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for being there for Ann Marie Buerkle’s swearing in:
Wednesday’s trip to Capitol Hill was amazing. I spent most of the afternoon with Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle, her staff, supporters and family, including a trip to the basement of the Capitol for her ceremonial swearing-in photo with Speaker John Boehner.
It was a great day but now the hard work begins.
Remember that old death panel debate that the MSM called a lie when Sarah Palin brought it up, but then was suddenly pulled from the legislation? Well guess what:
And now they’re able to accomplish through regulatory fiat what they couldn’t get through Congress, even with a playing field tilted steeply in their favor.
Now the author of a memo on the subject being a representative of the people elected in an open election decided to of course be totally open about this…or not
“While we are very happy with the result, we won’t be shouting it from the rooftops because we aren’t out of the woods yet,” Mr. Blumenauer’s office said in an e-mail in early November to people working with him on the issue. “This regulation could be modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use this small provision to perpetuate the ‘death panel’ myth.”
So according to Representative Blumenauer they shouldn’t talk about this “good thing” that they are doing because Republicans will know about. There’s open government for you.
Well now that the cat is out of the bad suddenly we hear a different tune from Representative Blumenauer
Blumenauer now says he regrets the letter’s secretive language, which has only bolstered conservatives’ claims that the Obama administration tried to sneak the provision in under the radar.
Yeah why would the idea that you said you didn’t want to let this be public make people think that you are doing something sneaky?
Weasel Zippers describes him best:
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Shhhh)
yet these same democrats from the land of Shhhh are accusing Republicans of a “lack of transparency”
But don’t just take RS McCain’s word for it, check out that fantastically conservative publication the Washington Post
Senators collected $469,000 from the financial industry the day before, the day of and the day after that key Sept. 16 vote, a Post review of donations shows. The biggest recipient was Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who shepherded the legislation and faced a tight reelection race.
The article only focus is on fairly new stuff but the best line from it is this response from Harry Reid’s spokesman:
Reid spokesman Zac Petkanas said the timing was not of Reid’s making. The vote was supposed to come months earlier but was delayed by Republican obstruction, Petkanas said.
Oh the timing wasn’t of Reid’s making. After all he is only the Senate Majority Leader.
Of course now that the election is long over this stuff can safely be reported. May I suggest to incoming republicans that the media are not likely to show such deference in timing for them. So do the right thing, it is usually the smart thing too.
A few weeks ago a column by Bonnie Erbe to nobody’s surprise who is paying attention (PBS on their online site actually refers to her as “non-partisan” which says more about PBS than it does about her) noted church closing in the East and painted it as a result of the old church orthodoxy:
Dogmatic, dictatorial churches do not resound with today’s spirituality, and young people are not clamoring to join them. So sending a message that says, in essence, “Follow my rules or go to hell” might be a good way of retaining older parishioners used to such harsh boundaries. But as elderly parishioners die off, they take the church’s message with them.
I live in a city where 4 Catholic churches recently closed and it is a shame to see churches close in NY and other urban areas, yet lets look at Dave Weigel’s column today about redistricting which links to this rather good 8 decade chart at the NY Times and what do we see? We see a flight of people not from the church but in general from particular states.
More and more of the faithful youth are fleeing high tax liberal states and settling elsewhere as Michael Barone writes:
Texas’ diversified economy, business-friendly regulations and low taxes have attracted not only immigrants but substantial inflow from the other 49 states. As a result, the 2010 reapportionment gives Texas four additional House seats. In contrast, California gets no new House seats, for the first time since it was admitted to the Union in 1850.
There’s a similar lesson in the fact that Florida gains two seats in the reapportionment and New York loses two.
This leads to a second point, which is that growth tends to be stronger where taxes are lower. Seven of the nine states that do not levy an income tax grew faster than the national average. The other two, South Dakota and New Hampshire, had the fastest growth in their regions, the Midwest and New England.
I suspect that if you want to see where the church is growing and thriving just follow that electoral population.
My oldest son is a solid Catholic who is going to college on a full academic scholarship. As soon as he graduates he plans on getting out of this state and I can’t say as I blame him.
So Bonnie rather than your argument concerning the empty churches I would refer you to Stacy McCain’s explaining the demographic facts of life and Ed Driscoll who says this:
And it seems rather difficult to build an emerging Democratic majority when two of the most prominent “liberal” cities in America (very much in name only, given the mammoth regulatory mazes and bureaucratic armies these cities come equipped with) have such poor future demographics. Or as Mark Steyn, who inspired our headline above with this classic 2006 article, wrote about Europe’s similar (and not at all coincidental) demographic woes, “what’s the point of creating a secular utopia if it’s only for one generation?”
As even Illinois, which is among the democratic states losing a congressional seat, is learning you can’t vote the dead if you oppose them being born.
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