Papantonio: Big Oil Republicans Endangering Your Children
The Keystone XL pipeline issue is truly giving us a picture of how dirty and disgusting the world inside the beltway really is in terms of politics. Additionally, Republicans are continuing...
By: Ring of Fire Radio
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Papantonio: Big Oil Republicans Endangering Your Children - Video
Republicans Lose Texas Abortion Battle
A federal judge blocked Republican laws in Texas that would have shut down one third of the clinics statewide by requiring local hospitals to approve abortion physicians. Subscribe to The...
By: Newsseria
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Republicans Lose Texas Abortion Battle - Video
By Emma Dumain and Daniel Newhauser Posted at 12:42 p.m. May 9
Republicans named to the Benghazi Committee include Roby, middle, and Roskam, right. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call File Photo)
Speaker John A. Boehner on Friday announced the Republicans who will serve on the special committee to investigate the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.
The Ohio Republican stood on the House floor and read off the names of the selected members before a chamber hushed in anticipation, noting in a statement following the selections that the investigation is about getting truth for the victims families.
These members have each demonstrated a commitment to this goal, and I have confidence that they will lead a serious, fact-based inquiry. As I have expressed to each of them, I expect this committee to carry out an investigation worthy of the American lives lost in Benghazi, Boehner said in the statement.
The appointees are Reps. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Peter Roskam of Illinois, Mike Pompeo of Kansas, Martha Roby of Alabama and Susan W. Brooks of Indiana. Boehner named Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina the chairman-designate earlier this week.
Boehners appointments were highly anticipated but the members he chose were not especially surprising to staff or reporters. Most of them had, in fact, been floated as contenders for the job throughout the week, and in choosing them, Boehner satisfied a wide breadth of constituencies within his conference, be they ideological, jurisdictional and in some cases, personal.
Boehner chose members who sit on most of the major committees who have investigated the Beghazi attack. He also chose members who have deep roots in the conservative movement while also ensuring leadership has a trusted ear on the committee.
Roskam, the highest ranking member on who will serve on the committee, is the conferences chief deputy whip. As a sitting member of leadership, he will arguably be Boehners most steady hand on the panel, and is a former trial lawyer.
Jordan was widely said to be vying for a slot on the Benghazi panel and is, like Gowdy, a member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the lead panel investigating the attacks thus far. A former chairman of the Republican Study Committee, he has a conservative pedigree sure to satisfy far-right members of the base who want the Benghazi committee to be sufficiently aggressive in its lines of inquiry.
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Republicans Named to Benghazi Committee (Video)
Among Republicans, the competition to be named to the House Select Committee on Benghazi was intense. Among Democrats, it is nonexistent.
In the week since House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) said the House would set up a special select committee to probe the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks that killed four U.S. citizens in Benghazi, Libya, dozens of Republicans expressed interest in six remaining GOP seats on the 12-member panel. Mr. Boehner has already tapped Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) as chairman, taking the seventh GOP position.
On Friday Mr. Boehner said the other Republican members of the panel would be Reps. Susan Brooks of Indiana, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Mike Pompeo of Kansas, Martha Roby of Alabama, Peter Roskam of Illinois and Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia.
Democratic leaders have not yet named their members and there appears to be little appetite for the five seats they are allotted.
This is not one of those plum positions that people fight for, said Rep. Raul Grijalva (D., Ariz.)
This is not one where youre going to build name credibility in the long term, so those that are on it have to be really strong, he said Friday.
Even some of the tiny group of Democrats who voted Thursday night with Republicans to form the panel said they werent hoping to serve on it.
Not my area of expertise, said Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.), one of seven Democrats to support creating the committee. Im on the Financial Services Committeegood place for me.
On Thursday, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D., Conn.) suggested in a letter to colleagues naming just a single member to participate, a move designed to allow Democrats to participate while still making clear they think the panel is a just a partisan exercise.
Among Republicans, being named to the Benghazi committee has more allure.
