Do Nothing Congress? My Ass.

Posted on December 16, 2015 by novahockey

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/263354-lobbying-victories-of-2015

And sure, they probably named some post offices too.

Filed under: Open Thread |

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43 Responses

  1. yellojkt, on December 16, 2015 at 8:40 am said:

    So does ending the annual doc-fix kabuki hurt or help the lobbying industry? And in a ‘do-nothing’ stalemate environment, wouldn’t lobbyist have greater power because the stakes are higher in whatever legislation does pass?

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  2. novahockey, on December 16, 2015 at 8:53 am said:

    there’s always a vehicle. I don’t think it matters one way or the other. sometimes you have to remind clients that in a do-nothing environment you have to be on alert for anything that’s moving. particularly if something has been scored as an offset and can be used for someone else’s priority.

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  3. Let the mutherfuker burn!, on December 16, 2015 at 9:10 am said:

    Who here would agree that the question and answers are important to their vote?

    No snark intended, genuinely curious.

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  4. Michigoose, on December 16, 2015 at 9:37 am said:

    Well, the DoD considers climate change a national security issue.

    Although Mr Rich’s comment is pretty silly, given that it was a Republican primary debate. Of course it’s pro-GOP!

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    • yellojkt, on December 16, 2015 at 10:15 am said:

      You have to work within the Overton Window. Asking how much taxes should be raised to mitigate global warming is a useless task. A properly phrased question about if and what can and could be done about climate change could be illuminating but even that may be too far a bridge.

      It’s not that long ago that RINOs like McCain actually advocated for a carbon tax.

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  6. novahockey, on December 16, 2015 at 10:16 am said:

    I think debates are a poor way of determining a candidates qualifications. Example — I never thought that Trump was well versed in anything. that’s not why you vote for such a candidate.

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    • yellojkt, on December 16, 2015 at 10:38 am said:

      Moats, sharks with laser beams, the whole Hunger Games arsenal. We have to start killing and maiming kids to get the message out that our borders are inviolate.

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      • jnc4p, on December 16, 2015 at 5:18 pm said:

        Or simply change the law regarding the automatic deportation so that those from El Salvador are treated the same as those from Mexico.

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  8. novahockey, on December 16, 2015 at 10:39 am said:

    Saw this the other day and thought it best summarized the current climate:

    “We’ve some how perverted our views to the point where we, the citizens of the United States, have to prove our worthiness to live in the company of those who wish to come here. It’s insanity and it’s contributing to opposition to sustaining the current levels of immigration.”

    http://ace.mu.nu/archives/360556.php

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  9. Let the mutherfuker burn!, on December 16, 2015 at 10:40 am said:

    Yello, should a country be able to determine who may or may not enter it ?

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  10. novahockey, on December 16, 2015 at 10:43 am said:

    just say you’re open borders. it’s fine. your position is — and i’m not exaggerating — if you make it here, you’re in. full ride courtesy the taxpayers. too bad you can’t walk from Cambodia or some some African shit-hole.

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  12. Let the mutherfuker burn!, on December 16, 2015 at 10:52 am said:

    Did the format somehow switch from chronological comments to chronological and/or “reply” comment formatting?

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    • ScottC, on December 16, 2015 at 11:17 am said:

      McWing:

      Did the format somehow switch from chronological comments to chronological and/or “reply” comment formatting?

      I’m not seeing any change, but I always look at comments on the dashboard.

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  13. Kevin S. Willis, on December 16, 2015 at 10:54 am said:

    @Michigoose: “Well, the DoD considers climate change a national security issue.”

    And the GOP can’t even use that as a rationale for cutting defense spending. Lame!

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  15. Kevin S. Willis, on December 16, 2015 at 10:54 am said:

    “Did the format somehow switch from chronological comments to chronological and/or “reply” comment formatting?”

    I think WordPress did that, McWing.

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  16. Kevin S. Willis, on December 16, 2015 at 10:55 am said:

    @yellojkt: “Moats, sharks with laser beams, the whole Hunger Games arsenal. We have to start killing and maiming kids to get the message out that our borders are inviolate.”

    If we’re digging a moat, might as well go whole hog and build a canal. Hey, why not?

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  17. Michigoose, on December 16, 2015 at 10:56 am said:

    Did the format somehow switch from chronological comments to chronological and/or “reply” comment formatting?

    I had been wondering the same thing. . .

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  18. Michigoose, on December 16, 2015 at 10:57 am said:

    If we’re digging a moat, might as well go whole hog and build a canal.

    Gondolas and romantic gondoleers?

