Pending Va. law will affect utility bills for a decade. Here’s what you need to know. & After losing a vote on the double dip, is Dominion losing Power? 16FEB18

EXCUSE ME PLEASE BUT DOESN'T THE GUY IN THE MIDDLE LOOK LIKE GOVERNOR RALPH NORTHAM?

dominion power is the real power in Virginia politics, buying and controlling politicians in the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates, money transactions that are acceptable in the U.S. as campaign contributions but realistically are financial transactions between perp and prostitute and are what we hypocritically refer to as  corruption in all other countries.  Click here to find your delegate and senator in Richmond and e mail them demanding they deny dominion power the double dip. The legislature in Richmond is supposed to vote on the final version of this legislation on Monday, 26 FEB 18
Pending Va. law will affect utility bills for a decade. Here’s what you need to know.
By Gregory S. Schneider February 21 Email the author

One of the most sweeping pieces of legislation before this year’s General Assembly involves the state’s regulation of its monopoly electric utilities - Dominion Energy, which services some two-thirds of the state, and Appalachian Power Co., which services customers in the Southwestern part of Virginia.

Traditionally, the utilities were overseen by the State Corporation Commission, a three-judge panel elected by the General Assembly. The SCC would review utility rates every two years and decide if the companies had overcharged consumers. The SCC could require the utilities to lower rates and issue refunds to ratepayers - though the companies still got to keep 30 percent of their excess revenue.

In 2015, though, Dominion and the General Assembly decided the utilities needed protection from the uncertainty of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which tightened environmental requirements. So the legislature passed a law, with bipartisan support, that froze base electric rates for seven years and prevented the SCC from conducting its biennial reviews. It was signed by Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D).

[New Virginia law shields Dominion from financial reviews]

The rate freeze became a political issue in 2017, when it became clear the new Trump administration would kill the Clean Power Plan. What’s more, the SCC had conducted a review that found the utilities had earned hundreds of millions in excess profits during the freeze.

Opponents criticized Dominion’s great influence in Richmond, where it is the state’s largest corporate political donor. More than a dozen Democrats who pledged not to accept donations from Dominion won election to the House of Delegates.

[Virginia power broker in the hot seat in governor’s race]

When the General Assembly convened in January for its 2018 session, lawmakers worked with Dominion to create legislation that would enact a sweeping overhaul of utility regulation. Nearly identical versions have passed both the House and Senate and are now working their way through committees. Here are the key consumer impacts of the bills:

Money back to ratepayers

Dominion customers would likely see their average monthly bill decrease by $6 under the plan. That’s mostly thanks to the following components:

* A $200 million credit to consumers for excess money the utility earned during the freeze. (The SCC has estimated that Dominion actually earned somewhere between $300 million and $700 million in excess profits during just two years of the freeze).

* Rate reductions of about $125 million per year based on the company’s savings from the corporate tax cuts enacted by Congress. This amount will be firmed once the tax code’s full impact is clear; it could change.

* Elimination of a $25 million annual surcharge that Dominion has been levying to cover the cost of biomass-burning facilities.

State oversight

The SCC would resume its oversight of the utilities, but it would conduct reviews every three years instead of every two years.

The SCC’s next review of Dominion rates would come in 2021 and would look at the years 2017-2020.

But customer refunds and base rate reductions are highly unlikely under the legislation, because of the next category:

Incentives for Dominion

Dominion would be allowed to reinvest any excess profits in modernizing the grid or renewable energy, such as solar and wind, instead of paying rebates to customers or reducing rates.

At the same time, the law would state that making those investments are “in the public interest,” basically telling the SCC that they have priority over keeping rates low.

To double-dip, or not to double-dip?

The mystery at the heart of the legislation has been whether it would let Dominion keep your cash and spend it too. In the Senate version of the bill (SB966), Dominion could both use excess profits for new projects and build the cost of those projects into base rates. An SCC analyst said that for consumers, it’s the equivalent of being given a new car as payment for a debt, then having to take over the payments on the car. Dominion denies that the bill works this way.

[Dominion bill passes House with key change aimed at helping consumers]

In the House version (HB1558), language was added at the last minute that prohibits Dominion from putting those investments into base rates. On Tuesday, a House committee amended the Senate bill to incorporate that change. Dominion now says it supports the new version.

Other goodies

Dominion would boost its EnergyShare program and run it through 2028, providing bill payment and weatherization assistance for customers who are low-income, elderly, disabled or veterans.

The bills also push the SCC to allow Dominion to undertake expensive projects to put utility lines underground. The commission often balks at these projects as not cost-effective, and warned in an analysis of the legislation that it “could potentially result in billions of dollars of additional costs that must be borne by customers in higher rates.” Supporters argue that it will improve the overall effectiveness of the grid and reduce outages.

Large industrial ratepayers would get a 2 percent reduction if they sign an “exclusive supply agreement” with Dominion of at least three years.

