As of this moment, the House GOP is fighting to raise taxes on America’s middle class right at the start of their big election year. Bold move.
Last week, the Kentucky’s Congressional delegation split along party lines, with Republicans Rogers, Whitfield, Davis and Guthrie voting for the XL Pipeline and slashing unemployment benefits while Yarmuth and Chandler voted against. Alessi has some fun video of the proceedings — including Geoff Davis getting his set straight by Sander Levin, as well as John Yarmuth’s floor address. Chandler… didn’t say much, but a good vote for him as 10 of his Blue Dogs jumped ship.
Meanwhile, Quiet Ben’s got a new angry bird lashing out at him, this one in the form of Emily Shelton, founder of the Boone County Tea Party, posting at the Tea Party Patriots website (which has a lovely social network built in… here’s Emily’s wall… and if you’d like to know more about TPP, you can start at SourceWatch).
Back on November 24th, Shelton attacked Chandler’s shifting stance on environmental regulations, seemingly as miffed by his sometime-support of Tea Party initiatives as many of Ben’s left-leaning constituents.
She then pushed Tea Panderer, Garlandy Barr:
According to Lexington, Ky. attorney Garland “Andy” Barr who narrowly lost the House race to Chandler in 2010 and is planning on running against him again in 2012, the challenge for Chandler is that he’s part of the problem. “He has voted continuously to increase the fat by supporting failed policies. He voted for cap-and-trade legislation that would create a vast Soviet-style bureaucracy, doubling energy prices and costing Kentuckians over 35,000 jobs. In a half-hearted epiphany, Chandler now concedes that some regulations may be ‘a bit excessive,’ hedging that ‘many regulations are ones we need,’ and ‘regulations can serve a good purpose.’ If Chandler actually meant what he said [when he distanced himself from President Obama’s economic agenda], he would actively oppose the president’s regulatory agenda.”
Regulations, bad! Clean water, bad! Clean air, bad! Ben Chandler is a Soviet!
Way to go, Andy. Your newborn has a great world to look forward to with you toeing dumbass lines like that. Obviously you know better… but pander away.
Shelton returned to hit Chandler again on December 16th, writing about Chandler’s wishy-washy Tea Party record… sometimes he’s with them, sometimes he’s against them.
Once Again Shelton — who, it should be noted, isn’t actually listed as the “author” of these articles, just a “contributing editor” of them — gets a private audience with Andy Barr:
“It is unconscionable that at a time when the labor force is shrinking and more than 13 million Americans are still looking for work, Ben Chandler continues to oppose sensible regulatory reform, like the REINS Act, which would give Congress the ability to protect the American people from job killing regulations,” said Andy Barr, the 2012 Republican candidate for Congress in Kentucky’s Sixth Congressional District.
Barr, a part-time instructor of Constitutional Law, also noted that the REINS Act would reinvigorate the non-delegation doctrine, a corollary to the separation of powers doctrine, which prohibits Congress from delegating unfettered legislative authority to the Executive Branch.
Unconscionable, huh, Andy?
You know what else the Geoff Davis/Rand Paul REINS Act will do?
This (PDF):
The REINS Act would make it almost impossible to set standards critical to ensuring we have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. Blocking these public health protections would lead to tens of thousands of deaths, illnesses, and hospital visits, especially among children and the elderly. For example, blocking long-overdue standards to limit mercury emissions from power plants, industrial boilers, and process heaters for just one year could result in up to 23,500 premature deaths.
And this:
To prevent lead poisoning in children, in 2007, the Consumer Product Safety Commission promulgated regulations prohibiting lead in cribs, toys, and other products children come into contact with regularly. If REINS became law, just one branch of Congress could block these sorts of life-saving regulations.
