Madame Virginia Foxx voted FOR (natch!) H.R. 3824 yesterday to weaken the "Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act."
We're not bothered so much by provisions in this law that would require the government to compensate property owners, if measures to protect species thwart development plans. Hell, the government is shelling out money to private interests for everything else these days!
What is much more bothersome is the provision in the law that would give political appointees the power to make some scientific determinations and stop "critical habitat" designations.
Giving compensation to landowners for loss of development is one thing. Turning over the mechanism for designating endangered and threatened species and their habitats to political hacks ... well, that's what we hate most about this present regime. They've politicized science. Why not endangered species too?
All of this for the moment is on hold, since the U.S. Senate has passed no version of this turn-back-the-clocks legislation, and the man in charge of writing it for the Senate, Sen. Lincoln Chafee, is not at all in favor of the House's approach.
Friday, September 30, 2005
Landmarks in Superior Morality
"But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." William Bennett, former Education Secretary and author, "The Book of Virtues," speaking yesterday on his radio show, "Morning in America" (source: WashPost, today).
The Fun Is Watching
What were we saying yesterday about Tom DeLay's operating like an imprisoned crime boss? Check out the WashPost this a.m.: "As DeLay fights charges that he was involved in a fundraising conspiracy, [House Speaker Denny] Hastert told him that he will remain among the speaker's closest advisers. Significantly, DeLay's large staff will remain on the majority leader's payroll -- working for [Rep. Roy] Blunt, but also in position to keep watch on him."
Trying to track where Madame Virginia Foxx stands among all the in-fighters becomes somewhat interesting, though all eyes are on DeLay's replacement, Roy Blunt of Missouri: "...there were clear indications that he is rubbing some of his colleagues the wrong way. Several lawmakers, who said they could speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity, said the 55-year-old former teacher has a reputation for being too overtly ambitious, and must work hard to win over skeptical colleagues. 'He's the kind of guy always looking over your shoulder when you are talking to him,' looking for something better, a top House Republican leader said."
Blunt is being allowed to hold simultaneously his Majority Whip position along with DeLay's vacated Majority Leader position. Who died and made him king? conservative rebels want to know. But Denny Hastert has apparently persuaded his restless troops to allow Blunt to run things at least until January, to see if DeLay can return.
Foxx has a history as an avid in-fighter when she was an academic administrator at Appalachian State University. She's bound to be in that rumble, shivving SOMEBODY.
Trying to track where Madame Virginia Foxx stands among all the in-fighters becomes somewhat interesting, though all eyes are on DeLay's replacement, Roy Blunt of Missouri: "...there were clear indications that he is rubbing some of his colleagues the wrong way. Several lawmakers, who said they could speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity, said the 55-year-old former teacher has a reputation for being too overtly ambitious, and must work hard to win over skeptical colleagues. 'He's the kind of guy always looking over your shoulder when you are talking to him,' looking for something better, a top House Republican leader said."
Blunt is being allowed to hold simultaneously his Majority Whip position along with DeLay's vacated Majority Leader position. Who died and made him king? conservative rebels want to know. But Denny Hastert has apparently persuaded his restless troops to allow Blunt to run things at least until January, to see if DeLay can return.
Foxx has a history as an avid in-fighter when she was an academic administrator at Appalachian State University. She's bound to be in that rumble, shivving SOMEBODY.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Matrix Theory and Intelligent Design
"For all we know, the world may have been created five minutes ago, and we've all been implanted with memory chips." --Robert Pennock, a philosopher of science at Michigan State University and a witness for the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District, under cross examination by the defendant's attorney (for who's who in this Darwin Revisited case, click here), quoted by the York Daily Record.
For the context of that comment, we depend on Mike Argento, writing in the same paper cited above: "[Pennock] got into what some people believe.... Young Earth creationists, for instance, believe our planet is between 6,000 and 10,000 years old, based on analysis of Scripture. Sure, you can believe that, Pennock said. But it ignores the evidence or claims that the evidence was placed there by God to fool us, which, when you think about, is a kind of odd way to describe the deity, as some kind of cosmic prankster. And that's when Pennock unloaded this: 'For all we know, the world may have been created five minutes ago, and we've all been implanted with memory chips.' "
So far in the Pennsylvania Darwin trial, Intelligent Design is taking a royal pasting, O my brethren.
Can't wait for the defendants to put on their case.
For the context of that comment, we depend on Mike Argento, writing in the same paper cited above: "[Pennock] got into what some people believe.... Young Earth creationists, for instance, believe our planet is between 6,000 and 10,000 years old, based on analysis of Scripture. Sure, you can believe that, Pennock said. But it ignores the evidence or claims that the evidence was placed there by God to fool us, which, when you think about, is a kind of odd way to describe the deity, as some kind of cosmic prankster. And that's when Pennock unloaded this: 'For all we know, the world may have been created five minutes ago, and we've all been implanted with memory chips.' "
So far in the Pennsylvania Darwin trial, Intelligent Design is taking a royal pasting, O my brethren.
