list and sets out the technology for Republican rank-and-file to do so automatically. You know, kind of like puppets. It’s a testimony to either the fortitude or the lassitude of the Republican rank-and-file that to date none of them have actually done so.

Today, we’ll start looking into the substance of the claims made on the “Pelosi’s Puppets” website. By clicking on any of the face’s of the so-called “Pelosi’s Puppets” in the House, you’ll be taken to a web page purporting to dish out details on the nature of that Representative’s puppet-like obedience to Nancy Pelosi’s legislative whims. Take, for example, the “Puppet” page for Representative Thomas Perriello of the 5th Congressional District of Virginia. On that page, the Republican Party asserts that Rep. Perriello “Voted With Nancy Pelosi 89.8% Of The Time.” A sources page for this claim provides the following detail to supposedly back up the claim:

Voted With Nancy Pelosi 89.8% Of The Time. (U.S. Congress Votes Database, Washington Post, Accessed 3/25/10, Based On 1113 Votes)

Two pieces of information in this “sourcing” should give you pause.

First, a check of the Washington Post “Congress Votes” database shows that the database does not provide information on the extent to which a legislator votes with Nancy Pelosi. The Washington Post database provides information on the percentage of the time in which a legislator votes with a majority of other members of his or her party. This is not the same thing.

You should keep in mind that this includes procedural votes such as attendance rolls to open a session, pro-forma party votes such as the election of the Speaker (with one candidate per party), symbolic votes such those honoring Dr. Martin Luther King and congratulating the Navy for naming a ship after Medgar Evers, and functionally insignificant votes such as those naming a Post Office after former House member Jim Kolbe. Many of these votes are overwhelmingly positive that representatives not only end up voting with majorities of their own party, but also with majorities of the opposite party. Taken together, these sorts of votes make up a majority of House votes, and that’s why the Washington Post database reports such a high frequency of “votes with party” actions. On average, as of today, Democratic members of the House vote with their party 92.3% of the time. Rep. Tom Perriello has voted with his party 90.1% of the time, less than average. If one takes voting with one’s party as a sign of “puppetry,” then the data show that Tom Perriello is less of a “puppet” than most of his fellow Democrat.

But of course, the Republican Party website does not measure puppetry according to voting with party. The Republican Party website says that Tom Perriello is one of the 14 puppets of Nancy Pelosi because he “votes with Nancy Pelosi.” The website further declares that Perriello voted with Nancy Pelosi 89.8% of the time (it seems very real with the tenth-place digit, doesn’t it?) and that this figure is “Based On 1113 Votes.” This is the second piece of information that should give you pause. The Speaker of the House does not typically cast a roll-call vote on a measure at all unless the vote margin is expected to be very close. Indeed, a check of two distinct public sources of House roll call data for this 111th Congress (both current as of June 30, 2010) verifies that Nancy Pelosi has only cast 83 roll-call votes in the entire 111th Congress of 2009 and 2010 (71 “yea” votes, 9 “nay” votes, and 3 “present” votes). By simple mathematics, it is not at all possible for Tom Perriello to have voted with Nancy Pelosi 89.8% of the time “Based on 1113 Votes.” It’s simply impossible. It can’t have happened.

Let’s be generous with the Republican Party and assume that, in making their tabulations, the elephants in the room simply tossed out the 1,340 instances in the 111th Congress in which Nancy Pelosi did not cast a vote at all. That leaves 83 roll call votes, a very small and unrepresentative subset, from which to derive a “voted with Nancy Pelosi” percentage. Three of those votes were “present” votes on Nancy Pelosi’s part, and on each of these instances Tom Perriello also voted “present” (these were procedural votes). Do we count these as times in which “Tom Perriello voted with Nancy Pelosi,” even though they were meaningless votes? Even if we do, then Tom Perriello “voted with Nancy Pelosi” only 64 times out of 83 possible times, 77.1% of the time. If we don’t count those three meaningless “present” votes, then Tom Perriello “voted with Nancy Pelosi” only 61 times out of 80 possible times, 76.2% of the time.

Does a member of a political party voting with his party’s leader three out of four times, and against his party leader one of out four times, count as “puppetry,” or as pretty much what you’d expect considering that party members tend to agree with one another? The latter conclusion seems much more reasonable. And regardless of which conclusion you draw from these figures, they are quite a bit lower than the 89.8% claim made by the Republican National Committee.

In conclusion, in making its “puppetry” accusations the Republican National Committee draws up numbers that look like accurate statistics, but that are demonstrably incorrect by a variety of standards, creating the appearance of accuracy by citing sources that don’t actually provide the needed source information.

The “Pelosi’s Puppets” percentages are plainly puckey.

Senator Robert Byrd is dead.

Was he a master of legislative procedure? Yes. Was he a war hawk? Yes. Did he vehemently oppose the war in Iraq? Yes. Was he a bigot? Yes. Did he oppose civil rights legislation? Yes. Did he support civil rights legislation? Yes. Did he deliver thundering speeches in defense of the U.S. Constitution? Yes. Did he oppose constitutional protections for people accused of crimes? Yes.

The career of Robert Byrd is a passing reminder to us that reflexively supporting members of a political party is no way to obtain a particular policy result. Even supporting a particular politician no matter what is likely to lead to inconsistent results — through his life, Byrd was all over the map (except when it came to the delivery of pork, which he diverted almost exclusively to West Virginia). The life of Robert Byrd teaches us that if we want to see a policy enacted, we should support that policy first. We should let our support for parties and politicians be contingent on their actions at a time and not stay consistent over time.

