I got my latest email from my member of Congress, one Benjamin Eugene Quayle (R) a little earlier today. He reminded his constituents of his commitment to not taking his federal pension.

As your representative, I have worked with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to tackle these enormous challenges, and I have led by example. I recently made the decision that I would not be participating in the congressional pension plan. Currently, Members of Congress enjoy a pension plan that is far more generous than the majority of private-sector retirement plans. As we work to reduce America’s out-of-control debt, one of the areas in need of reform is the federal pension system. It would be the height of hypocrisy if Members of Congress proposed those reforms without first eliminating our own pensions. It addition to opting out, I also signed on to two similar bills by Reps. Tim Griffin (R-AR) and Mike Coffman (R-CO) that abolish the congressional pension plans.

It would also be the height of hypocrisy for a wealthy heir to demand that federal workers join screwed-over private sector workers in a race to the bottom. But when has hypocrisy ever stopped a rich conservative on an anti-peon crusade? Quayle’s proposal of eliminating Congressional pensions is not that impressive of a gesture as it is, considering how he is wealthy enough to have no need for a pension. But Quayle has to be elected twice more to qualify for the Congressional pension (you have to serve 5 years) and he has been redistricted into the same district with Rep. David Schweikert.

Rep. Quayle went on to whine about this:

Normally this time of year, there are certain greetings I would offer you. However, as you may have heard—just when you thought political correctness couldn’t go any further— Congressional rules forbid House Members from sending holiday good wishes to constituents. Upon hearing of this absurd rule before the Christmas holiday, I signed on to a resolution authored by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) which resolves the that the House of Representatives recognizes the importance of symbols and traditions of Christmas and strongly disapproves of attempts to ban references to the holiday. So please forgive if me If I sound rude for not offering you a Happy ____ _____ today. It’s not my rule!

Normally, Ben? When had you offered them? In your annual Brock Landers Dirty Scottsdale Seasons Greeting? This is your first term in Congress. You haven’t established any normal anything in that capacity.

Quayle is claiming that he was censored from sending holiday greetings by the meaniebutt Congressional staffers who control franking, AKA the mailing privilege Representatives enjoy. The actual guidelines, according the Fox News article I linked to, say this:

Members are unable at the current time to use official resources to record holiday greetings, post on social media/website, or send to constituents in franked mail or e-communications.

Expenses related to the purchase or distribution of greetings, including holiday celebrations, condolences, and congratulations for personal distinctions (wedding anniversaries, birthdays, etc.), are not reimbursable.”

Franking Manual:
4(a). Example of Nonfrankable Items
-Birthday, anniversary, wedding, birth, retirement or condolence messages and holiday greetings are prohibited.”

You may make reference to the season as a whole using language along the lines of ‘Have a safe and happy holiday season.’ It may only be incidental to the piece rather than the primary purpose of the communication.”

Which means Rep. Quayle could have used his own (considerable) funds to send me (his constituent) a nice greeting that filled in the _____ _______ part. It’s okay, Ben. I had a nice _____ _______ anyway.

ci·pher noun, often attributive \ˈsī-fər\

Definition of CIPHER

1
a : zero 1a
b : one that has no weight, worth, or influence : nonentity

So much going on today! Hard to pick what to write about. Let’s see: The independent redistricting outrage (public meeting going on in Scottsdale as we speak, with many of my East Valley peeps in attendance). Russell Pearce recall (ABC15 announced a poll tonight showing a dead heat between Jerry Lewis at 46% and Pearce at 43%). Mitt Romney endorsed Mississippi’s Personhood Amendment today (putz). More harassment allegations against and evasion by Herman Cain (putz). All GOP Reps voting against infrastructure funding (putzes extraordinaire).

But I’m going to write about Channel 12′s Brahm Resnik reviewing Governor Jan Brewer’s magnum opus, Scorpions for Breakfast. My hero! He read it (in an hour he says) so the rest of us would be spared.

So obsessed, that Jan Brewer created a Google alert for “Jan Brewer.” It’s a wonder that alert didn’t crash the state e-mail server — or crash the governor herself.

“I couldn’t help myself,” the governor writes of her Web watch.

The book provides a meticulous accounting of the red-hot hate directed at Brewer (“Hitler’s daughter,” “Satan’s (inappropriate term),” “brainless blond bimbo”). She read many of the insults and slurs on blogs, she writes, even as her staff implored her not to pay attention to “losers.”

Brewer describes the personal attacks as “torture” the equal of waterboarding. “I could barely breathe,” the governor writes.

By now you know the rest of the book doesn’t revisit the infamous 13 seconds of silence during Brewer’s 2010 debate with Democratic opponent Terry Goddard. The governor does write about headless bodies — but they’re not in the Arizona desert.

