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House Democrats launched the 114th Congress this week almost fully united behind Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as their party leader.

Four centrist Democrats bucked Pelosi in Tuesday's much-watched vote for Speaker, including Reps. Jim Cooper (Tenn.), Daniel Lipinski (Ill.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and newcomer Gwen Graham (Fla.).

But 25 Republicans defected against Boehner for the top spot following a very public campaign for more conservative leadership in 114th Congress. And in contrast, Pelosi's near-unanimous support from her troops sends a signal that, while the Democrats may have lost ground at the polls in November, they remain united behind Pelosi and her vision for leading the party out of the minority.

It wasn't always such.

After the Democrats were trampled at the polls in 2010, when they lost 63 seats and control of the House, 20 rank-and-file members declined to back Pelosi in the vote for Speaker.

That number plummeted two years ago, when five Blue Dog Democrats voted for figures other than Pelosi for Speaker.

The lesser defections in recent years is at least partially a reflection of a changing Democratic caucus, as most of the centrist Democrats who voted against Pelosi are no longer in Congress. Indeed, of the five members who bucked Pelosi in 2013, only two Cooper and Lipinski remain on Capitol Hill in the 114th Congress.

Cooper, who had voted two years ago for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, did so again on Tuesday. Lipinski voted for Rep. Peter DeFazio (D), a liberal firebrand from Oregon. Sinema picked Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), the civil rights icon. And Graham, who had made it a campaign promise not to support Pelosi for Speaker, voted for Cooper.

At least 18 Democrats were absent from the vote, most of them New Yorkers who were attending Tuesday's funeral for former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo (D). The absentees lowered the number of votes Boehner needed to retain his gavel, but in the end didn't ultimately matter since he won 216 votes anyway.

The large show of support for Pelosi could have policy implications, as Boehner's struggles to rally the support of his conservative conference throughout the 112th and 113th Congresses are widely thought to carry over into the 114th a dynamic highlighted by the conservatives' attempted coup on Tuesday.

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Four centrist Democrats buck Pelosi

Almost a year ago, President Obama vowed to use his pen and phone wherever possible to make a difference for middle class Americans, effectively promising to aggressively employ executive action to lift struggling Americans economic prospects in the face of implacable Republican opposition.

But now some liberals are beginning to worry that Obama may fall short in this regard, on an issue where he could perhaps give more of an economic boost to the middle class through unilateral action than on any other front. And if that happens, it could form the basis for another argument among Democrats over the partys economic direction.

The issue in question is how Obama will treat the issue of overtime pay, which is set to flare up next month. Senator Sherrod Brown, a leading member of the partys increasingly emboldened populist wing, tells me: As the party of the middle class and those seeking to join it, Democrats should stop the erosion of overtime pay.

The background: Last spring, Obama directed the Department of Labor to revise the rules that govern which private sector employees get overtime pay as part of the New Deal-era Fair Labor Standards Act. Under current rules, those who make $455 or less a mere $23,660 per year or less qualify for time-and-a-half pay if they work more than 40 hours per week. Many workers over that threshold do not qualify for that protection. That threshold is functionally lower than it has historically been, thanks to inflation: According to the Economic Policy Institute, only 11 percent of salaried workers qualify, which compares with 65 percent back in 1975.

The question is: How high will the Obama administration set the new threshold? The answer will determine how many people will benefit and could amount to differences totaling in the millions of people. Some liberals are pushing Obama to set the threshold at around $51,000 per year, which could mean overtime pay for 47 percent of workers who get salaries. Billionaire Nick Hanauer, who has forthrightly admitted that wealthy capitalists such as himself have been enriched in part by the current low threshold, wants it set even higher, at $69,000 per year.

But now the Huffington Posts Dave Jamieson reports that some of these liberals think the Obama administration is eying a much lower threshold, of around $42,000.

This is where the argument among Democrats could kick in.

Progressive Senators who have already criticized the administration on other economic issues Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Tom Harkin wrote a letter last spring to Obama, applauding his decision to revisit overtime pay.

But in their letter, the liberal Senators also set forth their desired threshold: Around $54,000 per year.

The differences here matter a lot. According to the EPI, raising the threshold from its current level to a sum in the neighborhood of what the liberal Senators want could mean higher overtime pay for at least 2.6 million more people than raising it to $42,000, the amount the Obama administration is supposedly eying.

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Sargent: The next big fight among Democrats?

The Liberal Democrats denied that the figures showed a drop in morale in the party or a sign of lack of enthusiasm. Photograph: Chris Ison/PA

The Liberal Democrats have still to select their parliamentary candidates in more than half the seats up for grabs in the general election in four months time, leading Labour to claim that Nick Cleggs party is in danger of forfeiting its right to present itself as a national party.