Competing bottom lines

Supporters say the legislation would give Dominion (and Appalachian) steady funds to modernize the grid - to make it less vulnerable to both cyberattack and natural disasters - and to convert to renewable energy such as wind and solar. Many environmental groups now either support the deal or are neutral.

Critics - including the consumer protection office of the state Attorney General - say it prevents a realistic chance of rate reductions for some 10 years and guts the SCC’s ability to regulate the state’s biggest monopolies. The alternative would be to simply undo the 2015 rate freeze and let the SCC review all those projects - wind, solar, underground lines - individually.

Wall Street has already weighed in. It likes the proposed legislation. Analysts have boosted their outlook for Dominion stock in anticipation of the law passing and being signed by Gov. Ralph Northam (D), who helped negotiate it.

Greg Schneider covers Virginia from the Richmond bureau. He was The Washington Post's business editor for more than seven years, and before that served stints as deputy business editor, national security editor and technology editor. He has also been a reporter for The Post covering aviation security, the auto industry and the defense industry.

  Follow @SchneiderG

Power for the People VA

26FEBAfter losing a vote on the double dip, is Dominion losing Power?

February 16, 2018 by Ivy Main

An earthquake shook Richmond, Virginia on the afternoon of Monday, February 12, rocking the House of Delegates just as it was supposed to be passing HB 1558, Dominion Energy’s Ratepayer Rip-Off Act of 2018. The bill was intended to help the utility lock in stupendous unearned profits for its parent company, courtesy of the monopoly’s captive customers, under the guise of supporting clean energy and grid investments.

And the bill did pass the House, but only after delegates adopted an amendment offered by Minority Leader David Toscano stripping away a lucrative provision that Dominion both desperately wanted and swore didn’t exist: the infamous “double dip” that the SCC has said would allow Dominion to charge customers more than twice over for a large portfolio of infrastructure projects. With billions of dollars worth of projects on the drawing board, the double dip meant serious money.

Anyone who didn’t believe the double dip was real only needed to listen to Dominion lobbyist Jack Rust respond to repeated questions about it during a Senate Commerce and Labor Committee hearing two weeks earlier. It was a “yes or no” question that Rust wouldn’t answer with a yes or a no.

Obfuscation, however, was good enough for the Senate, which passed SB 966 last week by a bi-partisan vote of 26-13. It was good enough for Governor Northam, too, who had already pledged to sign the bill. A few environmental groups broke ranks to support the bill, too, cheering the provisions for energy efficiency and the promise of more renewables.

Admittedly, the Attorney General’s Office of Consumer Counsel remained opposed. So did other environmental and consumer groups, complaining not just about the double dip, but about ceding control over the future of Virginia’s electric grid to a profit-driven monopoly. But when has the General Assembly ever cared what environmental and consumer groups thought? So passing the bill through the House should have been easy.

And then Toscano called Dominion’s bluff. If the double dip is real, said Toscano, his amendment would fix it. If the bill doesn’t already allow for double-dipping, then making doubly sure of that does no harm.

The logic was unassailable, though bill patron and Friend of Dominion Terry Kilgore assailed it anyway. As the Associated Press reported, Kilgore tried to persuade legislators to reject Toscano’s amendment. Yet even some fellow Republicans deserted him on the vote, helping Democrats pass it 55-41. A quick-thinking Delegate Habeeb, apparently recognizing bad optics for the Republicans, called for a second vote, and this time the amendment passed 96-1, with even Kilgore supporting it.

By all accounts, the vote was unprecedented. Dominion does not lose floor votes. The vote rocked the House.

In hindsight, perhaps Dominion should have known a fault line had formed. Grassroots groups were agitating against the power of monopoly. A new group called Clean Virginia was agitating against the bill. Almost all the freshmen Democrats had pledged not to accept Dominion money—and there were a lot of them, thanks to last fall’s “blue wave” election. But the Republicans had already scuttled most of their bills; surely they had learned humility? They had not. They all supported Toscano’s amendment, and all but one followed him in opposing final passage of the bill, which passed 63-35.

The earthquake could be felt over at Dominion headquarters, where reporters could be seen inspecting the foundation for damage. CEO Tom Farrell called in his damage control specialists, heavy-hitting lobbyists Eva Teig Hardy and Bill Thomas, to persuade legislators to support the Senate version of the bill over the House version—or failing that, to lard it up with new favors to the utilities.

According to the AP, Kilgore continued to maintain after the vote that the double dip was “more perception than reality.” But he also said, “Toscano’s amendment takes ‘a lot of stuff out that needs to stay in’ the legislation. ‘I’m going to have to fix it.’”

One might think Dominion and its allies would be embarrassed to defend a provision they say doesn’t exist. Reportedly they have pivoted to a different argument, that the company would have no incentive to invest in renewable energy if it isn’t allowed to rip off ratepayers in the process. Accordingly, they are holding solar investments hostage, knowing how much Democrats want them.