I can actually empathize with that since you wouldn’t believe some of the comments I’ve gotten from angry conservative troll-men in my queue. It’s jarring. And look, I don’t cotton to gender slurs, whether they’re against my kind of woman or Jan Brewer’s. Opponents of Brewer and SB1070 haven’t done the cause any favors by calling her ugly names based on her being female (I include myself in this because I’ve made references to her being a “witch” on Facebook a time or two and I’m going to stop doing it henceforth). It’s cheap, too easy, and needlessly counterproductive.

That said, I don’t think Jan Brewer is tough. Or smart or principled. That’s not because she’s a woman. It’s because she’s a modern-day Republican politician. Of course she sits on the internet all day googling her name, when she’s not making appearances before adoring throngs. She does so for the same reason that Russell Pearce trawls white supremacist sites for hours on end and another Republican Arizona state legislator whom I didn’t name on this blog can spend hours on Facebook kvetching about how slutty 14 year old girls are these days. And Trent Franks can indulge his non-stop abortion obsession. They have lots of time to dwell on those things because they have no reason to become anything resembling policy experts. That work is done for them, via innumerable right wing think tanks, lobby shops, PACs, PR firms, etc. All they have to do is repeat the talking points while looking stern, concerned, excited, or maudlin about them as the situation requires.

So they fill their gobs of extra time up with what really interests them – which in most cases is sadly embarrassing narcissism or reactionary authoritarian narcissism, or a combination of both. This is why the GOP is having so much trouble with their Presidential candidates. They’re ciphers, not leaders.

Rep. David Schweikert (R-Tempe, Scottsdale) is another example. I’ve met him briefly socially a couple of times and, believe me, he’s a pleasant and polite guy. Whereas some right wing politicians react to opposition with panic or sputtering rage, David takes it on with kindly condescension. Look how he handled Billionaires for Wealthcare protesters at his town hall yesterday:

The protesters burst into the meeting while Mesa Mayor Scott Smith was speaking, shouted a few slogans and tried to give Schweikert a gift before they were ushered out by Mesa police. But Schweikert seemed anything but upset at the protesters, who have visited him at other constituent meetings in Fountain Hills and elsewhere.

“It actually amuses me. You have to give them credit for trying to be funny,” Schweikert said before he outlined problems with the national debt in a slide presentation.

“I think it’s great. It helps me tell the story of how out of touch” the protesters are on the Medicare issue, he said.

Schweikert added that he believes the protesters represent the extreme liberal fringe and upset moderate Democrats who want an honest dialogue about Medicare funding.

Why, he’s practically Wilford Brimley! And look how much Scwheikert cares about moderate Democrats, gentle soul that he is. How could someone so easygoing and tolerant be anything like those wild-eyed gun-waving Tea Party freakazoids we keep hearing about? Well, he voted for Ryan’s plan to gut Medicare and replace it with vouchers, for one thing, which is an extreme right wing fringe position on the issue. Which the Republic didn’t bother pointing out because the whole point is how genial David Schweikert is, bless his heart.

I’ll have some more on this amiable vs wild-eyed wingnut issue later this week.

EDIT: By some mistake of divine provenance I linked to a clip of our lovely and courageous Rep. Gabby Giffords. I’ll leave it up.

Here’s the debate clip:

It’s a really quick segment but I wanted to make sure I got the most important message out: It’s not the deficit that is causing our economic problems and cutting the deficit will not get us out of them. It’s a Washington obsession that has no relevance to the immediate needs of Americans for jobs, education, health care, functioning infrastructure, etc. Also, Brahm asked if I felt President Obama had been “rolled over” by the deal. I said not at all. Considering that the President was dealing with a Congress taken over by rabid anti-tax cultists (elections have consequences) the deal could have been worse. Which is not to say that it is good.

Shane repeated the Tea Party mantra that “spending is the problem”. I guarantee he doesn’t mean spending on the military or oil subsidies. From the Alternet Joshua Holland piece I linked:

Last year, with the private sector economy continuing to slump, an analysis by Moody’s Analytics found that almost one in five dollars in American consumers’ wallets came from one government program or another. The public sector has already seen deep cuts, and that trend will only worsen with Washington’s relentless focus on deficit reduction. Without those dollars, there will be fewer consumers demanding American companies’ goods and services, and the private sector will continue to have little incentive to hire. That’s our core economic problem at this time.

Those government programs include public sector jobs, Social Security, unemployment payments, and various forms of public assistance and transfers. Thanks to decades of racebaiting and cultural conservative propaganda many Americans are blissfully unaware of how likely they are to use a government program at one time or another in their lives.