And this:
In 2006, more than 200 illnesses and three deaths were linked to bagged spinach contaminated with E. coli. In 2008, 1,400 people were infected with salmonella from serrano peppers grown on a contaminated farm in Mexico. In recent weeks, listeria contamination has swept through sixteen states. In order to protect the American public from food contamination, Congress passed a law requiring that large farms’ produce handling be regulated, and an inspection system for foreign farms put in place, by 2013. The REINS Act would make it easy for any industry interest to block new regulations, regardless of what experts or the regulatory record might say.
Says the League of Women Voters:
Let us be absolutely clear: sacrificing tens of thousands of American lives will not create more jobs. Poisoning the air our children and our families breathe will not stimulate the economy. Burdening the American people with hundreds of billions of dollars in health and welfare costs will not lead to sustained economic growth. Sowing the seeds of massive economic uncertainty will not help the economy.
And rather than cost jobs, the Natural Resources Defense Council has demonstrated that if corporations environmental regulations were tightened, tens of thousands of jobs would actually be created as updates are made to their currently polluting factories. An EPA study found that while the cost of complying with regulations might equal as much as $25 billion, the resulting corporate savings would add up to $37 Billion. Meanwhile, a Public Citizen study found that “increased energy efficiency for refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners and other appliances will save consumers more than $13 billion a year through 2030.” (more).
And the Economic Policy Institute found:
- Setting aside the Cross-State Air Pollution rule, the combined annual benefits from all final major rules exceed their costs by $10 billion to $95 billion a year. The benefit/cost ratio ranges from 2-to-1 to 20-to-1.
- The net benefits from the Cross-State Air Pollution rule exceed $100 billion a year (this rule is treated separately because benefits accruing from action under the Bush administration and the Obama administration cannot be disentangled).
- The combined annual benefits from three major proposed rules examined here exceed their costs by $62 billion to $188 billion a year. The benefit/cost ratio ranges from 6-to-1 to 15-to-1.
- When fully in effect in 2014, the combined costs of the major rules finalized by the Obama administration’s EPA would amount to significantly less than 0.1% of the economy.
- Assuming the proposed rules are also finalized, when fully in effect in 2016 the combined costs of the major EPA rules finalized and proposed so far under the Obama administration would amount to about 0.13% of the economy.
Where most rational humans see profit and economic benefit, Garlandy Barr plays idiot and see communism!.
While most loving parents would rather not let their young children play with poisoned toys… Andy Barr panders to the Tea Party, telling them that, yes, it’s safe to leave your baby alone with Corporate America. If you can’t trust Wal-Mart, who can you trust, right Andy?
As for Emily… Andy is blessed to have her experienced campaign help on his 2012 Campaign. Andy Barr is faced with the daunting task of explaining to the 6th District why he supports the destruction of Medicare, and why his party — it seems — decided to raise taxes on the middle class in the middle of a great recession in which 13 million Americans continue to look for work.
So Andy needs help, and Emily has experience. She fundraised for failed Republican Secretary of State candidate Bill Johnson, she worked closely with failed Republican primary State auditor candidate Addia Wuchner. And back in 2010, she led a Boone County Tea Party revolt against the Northern Kentucky Tea Party, creating a splinter group that, rather than meeting at Sub Station II on Dream Street in Florence, held separate meetings at The Dugout in Burlington.
The change to a more structured, top-down organization under the new leadership, Shelton says, has some supporters looking to form a group that more accurately represents their positions.
“We are trying to keep the Tea Party unaffiliated to candidates,” Shelton said. “Once you get identified with a person or a party, you lose people.”
The split came into focus when about 28 regulars from the group met at Sub Station II as usual Monday, at the same time the first Boone County Tea Party meeting at the Dugout was taking place.
In another indication of the rift, the Boone County Tea Party website is currently being retooled. The site usually provides event information and minutes from previous meetings, but now contains only this brief message: “Don’t worry, we will be back shortly with an updated forum. It will only be a minute 
.”
SHE WON'T GO!
KentuckyElection.org
BONNIE PRINCE BILLY