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  19. Kevin S. Willis, on December 16, 2015 at 10:58 am said:

    @novahockey: ““We’ve some how perverted our views to the point where we, the citizens of the United States, have to prove our worthiness to live in the company of those who wish to come here. It’s insanity and it’s contributing to opposition to sustaining the current levels of immigration.””

    That’s pretty much it. We also have to assimilate in reverse, and embrace the imported cultures while devaluing and eliminating traditional American “melting pot” culture.

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  20. jnc4p, on December 16, 2015 at 11:00 am said:

    “yellojkt, on December 16, 2015 at 10:38 am said:

    Moats, sharks with laser beams, the whole Hunger Games arsenal. We have to start killing and maiming kids to get the message out that our borders are inviolate.”

    Or simply change the law regarding the automatic deportation so that those from El Salvador are treated the same as those from Mexico.

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  21. jnc4p, on December 16, 2015 at 11:02 am said:

    NoVA, any idea on what the final outcome was with the provision that prohibited taxpayer funding of the risk corridors for the PPACA insurers who lost money?

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  23. Michigoose, on December 16, 2015 at 11:48 am said:

    @scottc1:

    I’m not seeing any change, but I always look at comments on the dashboard.

    In the thread it placed this directly under McWing’s comment, rather than in chronological order. Now we’ll have to see what it does with this one. . .

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    • ScottC, on December 16, 2015 at 11:58 am said:

      Ah yes, now I see it. The only way you can tell is by the time stamp. Usually on most systems there is some kind of indentation to make it obvious, but here it seems the only indication is the time stamp. Kind of irritating.

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  24. Let the mutherfuker burn!, on December 16, 2015 at 12:12 pm said:

    Looks like Risk Corridor bailout still shutdown.

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  25. Let the mutherfuker burn!, on December 16, 2015 at 12:17 pm said:

    Speaks volumes.

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  26. yellojkt, on December 16, 2015 at 12:49 pm said:

    Never heard of Phil Kerpen before but the author of Democracy Denied: How Obama is Ignoring You and Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America – and How to Stop Him strikes me as a possibly partisan source on this topic.

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    • ScottC, on December 16, 2015 at 1:05 pm said:

      yello:

      …strikes me as a possibly partisan source on this topic.

      I wonder what a non-biased source on this topic would look like.

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  28. Kevin S. Willis, on December 16, 2015 at 1:54 pm said:

    @yellojkt: “Never heard of Phil Kerpen before but the author of Democracy Denied: How Obama is Ignoring You and Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America – and How to Stop Him strikes me as a possibly partisan source on this topic.”

    Biased in favor of book sales, am-I-right?

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  29. Kevin S. Willis, on December 16, 2015 at 1:57 pm said:

    @michigoose: “Gondolas and romantic gondoliers?”

    Well, I was thinking more like barges and making some shipping scratch for shippers making use of our awesome border-security-shipping-canal. And make it big enough to accommodate large cruise ships (a small moat wouldn’t do any good, anyway). Thus, even if it didn’t help with immigration, we’d have a canal . . . and one that we controlled. And one way more awesome than the Panama Canal because it would be way longer.

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  30. Kevin S. Willis, on December 16, 2015 at 2:03 pm said:

    @yellojkt: “You have to work within the Overton Window. Asking how much taxes should be raised to mitigate global warming is a useless task. A properly phrased question about if and what can and could be done about climate change could be illuminating but even that may be too far a bridge.”

    Nah. It’s the answers, not the questions, that need to be within the Overton Window. The questioners could ask almost anything, but if the answer was outside the Overton Window (i.e., I believe in AGW and support a big fat carbon tax) that would doom the candidate. If the answer is: “Mankind doesn’t control the climate by driving an SUV or grilling some steak, and the last thing we need to do right now is tax energy or the people who use it,” then that answer would be fine. Overton Window is really about advocated policy, so whatever questions they wanted to ask would be fair game.

    “It’s not that long ago that RINOs like McCain actually advocated for a carbon tax.”

    He stuck his finger into the wind, but I think he read the direction wrong.

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  31. Kevin S. Willis, on December 16, 2015 at 2:06 pm said:

    I enabled comment threading, to see if replies would then be threaded, rather than simply appearing right under the comment they are a reply to. That seems to be the case. Originally, we vetoed comment threading because of this, but if WordPress is now doing its own half-assed version of this, anyway, I’m not sure I see a good reason not to turn it on.

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    • Michigoose, on December 16, 2015 at 2:43 pm said:

      This is better. I’d see that you or Scott or someone had made a new post on a thread, and if it didn’t appear at the end I had to try to find it in the weeds. Thank you, Obi-Wan Kenobi!

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  32. Michigoose, on December 16, 2015 at 5:33 pm said:

    Skip the intro and get right to the goats.

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