Fact filled article on why the current Congress is the worst ever.

[GePap]

Any of the critics of Oerdin have anything to disprove the article, or cast doubts on what it says?

Just curious, seems people care more about *****ing about nonsense like "that poster is biased"!! OMG!!! than actually, I don't know,. talking about the state of Congress.

[Kuciwalker]

Any of the critics of Oerdin have anything to disprove the article, or cast doubts on what it says?

Given that I haven't even bothered to read it, no. But given other comments, it seems like there's no point to reading it anyway.

And you can't exactly complain, since I just mailed in an absentee ballot with a vote for James Webb, Democrat, for Senate.

[Verto]

Whether or not the article has a bias, it certainly brings up valid points and startling stories.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Any of the critics of Oerdin have anything to disprove the article, or cast doubts on what it says?

Given that I haven't even bothered to read it, no. But given other comments, it seems like there's no point to reading it anyway.

And you can't exactly complain, since I just mailed in an absentee ballot with a vote for James Webb, Democrat, for Senate.

Sorry, but what does you voting for a democrat have to do with ignoring the article and its points?

The anti-Oerdin people are even more boring, because at least oerdin posts something NEW for people to read. The trolls makes the very same complaint. Its even LESS original.

[Asher]

The problem isn't with the article, it's how Oerdin frames it. As an artsy guy, maybe this isn't obvious to you...but when you post things saying "this is from a far right-wing newspaper", when it's not, or you post an article saying "This isn't filled with partisan hackery", when it is, you set yourself up for being ignored or dismissed outright.

[Kuciwalker]

The anti-Oerdin people are even more boring, because at least oerdin posts something NEW for people to read.

That's the thing: he doesn't post anything new.

[Sikander]

The first paragraph told me it was drivel. Perhaps if someone wants to break down the actual information in the article into the 50 or so words it would take to communicate it I'll have a look at that.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

The anti-Oerdin people are even more boring, because at least oerdin posts something NEW for people to read.

That's the thing: he doesn't post anything new.

Pot, meet kettle. Since when do you ever post anything new? All you do is take one-line potshots.

-Arrian

[Ari Rahikkala]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
tldr

[Verto]

Last year, Sensenbrenner became apoplectic when Democrats who wanted to hold a hearing on the Patriot Act invoked a little-known rule that required him to let them have one.

"Naturally, he scheduled it for something like 9 a.m. on a Friday when Congress wasn't in session, hoping that no one would show," recalls a Democratic staffer who attended the hearing. "But we got a pretty good turnout anyway."

Sensenbrenner kept trying to gavel the hearing to a close, but Democrats again pointed to the rules, which said they had a certain amount of time to examine their witnesses. When they refused to stop the proceedings, the chairman did something unprecedented: He simply picked up his gavel and walked out.

"He was like a kid at the playground," the staffer says. And just in case anyone missed the point, Sensenbrenner shut off the lights and cut the microphones on his way out of the room.

[Verto]

GOP chairmen routinely call a meeting, bring the press in for a photo op and then promptly shut the proceedings down. "Take a picture, wait five minutes, gavel it out -- all for show" is how one Democratic staffer described the process. Then, amazingly, the Republicans sneak off to hold the real conference, forcing the Democrats to turn amateur detective and go searching the Capitol grounds for the meeting. "More often than not, we're trying to figure out where the conference is," says one House aide.

In one legendary incident, Rep. Charles Rangel went searching for a secret conference being held by Thomas. When he found the room where Republicans closeted themselves, he knocked and knocked on the door, but no one answered. A House aide compares the scene to the famous "Land Shark" skit from Saturday Night Live, with everyone hiding behind the door afraid to make a sound. "Rangel was the land shark, I guess," the aide jokes. But the real punch line came when Thomas finally opened the door. "This meeting," he informed Rangel, "is only open to the coalition of the willing."

[Verto]

One of the most depressing examples of one-party rule is the Patriot Act. The measure was originally crafted in classic bipartisan fashion in the Judiciary Committee, where it passed by a vote of thirty-six to zero, with famed liberals like Barney Frank and Jerrold Nadler saying aye. But when the bill was sent to the Rules Committee, the Republicans simply chucked the approved bill and replaced it with a new, far more repressive version, apparently written at the direction of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

"They just rewrote the whole bill," says Rep. James McGovern, a minority member of the Rules Committee. "All that committee work was just for show."

[Verto]

In 1977, when Democrats held a majority in the House, eighty-five percent of all bills were open to amendment. But by 1994, the last year Democrats ran the House, that number had dropped to thirty percent -- and Republicans were seriously pissed. "You know what the closed rule means," Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida thundered on the House floor. "It means no discussion, no amendments. That is profoundly undemocratic." When Republicans took control of the House, they vowed to throw off the gag rules imposed by Democrats. On opening day of the 104th Congress, then-Rules Committee chairman Gerald Solomon announced his intention to institute free debate on the floor. "Instead of having seventy percent closed rules," he declared, "we are going to have seventy percent open and unrestricted rules."

How has Solomon fared? Of the 111 rules introduced in the first session of this Congress, only twelve were open. Of those, eleven were appropriations bills, which are traditionally open. That left just one open vote -- H. Res. 255, the Federal Deposit Insurance Reform Act of 2005.

In the second session of this Congress? Not a single open rule, outside of appropriation votes. Under the Republicans, amendable bills have been a genuine Washington rarity, the upside-down eight-leafed clover of legislative politics.

[Verto]

In the Sixties and Seventies, Congress met an average of 162 days a year. In the Eighties and Nineties, the average went down to 139 days. This year, the second session of the 109th Congress will set the all-time record for fewest days worked by a U.S. Congress: ninety-three. That means that House members will collect their $165,000 paychecks for only three months of actual work.

[Verto]

Republicans in the Clinton years spent more than $35 million investigating the administration. The total amount of taxpayer funds spent, when independent counsels are taken into account, was more than $150 million. Included in that number was $2.2 million to investigate former HUD secretary Henry Cisneros for lying about improper payments he made to a mistress. In contrast, today's Congress spent barely half a million dollars investigating the outright fraud and government bungling that followed Hurricane Katrina, the largest natural disaster in American history.