So it’s easy to say “cut spending!” when you think the cuts are going to be to people not like you because you don’t use any government programs (even though you use a bunch of them), which is why when I press conservatives about what cuts they would make they suggest “welfare” (a catch-all for government money going to undesirable people) or earmarks. (The “no spending on undesirable people” was definitely a factor in the newly elected Tea Party Congress going after Planned Parenthood right out of the gate.) It simply doesn’t register that sweeping budget cuts may also impact veterans benefits and college aid. And most Americans are tragically unaware of how austerity regimes are used to shove through the privatization of public services and the takeover of public property by private entities. (ALEC is making great strides in privatization at the state level.)

Folks, our grandparents and great-parents went through this in the 30s. Hoover and FDR bowed to conservative business interests and implemented austerity programs. In both cases, it worsened the Depression. Austerity in a bad economy is a lousy idea (unless you’re really, really rich and will profit from it) and Americans should reject it outright and demand better from our leaders.

After the show Jenney linked to the video with a post titled “Where is Bill Clinton when we need him?” He accused me of “reading Dem talking points” (like there’s something wrong with that) and claimed I was “erroneous” in stating that the GOP “Cut, Cap, and Balance” plan would reduce government to the size it was in 1966 by 2021, when we have 100 million more people in the US than we do in 1966. Here’s why I’m right.

The last time the United States had spending this low was in 1966. Much has changed since then, which makes a federal budget at that level both impractical and undesirable. We are an older country, with more retirees receiving the Social Security and Medicare benefits they’ve earned during their working lives. Social Security benefits have been consciously increased to improve the quality of life for retirees. Health care costs have multiplied so providing Medicare, veterans’ care, and Medicaid is much more expensive. Education has become more costly, and government fuel costs have risen along with everyone else’s.

We are a very different country than we were back then, with very different needs and with stronger economic competitors making investments in their own countries to make themselves strong. We must match those investments to remain the No. 1 economy and the most competitive nation on earth. We simply can’t put a 1966 transmission into a 2012 Mustang.

Jenney, like so many conservatives these days, hearts Bill Clinton because Bill Clinton (hated as he was by every conservative breathing oxygen in the 90s) is not Barack Obama. And Jenney thinks he can fake people out because Pres. Clinton presided over GDPs where the percentage of federal spending was closer to 1966 levels (during the Dot Com bubble) and act as if the economy of that unprecedented time will be replicated from 2012 to 2021 under the delusional Cut, Cap, and Balance plan of the GOP. It’s what Bill Clinton would do!!

Right, and I can dream about FDR. I can dream that the Beltway gets over its stupid budget deficit obsession and turns its collective attention to the Main Street jobs deficit. They decide that the most important thing that must be done right now is to put forth another stimulus. A bigger, badder, shovel project readier one that is not larded with tax cuts. One that will at the very least, seriously, at the very absolute least, provide paying work for the 27% of young military veterans facing unemployment.

Jenney brought up one thing (thanks, Tom) that I would have talked about had we more time in the newscast. The People’s Budget is what progressive members of Congress have offered as a way to balance the budget in a fair, humane, and sensible way. FDR would approve. Where is he when we need him??

In 1998 when President Clinton broke down and (finally) confessed to the nation that he had an affair with young White House intern Monica Lewinsky, I felt betrayed. I thought he should resign. As time went by – and admittedly my view was influenced by the rank obnoxiousness of the rabid pack of Clinton foes – I was glad he didn’t. Especially when the multiple dalliances of his detractors and Congressional interlocutors were revealed. Bill Clinton wasn’t trying to legislate other people’s sex lives* so there was no need for him to resign over his. As of this writing, Newt “I cheated because I loved this country” Gingrich is still eager to have poor women carry unwanted children to term or die from cervical cancer for their “sins”.

*He could have been better on gay marriage, as could our current President.

Carl Paladino who sent pornographic emails featuring bestiality to bunch of people a time or two. That Carl Paladino.

Which brings me to Ben Quayle and CD3. Remember how in the far off yesteryear of 2010 some of us naively thought that Quayle being revealed to be “Brock Landers” of Dirty Scottsdale would be his downfall in the election? Ah, those were innocent times, my lambs. It turned out that being exposed for composing turgid Penthouse Forum style fiction for a scuzzy website and then lying about your involvement, badly, was no impediment to becoming a Congressman in Arizona. Nor was running possibly the most awkward campaign ad ever, wherein the trust fund baby son of a former Vice President promised to “knock the hell out of” Washington, DC. But I digress.

Perspective: The Congressional district won by the bestiality email sender Republican guy was lost by a Republican who agreed with Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to gut Medicare. This is what the Democrat campaigned on, in one of the toughest districts for Dems in the country. To recap: Bestiality emails were not a problem for the majority of voters in NY26. But indicating that you were okay with messing with Medicare was the bridge too far for them. What can we learn about this here in AZ3?

Ben Quayle held a town hall recently where he endorsed Ryan’s Medicare plan. Oh dear. Supposedly he told the audience that if you are over age 55 you shouldn’t be concerned about the changes to Medicare because they won’t affect you! Keep talking, Brock.