Last week, Congressman Frank Pallone stood before the House of Representatives and gave a speech designed to serve the political needs of the Democratic Party. Pallone stated:

“The gulf coast catastrophe underscores the need for comprehensive energy and climate reform to rein in Big Oil and reduce our reliance on dirty and foreign fuels. For too long under the Bush administration, Big Oil was able to operate with complete disregard for safety; and instead of standing up for the people, businesses and the environment, House Republicans continued to side with Big Oil.

The Democratic-led Congress is moving America in a new direction for energy independence, working to lower costs for consumers, making America more secure, and launching a cleaner, smarter, more cost-effective energy future that creates millions of clean energy jobs and reduces global warming.”

As inspiring as Pallone’s words may be to Democratic partisans, they ignored the legislative reality of the oil spill and climate bills moving through the U.S. Congress. The truth is that Democrats in both houses of Congress are maneuvering to protect the interests of Big Oil, rather than working for effective energy policy change.

Climate legislation currently being promoted in the U.S. Senate, which House Democrats would have to reconcile themselves to in order for any climate legislation to be passed at all, would not reduce the amount of offshore drilling currently taking place along America’s coasts. The Democratic climate bill would expand offshore drilling. That wouldn’t help America confront climate change, and it certainly wouldn’t make our nation safer from the oil industry’s risky adventures out on the Outer Continental Shelf.

In the House, Democrats have failed to move forward with strong legislation to deal with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. One of the few bills that would provide a reasonable degree of protection from a repeat of the Deepwater Horizon calamity is the No New Drilling Act, which would ban new offshore drilling leases. Yet, the House Democratic leadership has withheld its support from the No New Drilling Act. Frank Pallone surely knows this – he wrote the No New Drilling Act himself.

What a shame it is that the congressional Democratic reality does not match the fantasy of activism described in Frank Pallone’s speech.

Did you know that despite its record profits, Exxon Mobil didn’t actually pay any federal income tax last year?

Did you know that Vermont Senator Bernard Sanders introduced a legislative amendment that would have closed tax loopholes for big oil corporations like Exxon Mobil, required oil giants to pay income taxes like the American people do, dedicated $10 billion of the proceeds to retrofitting public structures for energy efficiency and dedicated a further $25 billion to deficit reduction?

Did you know that not one Senate Republican voted for Sanders’ amendment? Well, that goes without saying. But did you know that 21 Senate Democrats the Senate Republicans to vote down Sanders’ amendment?

The following are the 21 Senate Democrats who voted to keep the big oil corporations from paying income tax:

Daniel Akaka (HI)
Max Baucus (MT)
Evan Bayh (IN)
Mark Begich (AK)
Michael Bennet (CO)
Jeff Bingaman (NM)
Kent Conrad (ND)
Christopher Dodd (CT)
Byron Dorgan (ND)
Kay Hagan (NC)
Daniel Inouye (HI)
John Kerry (MA)
Mary Landrieu (LA)
Blanche Lincoln (AR)
Ben Nelson (NE)
Mark Pryor (AR)
Jon Tester (MT)
Mark Udall (CO)
Tom Udall (NM)
Mark Warner (VA)
James Webb (VA)

I hereby nominate Dennis Kucinich to become the chair of a new congressional caucus: The Big Talk Caucus. Members of this caucus would be those U.S. Representatives who frequently give speeches on issues, but then fail to introduce or support legislation related to those issues.

Last week, Kucinich gave a nice little speech in which he called for action on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Kucinich wondered, “What if the BP gusher in the gulf is unstoppable? This is a challenging question which is making its way through various blogs. What if millions of barrels of oil continue to flow uncontrolled from the hole in the seabed? We should be preparing now for a worst-case scenario. We should be mobilizing our Nation now, developing new, comprehensive plans for sustainable, alternative energy, for environmental protection, for public health, for preservation of species, for security, for rebuilding our economy and repairing commerce. We should be challenging our fellow citizens and ourselves to take part in charting a new course for our Nation, towards creating an America which has unlimited energy because it has unlimited vision, unclouded by greed or partisan advantage.”

Yes! We should be mobilizing our nation now! Not later. Now! Like Representative Kucinich is doing!

Uh, what is Dennis Kucinich doing to mobilize our nation in response to the offshore drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico?

Nothing. Dennis Kucinich has done nothing but get up and give speeches. Anybody can give speeches. Members of Congress have the power to pass laws that actually change things.

Kucinich has not introduced any legislation that has anything to do with the Gulf oil spill. Neither has Kucinich co-sponsored any such legislation.

There are plenty of phony bills in Congress right now that only provide window dressing on BP’s oily mess down along our nation’s southern border. However, there are some good bills that could use Kucinich’s support.

One of these bills is H.R. 5248, the No New Drilling Act. This legislation would ban new offshore drilling, if it were passed. That’s strong protection of America’s coastline from a dirty, inefficient, dangerous source of energy that we don’t really need.

Kucinich is not listed among the bill’s co-sponsors. Why? All Kucinich has to do to co-sponsor a bill is take a few minutes to get his staff to fill out some short paperwork. Why won’t Kucinich take that small effort to support the No New Drilling Act?

It isn’t as if Kucinich hasn’t been working on other projects, of course. On May 25, Congressman Kucinich did introduce a new piece of legislation to the House of Representatives: H.R. 5390. And what would H.R. 5390 do? It would “designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 13301 Smith Road in Cleveland, Ohio, as the ‘David John Donafee Post Office Building’.”

Kucinich has chosen to rename a post office building instead of grappling with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. That’s not what I call mobilizing a nation.