Can't wait for the defendants to put on their case.
The Hammer and the Madame
Trying to figure out Madame Virginia Foxx's relationship with Tom DeLay, like certain other metaphysical enigmas, can cause me mild fainting spells. DeLay is precisely the sort of cocky little male dictator that Foxx used to despise. Probably still does. But that $10,000 DeLay gave her for her campaign does a lot to sweeten spite. Hell, if she played THOSE cards right, that spigot might gush: DeLay gave over $40,000 to her fellow North Carolina Republican Congressman Robin Hayes. Hmmmm ... one might live so long.
Especially if one did as one was told. Foxx has voted with DeLay 96% of the time. All those big government spending bills ... YES YES YES, moaned the Madame, who has conducted her long public life being as stingy a conservative as breathes air on earth.
At the same time, she quietly joins the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the don't-spend-a-damn-dime caucus of arch-conservative House Republicans led by Mike Pence (R-Ind.). Foxx's name mysteriously does not show up on the membership list of the RSC, but a call to her office confirms she's joined up.
Foxx is a total back-bencher, and not the most sociable soul, so the extent to which DeLay even KNOWS her is open to speculation ... knows her or cares about her views, unless there's a close vote. But there's plenty of evidence that DeLay got good and mad at her RSC buddy Mike Pence during the height of the Hurricane Katrina crisis (see below), and it was at that precise time that Madame Foxx decided to stick her sore thumb waaay up in the air, voting NO on Katrina aid. Might have gotten Mr. DeLay's attention.
Mike Pence, according to Robert Novak, got DeLay's attention and got slapped down for it, hard, Sept. 20th, for criticizing "the leadership" for their big-spending ways. Pence had been in the press on the 19th, confidently announcing that Congress would surely come to its senses and put a hold on certain highway spending and the Medicare prescription drug plan, to offset the $60 billion (so far) going to the hurricane zone. According to both Novak and Dana Milbank in the WashPost, Pence tucked tail. He and the RSC had been reticent before this about publicly criticizing Republican leadership, but the dam seemed to be leaking.
And here comes Foxx and 10 other conservatives (all members of RSC? probably), voting against the second Katrina aid bill. For that stunning vote, was she on the receiving end of some of that Pence-style punishment? One wonders. This sentence appeared in the WashPost on Tuesday this week: "In private meetings last week, GOP leaders sharply criticized rank-and-file Republicans for taking issue with the surge in spending....? Virginia Foxx may have gotten cussed. By MEN, at least some of whom are less capable than she. Wonder how that felt.
Pence and Foxx and the rest of the conservative mavericks, as it turned out, only had to wait mere nanoseconds before DeLay was indicted and officially removed from a position of authority over them. Don't you know they're so secretly relieved that ... they're developing pimples!
For DeLay, the politics of Katrina relief, particularly to the Texas portion of the hurricane zone, goes to the root of his ethical problems. He's indicted for funneling corporate money into the project to redistrict Texas to give himself an additional half-dozen Republican yes-men in Congress. Two of those new yes-men, freshmen Louie Gohmert and Ted Poe, represent districts in the hurricane zone, and they'll have to face a potentially pissed off electorate next year. DeLay's determined to pour on the money to save 'em.
"This leadership group is so out of touch, it's unbelievable," an unnamed Republican lawmaker was quoted as saying in the WashPost (link above). Could well be Foxx's view of that situation, though not necessarily her quote. I'd lay money on it.
Which begs the question: Why did she vote with DeLay 96% of the time? Opportunism? Selling out one's values for filthy lucre? Or pure old human cowardice? Tom DeLay is, after all, a thug who scares plenty of people.
Especially if one did as one was told. Foxx has voted with DeLay 96% of the time. All those big government spending bills ... YES YES YES, moaned the Madame, who has conducted her long public life being as stingy a conservative as breathes air on earth.
At the same time, she quietly joins the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the don't-spend-a-damn-dime caucus of arch-conservative House Republicans led by Mike Pence (R-Ind.). Foxx's name mysteriously does not show up on the membership list of the RSC, but a call to her office confirms she's joined up.
Foxx is a total back-bencher, and not the most sociable soul, so the extent to which DeLay even KNOWS her is open to speculation ... knows her or cares about her views, unless there's a close vote. But there's plenty of evidence that DeLay got good and mad at her RSC buddy Mike Pence during the height of the Hurricane Katrina crisis (see below), and it was at that precise time that Madame Foxx decided to stick her sore thumb waaay up in the air, voting NO on Katrina aid. Might have gotten Mr. DeLay's attention.
