this lady has it right!
Already Clear that the Democrats Have No Plan
Monday January 22, 2007
After the November election, I decided to take a look at life six months later and see how well the Democrats had done in making life better, since that was the theme of their campaign - make life better with a new direction for the country. I was and still am willing to give them a chance.
Sadly, it has been mere weeks, and they are off to a dismal start.
Democrats force-fed us with their vows to end political corruption. However, to this day, they remain mute and paralyzed on the subject of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La. He is the congressman who was caught on tape taking a $100,000 bribe; later, $90,000 of the money - in marked FBI bills - was found in his home freezer. He has been reelected and remains hands-off to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and he sits right under the speaker's nose.
Upon victory, Pelosi's immediate faux pas was to select Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., as chair of the House Intelligence Committee, a field ripe for bribery. Hastings has a history of being removed from his judge's bench after a bribery trial, impeachment hearings for corruption and bribery, and he was the center of investigations into ethics violations. In fact, in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, Pelosi voted for Hastings' 1988 impeachment, which led to his 1989 conviction.
Taking the path of the politically convicted, Hastings ran for office and won, setting the scene for his present powerful positions as a senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and a ranking member of the Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security.
Pelosi also has open-ended affection for Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., who has had his own ethics investigations problems. Murtha is referenced as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the Abscam bribery scandal. He was ultimately cleared of charges because he did not take the bribe on tape but said he was open to it - a bribe - in the future. The stench lingers.
It is puzzling how these relationships represent San Fran Nan's idea of fighting corruption.
From the moment Republicans won control of Congress in 1994, the country heard relentlessly how Republicans must "reach across the aisle." It was bipartisanship ad nauseam. Oddly enough, the first order of business for the Democrats was to freeze out Republicans and avoid any opposition for the supposedly new direction of the Democrats. Is this the Democratic definition of "bipartisanship"?
Democrats immediately raised the federal minimum wage. Unfortunately for Pelosi, it did not take long to uncover that the San Francisco-based Del Monte Corp.'s American Samoa manufacturing operation was excluded from the wage increase. Once confronted, Pelosi nervously attempted to blanket the matter as a mere oversight and said American Samoa would be brought into compliance. Maybe it has been, maybe not.
The wealth of Nancy Pelosi and her husband is reported as $50 million. Among other things, they own at least one high-end restaurant and a vineyard in the San Francisco area. Irrespective of the major Democratic support for labor unions, the Pelosis do not pay their employees union wages. It is not known if they even pay minimum wage.
Nancy Pelosi has made "children, children, children" her mantra since taking the gavel. She has placed her grandchildren in front of the camera without limit, and she was profiled in a recent AARP publication. In that article she said that having five children in six years gives her the qualifications to be Speaker of the House. The touting of her motherhood and grandmotherhood makes one think she is the only woman in the world with children and grandchildren.
In spite of all of this children-chanting, we do not hear one plan for changing the pathetic education landscape of our country. No, the correct answer is not more money. Every administration gives more money, and even with the Bushes spending more than ever, the state of our education system is dilapidated. It needs to be dismantled and rebuilt into a productive entity without union influence. It indeed needs to be all about - and nothing but - for "the children." Pelosi remains silent.
Another area for children where Speaker Pelosi is mute is the child abuse epidemic in Vermont. Monthly, the Vermont judges are letting child molesters off with frightening 60-day sentences and often no sentences at all. Many of these perverts have maliciously and insidiously raped children, committing unspeakable acts against them for as long as four years, yet they avoid due penalties.
Pelosi has a lot of power and could bring a lot of attention to this cause, but she does not.
A huge promise from the Democrats was resolution to the Iraq mess. They promised their "plan" by early 2006, then summer, then by election time; later it would be unveiled when they took over. Now we hear it is Bush's war and he must take care of it. They will merely criticize.
The Democrats have no plan and apparently no clue. I'd like to hear from one reader who has taken over a job, and kept that job, after telling the boss that he or she would not take care of the present problem because the last guy left it that way, so there will be no plan.
Democrats do not have a plan, and they ran on a big lie. That should infuriate the voters. A lot of us said we didn't like all of the things Bush and the Republicans did, but it isn't enough to just bash them. The American people deserve to demand that the Democrats to keep the promises they made to us.
As Nancy Pelosi so often reminds us, "the Democrats are back."
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