The Liberal Democrats have selected candidates in only 266 of the 631 seats British parties will contest excluding Northern Ireland, where the party does not fight elections.

By contrast Labour has selected candidates for election in 606 seats, Ukip in 358, the Greens in 310 and the Conservatives for 471. The figures have been compiled by the Political Betting website. The Labour MP for Chesterfield, Toby Perkins, claimed the Liberal Democrats were risking a collapse in their share of the vote.

The Liberal Democrats denied that the figures showed a drop in party morale or a sign of lack of enthusiasm.

An official said the party was behind compared with its progress in getting candidates in place in 2010, but that was partly due to the absence of a fixed-term parliament at the last election. There had also been an expectation in 2009 that Gordon Brown would go for an early election, which meant all the parties rushed to get candidates in place, even if many of them were paper candidates.

But Perkins said: Whether the Liberal Democrats get to a full list of candidates we shall see, but the election is a few months off, and it is revealing that when Labour is presenting a national list of candidates, the Liberal Democrats cannot find anyone to represent them in large parts of the country.

Everyone knows it is important to have a candidate in place for some time if you are to build your vote. It shows the extent to which the Liberal Democrats are likely to see their vote collapse to 30 or less seats. Its all a long way from the new politics of 2010 that the Liberal Democrats offered then.

Liberal Democrat HQ said it was for local parties to select candidates from a list of approved candidates, and had not set a deadline by which parties must select.

The last day for the nomination of candidates is 11 working days before the election itself, so parties can find paper candidates at the last minute that in effect mount no campaign, and expect to lose their deposit.

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Liberal Democrats yet to select candidates in more than half of seats

MVI 4694 Illegal Immigration Reform Growing The Federal Government!
Over 1000 new employees are being hired to move into a new building in Virginia that will cost the American people over $48000000.00 per year. This madnes...

By: Gabor Zolna

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MVI 4694 Illegal Immigration Reform Growing The Federal Government! - Video

At the White House on Tuesday, Mexicanpresident Enrique Pea Nieto praised USPresident Barack Obama'scontroversial executive actionto temporarily defer deportation of nearly 5 million immigrants living in the United States as an "act of justice."

The series of executive actions, which the president announced in November, provides a legal reprieve to parents of US citizens and permanent residents who have lived in the country for at least five years. It also allows immigrants who arrived as children to apply for deportation postponement. About two-thirds of the plan's potential beneficiaries are from Mexico. Obama hosted Pea Nieto at the White House in a bid to strengthen relations with the Latin American nation.

The Mexican leader's statement adds another talking point to the debate on US immigration, an issue that grows more divisive even as it becomes relevant to a growing sector of the American public. According to the Migration Policy Institute, the US foreign-born population hit a historic high of41 million in 2012. And while 28 percent about 11 million of those were Mexican natives, the demographics have grown increasingly diverse: The number of migrants from China, India, and the Philippines each hovered close to 2 million, while those from Vietnam, Cuba, and South Korea tallied around 1 million apiece.

These immigrants have settledacross the United States, with the majority living in California, New York, Texas, Florida, and New Jersey respectively. About 11.5 million are undocumented, according to Migration Policy Institute data.

Along growing diversity is a starker divide on the issue of immigration and how to address it, especially along party lines. A Pew Research Center study released last month found that 50 percent of Americans disapprove of Obama's executive action, narrowly surpassing the 46 percent who agree with the decision. The same study found that 82 percent of Republicans surveyed said they disagree with the president, while 71 percent of Democrats said they approve a divide mirrored in the stalemate on immigration policy between the White House and Congress.

The Washington Post articulated the problem in a Jan. 5 editorial: Like the Republicans, we worry that Mr. Obamas executive order attempts to accomplish what should be done through legislation ... [But] rather than take the challenge, Republicans now appear intent on confirming their image as the party of no solution to the immigration dilemma.

For some, the solution lies in finding a tenable middle ground. In his book American Dreams, to be released next week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) outlined a series of bills aimed at addressing the issue piecemeal, arguing against the sweeping methods that the president has tried to employ. Mr. Rubio, a potential candidate in the 2016 presidential elections,himself previously tried to pass a comprehensive immigration bill in the last Congress.

He writes, "We must begin by acknowledging, considering our recent experience with massive pieces of legislation, [that] achieving comprehensive immigration reform of anything in a single bill is simply not realistic."

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Immigration stalemate: Will growing diversity make it worse?