Mike Pence, according to Robert Novak, got DeLay's attention and got slapped down for it, hard, Sept. 20th, for criticizing "the leadership" for their big-spending ways. Pence had been in the press on the 19th, confidently announcing that Congress would surely come to its senses and put a hold on certain highway spending and the Medicare prescription drug plan, to offset the $60 billion (so far) going to the hurricane zone. According to both Novak and Dana Milbank in the WashPost, Pence tucked tail. He and the RSC had been reticent before this about publicly criticizing Republican leadership, but the dam seemed to be leaking.
And here comes Foxx and 10 other conservatives (all members of RSC? probably), voting against the second Katrina aid bill. For that stunning vote, was she on the receiving end of some of that Pence-style punishment? One wonders. This sentence appeared in the WashPost on Tuesday this week: "In private meetings last week, GOP leaders sharply criticized rank-and-file Republicans for taking issue with the surge in spending....? Virginia Foxx may have gotten cussed. By MEN, at least some of whom are less capable than she. Wonder how that felt.
Pence and Foxx and the rest of the conservative mavericks, as it turned out, only had to wait mere nanoseconds before DeLay was indicted and officially removed from a position of authority over them. Don't you know they're so secretly relieved that ... they're developing pimples!
For DeLay, the politics of Katrina relief, particularly to the Texas portion of the hurricane zone, goes to the root of his ethical problems. He's indicted for funneling corporate money into the project to redistrict Texas to give himself an additional half-dozen Republican yes-men in Congress. Two of those new yes-men, freshmen Louie Gohmert and Ted Poe, represent districts in the hurricane zone, and they'll have to face a potentially pissed off electorate next year. DeLay's determined to pour on the money to save 'em.
"This leadership group is so out of touch, it's unbelievable," an unnamed Republican lawmaker was quoted as saying in the WashPost (link above). Could well be Foxx's view of that situation, though not necessarily her quote. I'd lay money on it.
Which begs the question: Why did she vote with DeLay 96% of the time? Opportunism? Selling out one's values for filthy lucre? Or pure old human cowardice? Tom DeLay is, after all, a thug who scares plenty of people.
Blunt Force Trauma
The WashPost this a.m. confirms what was going around the Internet yesterday ... that Tom DeLay intends to continue exerting control over the Republican caucus in the U.S. House even after stepping down officially as Majority Leader ... rather the way a jailed don can continue to run his mob.
According to the Post, DeLay is keeping his Majority Leader's office in the Capitol, rather than relinquishing it to the new Leader, Roy Blunt of Missouri.
The other interesting fact confirmed by the Post is that DeLay had wanted to install David Dreier of California in his job: "What [DeLay] and [House Speaker Denny] Hastert wanted was a timeserver, someone to hold the job but with no ambitions to stay in it. And they had someone in mind. This week, an aide to the speaker approached Rep. David Dreier about his role in a post-DeLay caucus. Dreier, a congenial Californian who has loyally served the GOP leadership as Rules Committee chairman, expressed interest in helping Hastert."
Word leaked quickly yesterday that DeLay had hand-picked Dreier. Approximately three seconds later, Mr. Dreier's transparent but still deeply closeted homosexuality became a raging topic. According to the Post story, Republican conservatives in the House staged a revolt against DeLay's choice of Dreier, alleging he was too "soft" (hee-hee), so Blunt, the Majority Whip with his own ethics problems, gets the job.
Does it take a crystal ball to see why DeLay wanted the "congenial" Dreier? He was going to make him his bitch and continue to run the House as he has. Blunt will perhaps be less pliable, though Lord knows the House Republican showers are a dangerous place to drop the soap.
According to the Post, DeLay is keeping his Majority Leader's office in the Capitol, rather than relinquishing it to the new Leader, Roy Blunt of Missouri.
The other interesting fact confirmed by the Post is that DeLay had wanted to install David Dreier of California in his job: "What [DeLay] and [House Speaker Denny] Hastert wanted was a timeserver, someone to hold the job but with no ambitions to stay in it. And they had someone in mind. This week, an aide to the speaker approached Rep. David Dreier about his role in a post-DeLay caucus. Dreier, a congenial Californian who has loyally served the GOP leadership as Rules Committee chairman, expressed interest in helping Hastert."
Word leaked quickly yesterday that DeLay had hand-picked Dreier. Approximately three seconds later, Mr. Dreier's transparent but still deeply closeted homosexuality became a raging topic. According to the Post story, Republican conservatives in the House staged a revolt against DeLay's choice of Dreier, alleging he was too "soft" (hee-hee), so Blunt, the Majority Whip with his own ethics problems, gets the job.
