McHugh Watch

On this Memorial day, it is only fitting to remind ourselves of what our representatives are doing with regard to the Iraq war. May is headed to be the bloodiest month for American soldiers to date. Today on NPR, Naval Academy Chaplain Lt. Commander John Owen told us of his ”profound duty to inform the family of a fallen sailor that their loved one is dead and that any day can become Memorial Day when you bear news that will change people’s lives forever.”

For us, the Iraq war is almost an abstraction. Our lives go on with hardly a ripple caused by this war. We continue our conspicuous consumption and take pleasure in the everyday joys of life. Yet for these families – these Moms and Dads – their lives have changed irrevocably: forever.

We need to start making this war personal. We need to start demanding of those that continue this war to step up to the plate and enlist – along with their children – to fight this war. If this war is so important to our national security, they need to fight – because most of us don’t think it is. Most of us think that this is another Vietnam – unwinnable with nothing to win. I know that’s highly improbable for our chickenhawks to fight. After all, they all have their excuses. They are so important. Mr. McHugh’s was a “heart murmur”. Mr. Cheney’s was five deferments. Mr. Bush’s was a year off to campaign. How about their children? Why isn’t Barbara Bush using her Yale education to lead soldiers in the “surge”? We all know Mr. Kuhl is brave with a gun, particularly when he’s drinking and threatening his wife. No, it’s time to stop the abstraction. This is real personal. They have very little credibility when they order other parent’s sons and daughters to the killing fields and have not or will not serve themselves or have their children serve. It’s that simple. Put up or shut up. Continue Reading »

GM profits are down by 90% this quarter. A lot of that is due to the losses by their financial arm GMAC. More ominous however are their continuing loses from the North American car manufacturing operations. The reason: GM is not making cars that Americans want to buy. Is it any wonder that the Massena plant is closing. Those that invoke the “efficiency” of the market place as an almost religious mantra are now seeing that efficiency in its most brutal manifestations. Yes, the “invisible hand” of an unrestrained and unguided market is forcing the closure of the GM Powertrain division in Massena.

GM, like so many American companies, has put short term gains above long term stability. They have refused to invest in the future and come up with fuel efficient cars. In fact, after successfully conducting a leasing trial in southern California, GM crushed and buried the EV1, the electric battery car. Instead, they have scared the wits out of our local union leaders who, joined by our congressman, have resisted government benchmarks for fuel efficiency (CAFE) standards. The last time fuel efficiency was demanded by the congress was in 1976 after the Arab Oil embargos. Since then, Detroit and Big Oil has fought them tooth and nail. That was fine when gas was relatively cheap. It was also fine when Congress, could put its head in the sand about global warming. That was before the ice caps so dramatically started to break off. Continue Reading »

A few weeks ago, asked the question of how bipartisan Mr. McHugh was. I therefore looked at all the votes where Mr. McHugh agreed with the Democratic position. My answer came back at about 50%. Not bad.

Then I looked closer at the votes. It turns out that the Republicans and Democrats agree about 40% of the time. Most of those votes however are non-policy votes. Good for “atta boys” back home but of utterly no consequence. These include naming of post offices, recognition of national champion sport teams, recognizing birthdays, recognizing Muhammad Ali, naming “National Heart Month” or “Hire a Veteran Week”, etc, etc, etc. They actually spend a considerable amount of time voting on these things.

The more sophisticated question is: how many time does our congressman agree with the majority when his party disagrees. That is the real marker of bipartisanship. In the 110th congress, he votes about 25% of the time with the Democrats. In the 109th Congress he only agreed 13% of the time when his party disagreed with the Democrats. The difference in the 110th is that the agenda is controlled by the Democrats. For example, he votes for a clean minimum wage bill this year when the Democrats brought it to the floor but refused to sign the discharge petition with the Democrats last year to bring it to a floor vote. The difference between being passive and active – reluctant agreement.

The question prompted me to create a searchable database. It is based on the Washington Post’s compilation of congressional votes and then expanded with more detailed information on the bills. It was easy to expand it to our other Central New York and North Country congressmen/women. Over the past three weeks I’ve had to learn three computer languages – JavaScript, PHP and mySQL – to put it up. I expect bugs in it so please post the problems you find and I’ll brush up my newly learned languages and try and fix it.

The Database search abilities are fairly intuitive. The issues option is not yet completed and the type of actions for the 109th are not in yet. I will try and keep it up to date every week.

A few more interesting facts from the database:

Jim Walsh has missed 34 out of 301 or 11% of the votes. Where’s he?

Gillibrant missed 15 of 301 or 5% including the veto override of the Iraq war funding supplemental.

McHugh missed 6 of 301 or 2% including the Drug Negotiation bill.

Arcuri has missed NONE.

How many of us are allowed to miss that much work and keep our jobs? It’s called taking responsibility. This author does not see why we should not hold our congressmen to the same standard that is applied to us in the workplace.

I hope this provides our readers more insight into how we are being represented. Happy searching.

Your can enter the congressional databases here.