“This is not surprising considering he made the same evolution in 2008,” the statement said. “It’s too bad he didn’t choose to follow through on those promises after his election.”

They also invited Obama to visit the Arizona border, the busiest illegal entry point in the nation, rather than El Paso, where illegal traffic has plummeted in the last two decades.

“It is no wonder the President chose El Paso and not Tucson as a backdrop to talk about immigration reform,” the senators said.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, also a Republican, also said Obama should have gone to Arizona, saying in a statement: “Our state remains America’s gateway for illegal immigration, and we continue to bear the brunt of the federal government’s failure on this issue.”

“If the president felt confident in declaring the border secure, he should have come to tell the people of Arizona face-to-face,” she said.

Young Congressman Quayle is dissatisfied with the President on border security:

Republican U.S. Rep. Ben Quayle said Obama’s speech was “driven by politics and politics alone.”

“Instead of real solutions and reforms, the president offered finger pointing and spin,” he said. “The U.S. border with Mexico is far from secure. No campaign speech can change that fact.”

Finger pointing and spin! Gosh, that’s harsh. I was curious to see what legislation Quayle, who is on the Border and Maritime Security Subcommittee of the Homeland Security Committee, has sponsored on immigration and border control. The answer is none.

The Colorado Independent reports that the Family Policy Council, the political arm of evangelical behemoth Focus on the Family, has launched a multi-state effort to attack LGBT and reproductive rights in the 2012 campaign season. Naturally GOP politicians are pleased as punch at this since it’s electoral catnip for them.

The campaign, which largely targets states where Republicans won control of legislatures or governorships, has garnered the support of Republican political superstars such as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.), Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Jon Kyl (Ariz.), and Rep. Trent Franks (Ariz.). The groups intend to pass anti-gay marriage amendments, curtail abortion rights and, in at least one case, ban “transgender bathrooms.”

The article links Center for Arizona Policy’s strategic PDF, which is apparently practically identical to the promotional materials used by the other states participating in this mysteriously funded endeavor. Which is totally a coinky dink having nothing to do with Focus on the Family.

Requests for information from many of the policy councils were denied, and Focus on the Family told The American Independent that they have no involvement, declining to offer information on any organization that might back the plan.

Focus on the Family says that while the groups are “fully associated” with FoF, they “are independent entities with no corporate or financial relationship to each other or to Focus on the Family.”

Right-o.

HR3, which was voted on in Congress yesterday and passed with every GOP member (including our entire AZ GOP delegation) voting in favor, had the odious “forcible rape” language stripped out of it a while back. But Republicans used a “sly legislative maneuver” to arrive at the same exclusion of abortion coverage for victims of statutory rape.

The backdoor reintroduction of the statutory rape change relies on the use of a committee report, a document that congressional committees produce outlining what they intend a piece of legislation to do. If there’s ever a court fight about the interpretation of a law—and when it comes to a subject as contentious as abortion rights, there almost always is—judges will look to the committee report as evidence of congressional intent, and use it to decide what the law actually means.

In this case, the committee report for H.R. 3 says that the bill will “not allow the Federal Government to subsidize abortions in cases of statutory rape.” The bill itself doesn’t say anything like that, but if a court decides that legislators intended to exclude statutory rape-related abortions from eligibility for Medicaid funding, then that will be the effect.

The Ms.blog post is hot link heavy so click on it and read the truly hair-raising conventional wisdom on rape that has informed male-dominated law enforcement views in the recent past and (to an appallingly large extent) very recently.

The 32-year-old woman was walking through a midtown alley last January when a man pressed a gun to her shoulder and told her, “Don’t scream.”

At the hospital, where she was treated for vaginal bleeding, the woman recounted being raped at gunpoint, in a vehicle with black leather seats. When it was over, her attacker told her to walk away slowly and not look back.

The police detective’s report reflects the tone of his questioning in the hospital room: Why had she waited two hours to call police? Why didn’t she flag down a squad car? Where was she coming from before she was assaulted? Who was she with? Frustrated, the woman retracted her statement and signed a new one saying that nothing had happened.

No longer a rape, the incident was now classified as “unfounded,” police parlance for saying the victim was lying or they do not believe a crime occurred.

Sure hope she wasn’t impregnated by her attacker. She wouldn’t be eligible for an abortion under Medicaid due to the Hyde Amendment. Under HR3 she wouldn’t even be able to get an abortion with her own insurance or under her employer’s plan. Because her rape wasn’t officially sanctified as a rape by the police.

Along those lines, it’s not at all a stretch to surmise that maybe Congress dudes Flake, Franks, Gosar, Quayle, and Schweikert aren’t exactly qualified to legislate anything having to do with rape, let alone deciding which rape victims have to bear their rapist’s babies.