Random Thoughts on Other Notable Headlines of the Day Issue XLV

December 8, 2009  

Lawmaker Controls Purse Strings of Department That’s Investigating Him

Democratic Representative Alan Mollohan is under investigation for his “finances and nonprofits he created and helped fund in his district”. Nothing unusual about one of our lawmakers being investigated, as that seems to be the environment they’ve created for themselves. But there’s a little twist to this one — Mollohan controls the budget for the Justice Department — the department that’s investigating him.

In 2000 Mollohan had assets worth $562,000; four years later those assets had grown to $6.3 million. Not bad for a $174,000 default salary for a Representative. How much do you make, and how much did your assets increase over the past four years? Mollohan’s increased by 1,021 percent. Of course, if you are one of the 15 most corrupt members of Congress, you, too, could probably enjoy those kind of gains.

Cutting Taxes Is GOP’s Answer to “Everything”

Truthout recently published an article by Art Levine. Gingrich, Palin, GOP Offer Magic Jobs Solution: More Tax Cuts Now! In case you haven’t heard of it yet, it’s called trickle-down-economics. This mirage, or slight-of-hand, has been written about so much until hardly no one pays attention to it any more, which is really not a good thing. This idea of ‘give the corporations more money so they will create more jobs’ has been disproven so many times that only the most arrogant of the GOP would still preach it. But we commoners should never forget it — it’s cost the common working folks trillions of dollars over the past 30 years, and given much of a free ride to many corporations.

Obama and Afghanistan

“You’ve got to make decisions based on information and not emotions” — President Obama’s statement when deciding on what answer for Afghanistan. By comparison, President Bush said “I’m not a textbook player, I’m a gut player”. Joel Achenbach, for The Washington Post, printed these two quotes in his article on the Afghanistan problem that Obama faced.

Achenbach quotes retired Army colonel, who served under Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, as saying “He’s establishing his decision-making process as being almost diametrically the opposite of the previous administration. [The Bush-Cheney style was] cowboy-like, typical Texas, typical Wyoming, and extremely secretive”.