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Republicans Clamor to Serve on Benghazi Panel, Democrats Not so Much
Progressivism is a political movement that represents the interests of ordinary people in their roles as taxpayers, consumers, employees, citizens, and parents. To coin a phrase, progressivism champions government "of the people, by the people, for the people."Given this mission, one might expect all democracies to be made up predominantly of one or another Progressive parties. Unfortunately, this isn't the case.
Economic elites emerge in every society and invariably seek to promote their own interests, all too often against those of taxpayers, consumers, employees, citizens, and parents. By definition, economic elites enjoy greater wealth, and therefore influence, than the ordinary citizen, and they typically attempt to exploit these advantages politically, using them as leverage to obtain still greater wealth and influence. And since the desire for wealth and power is rarely satisfied, there tend to be recurring cycles of concentrated political and economic power, together with the corruption that always attends these. One such cycle of corruption was seen in the United States around the turn of the 20th century, culminating in the economic crash of 1929. At the turn of the 21st century, the US is in the midst of another.
Progressives are typically portrayed in the corporate mass media as being "far left," a characterization which is grossly misleading. It should never be forgotten that virtually the entirety of the mass media are owned by the ultrawealthy, and objective studies have shown, for example, that corporate representatives outnumber labor representives in the mass media by enormous margins (by one count 27 to 1).
Thus, the impression that Progressives are "far left" arises largely because the elitist mass media simplistically, and falsely, portrays American politics as being a one-dimensional split between "liberals" and "conservatives." In fact, American politics are far more complex, and can't be properly understood unless we add (at least) one more dimension: elitism vs. populism. When we do add this additional dimension, it becomes clearer that many self-styled "conservatives" are in fact ultrawealthy economic elitists who have little in common with cultural conservatives or cultural liberals, and that their distance from the political center is much greater by far than the distance of Progressives, whose views, when accurately represented, are far more mainstream than those of virtually any elitist. (See the linked diagram for the true political spectrum.) Indeed, polls have shown that many of the most important Progressive goals are endorsed by large majorities of the American populace on both the left and the right (as high as 95%).
This misportrayal of Progressivism has been intentionally cultivated because US economic elites typically seek to exploit highly emotional "wedge" issues on which cultural conservatives and cultural liberals differ most, so as to elicit the political and economic support of cultural conservatives. For this reason, it has become customary for pseudoconservative elitist politicians to pose as strong backers of American values. Yet sadly, when this type of individual is elected, cultural liberals and cultural conservatives both lose out, and the most fundamental American values are undermined.
For example, pseudoconservative elitist George Bush portrayed himself as a champion of education. However, a general rule of thumb is that real political priorities, as opposed to political posturing, can be judged by what a president spends money on; and as president he did nothing to increase funding for education. Instead, he cut taxes (primarily among the wealthy) that might have funded such increases, shifted remaining spending to "defense," which benefitted conservative investors and underwrote aggressive foreign policy adventures for the sake of large corporations, and sent out his wife, and posed for photo opportunities himself, so as to present himself as the champion he falsely claimed to be. To choose another example, he talked a great deal about imaginary jobs while millions of real American jobs were exported to other countries, all to benefit his wealthy friends. He also talked about the value and importance of hard work, even as he sought to strip millions of Americans of overtime pay.
Few Americans would have endorsed Bush's actual policies on these issues, and a great many others, if they had been better informed concerning them, while few Americans would find much to object to in the typical platform of Progressive candidates.
Our primary resource concerning Progressivism may be found here. For further details concerning Progressivism, we recommend The World of Hope: Progressives and the Struggle for an Ethical Public Life, by David B. Danbom. This study emphasizes the connection between Progressivism, core American values, and the difficulties confronting attempts to bring those values to bear on politics in the face of recalcitrant and corrupting business and financial sectors.
(See also: class conflict, democracy, populism, plutocracy, oligarchy, globalization and the links below.)
"What an impressive crowd: the haves, and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite. I call you my base."
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Progressivism - Progressive Living