Does it take a crystal ball to see why DeLay wanted the "congenial" Dreier? He was going to make him his bitch and continue to run the House as he has. Blunt will perhaps be less pliable, though Lord knows the House Republican showers are a dangerous place to drop the soap.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Foxx & the DeLay Gravy Train
Virgina Foxx:
Contributions received from Tom DeLay's ARMPAC: $10,000
Voting percentage with DeLay: 96%
Contributions received from Tom DeLay's ARMPAC: $10,000
Voting percentage with DeLay: 96%
Foxx and the Republican Study Committee
Down-thread, a comment was posted saying I should do my homework before publishing a statement that Virginia Foxx is not a member of the uber-conservative Republican Study Committee. Turns out she is, but it took a call to her Washington office to confirm it. The official website for the RSC does not list her, though it lists a hundred other Republican congresspeople. I know this because I had done my homework. But I'm also glad to have this small but significant fact settled and readers willing to correct me.
Details about "Operation Offset," devised by the RSC, continue to tumble out and make for interesting analysis. Matthew Yglesias at The American Prospect points out that this "hit-list" "partakes heavily of a much-beloved Republican tactic: using phase-ins to obscure what's really happening. In the first year, 78 percent of the cuts come from delaying the implementation of the scheduled Medicare prescription-drug benefit and rolling back earmarks attached to the recent highway bill. Both are genuinely wasteful, though neither is 100 percent waste, so both proposals look to be on a good path. Both, however, are one-time savings, not enduring elements of the budget. In year two of the plan, for example, 0 percent of the cuts come from those measures. In year three, it's also zero percent. Year four? Zero percent. You get the idea. By the time you look at the full 10-year picture, only about 10 percent of the cuts are coming from these wasteful endeavors. Almost half, meanwhile, is accounted for by the cryptic 'Block Grant Medicaid Acute Services.' What this means is that instead of providing an amount of money for emergency medical services equal to the amount necessary to provide acute services to everyone who's eligible, the government will appropriate too little and just let poor people not get treatment when they're sick."
Here's the line that resonates, like a tuning fork struck on Virginia Foxx's hard hard heart: "Say what you will about the idea of making sure poor people get treatment when they fall ill, but this isn't 'waste' by any standard definition. It's just something conservatives don't care about."
Details about "Operation Offset," devised by the RSC, continue to tumble out and make for interesting analysis. Matthew Yglesias at The American Prospect points out that this "hit-list" "partakes heavily of a much-beloved Republican tactic: using phase-ins to obscure what's really happening. In the first year, 78 percent of the cuts come from delaying the implementation of the scheduled Medicare prescription-drug benefit and rolling back earmarks attached to the recent highway bill. Both are genuinely wasteful, though neither is 100 percent waste, so both proposals look to be on a good path. Both, however, are one-time savings, not enduring elements of the budget. In year two of the plan, for example, 0 percent of the cuts come from those measures. In year three, it's also zero percent. Year four? Zero percent. You get the idea. By the time you look at the full 10-year picture, only about 10 percent of the cuts are coming from these wasteful endeavors. Almost half, meanwhile, is accounted for by the cryptic 'Block Grant Medicaid Acute Services.' What this means is that instead of providing an amount of money for emergency medical services equal to the amount necessary to provide acute services to everyone who's eligible, the government will appropriate too little and just let poor people not get treatment when they're sick."
Here's the line that resonates, like a tuning fork struck on Virginia Foxx's hard hard heart: "Say what you will about the idea of making sure poor people get treatment when they fall ill, but this isn't 'waste' by any standard definition. It's just something conservatives don't care about."
The Pennsylvania Monkey Trial
The Pennsylvania ACLU has set up a blog, "Speaking Freely," specifically to keep up with the daily testimony and cross-examination in the landmark Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District, the suit by parents of school-age children seeking to prove that "Intelligent Design" is religion dogmatism in new clothes and has no place in science classes. This site looks like it'll be the best source for what will likely be a long slog.
Among the reader comments on "Speaking Freely" is someone's apt analogy: that standing in front of a 10th grade science class and announcing that evolution is just a theory, equivalent to other worthy theories like "Intelligent Design," would be like opening a 20th-century history class by saying that some people don't believe there was ever a Holocaust during WWII, and we need to study both "theories," or that some people believe the so-called "moon landing" in 1969 was faked, and we have to give equal time to the doubters.
Among the reader comments on "Speaking Freely" is someone's apt analogy: that standing in front of a 10th grade science class and announcing that evolution is just a theory, equivalent to other worthy theories like "Intelligent Design," would be like opening a 20th-century history class by saying that some people don't believe there was ever a Holocaust during WWII, and we need to study both "theories," or that some people believe the so-called "moon landing" in 1969 was faked, and we have to give equal time to the doubters.
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