Dominion’s new argument is simply posturing. Its 2017 Integrated Resource Plan declared solar to be the cheapest form of energy in Virginia, and it had signaled via the Rubin Group its plan to build at least 3,000 MW of solar in the coming years. Saying now that it might take its ball and go home is a sign its lobbyists are out of good arguments.

In the past, good arguments were not a requirement for Dominion to get what it wants; political power has always been enough. It will be interesting to see now whether Dominion emerges with some semblance of its omnipotence intact, or whether this earthquake presages new shocks that could crack the fortress.

DEMAND A CONSUMER ADVOCATE WHO PROTECTS CONSUMERS 18FEB18

THE drumpf/trump-pence administration is full of male and female political whores who are selling off the resources of the American people as fast as they can for as much money they can get for the drump/trump-pence and republican party political committee's.  dana baiocco is one of the best known of these political whores and if approved by the US Senate as head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission / CPSC will be a serious threat to the health and safety of ALL Americans. Here is your chance to tell your Senators to reject ms baiocco, from EarthJustice, click the title. My letter to Sens Warner D VA and Kaine D VA is at the end of this post......

DEMAND A CONSUMER ADVOCATE WHO PROTECTS CONSUMERS

If Big Tobacco, crooked chemical corporations and President Trump get their way, another industry shill will sit on a commission charged with protecting consumers against unscrupulous corporations and their harmful products.

With her record, it’s unlikely that Trump’s nominee, Dana Baiocco, would protect anything but corporate interests. Baiocco is dangerous and unfit to serve on the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) but her nomination could see a Senate floor vote as early as next week.

Tell your Senator that Baiocco should not be confirmed for this crucial public safety role.

The CPSC sets federal regulations, develops uniform safety standards and conducts research into product-related illnesses and injury. The jobs of the CPSC commissioners exist so that you don’t have to worry about whether that new sofa or cell phone you’re buying will harm you or your family.

Baiocco has devoted her career as a lawyer to defending defective and dangerous products.

She represented clients such as Yamaha, which manufactured ATVs linked to multiple deadly roll-over accidents; Volkswagen, which cheated on emission standards; Mattel, which manufactured toys containing high levels of lead paint; and RJ Reynolds, a tobacco company that hid the known hazards of smoking for decades, and waged a deceitful campaign to encourage people to feel “safe” smoking at home by promoting the extensive use of toxic flame retardant chemicals in mattresses and furniture.

Your senators will be voting on this dangerous nominee soon, and they need to hear from you. Urge them to block Dana Baiocco and demand a commissioner who will protect everyone living in the United States.

MY LETTER TO SENS WARNER AND KAINE

I am writing to express my concern about the nomination of Dana Baiocco to serve as a commissioner on the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). 

As a consumer I rely on the CPSC to protect the health and safety of my family. You must ensure that CPSC's decision-making process will not be tainted by conflicts of interest. 

No one is above the law, and CPSC commissioners must comply with the same fundamental rules of ethics that are required of all government employees. This means that CPSC commissioners should recuse themselves from matters in which a reasonable person would question their impartiality. There is little doubt that reasonable people would question Ms. Baiocco's impartiality when it comes to deciding the safety of products manufactured by companies she has vigorously defended in legal proceedings in order to deny compensation to their victims. 

Ms Baiocco sells her services to the highest bidder, and Baiocco's history shows she provides the services paid for by corporate America. There isn't anything she won't do for the right amount of money. This is meant to sound disgusting because it is, it is the way the men and women of the trump-pence administration operate.

As your constituent, I urge you to demand that Ms. Baiocco commits to recusing herself from matters in which her impartiality can reasonably be questioned. 

The public deserves a CPSC commissioner who will put consumer protection first. 

As your constituent, I urge you to:

*Demand that Ms. Baiocco commits to recusing herself from matters in which her impartiality can reasonably be questioned including work involving flame retardant chemicals in consumer products, given her history representing Big Tobacco, and

*Oppose her nomination if she refuses to do so.

Democrats Can’t Unite Unless Wasserman Schultz Goes! & Debbie Wasserman Schultz goes to bat for predatory lenders 23&1MAI16

FOTZE rep debbie wasserman-schultz D FL, chair of the DNC / Democratic National Committee, is a political whore. She is working for the 1%, for corporate America and especially for the bank-financial cabal to screw the poor, the retired, vets and active military, the working class and the middle class. Her latest action in support of the bank-financial cabal is co-sponsoring legislation that will nullify the new rules the CFPB / Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is enacting to regulate payday loan lenders (see below) to the financial detriment of the poor and working class. She has also welcomed lobbyist to dictate the Democratic Party Presidential Campaign Platform, the result will be little different than the republican's presidential campaign platform if she is not removed from the DNC. If the Democrats loose the presidency to donald drumpf it will, in large part, be thanks to wasserman-schultz. She needs to be forced out as the DNC chair and might as well change her party affiliation to repiglican. Then she will be able to sell herself to the highest bidders without needing to explain her actions. Word of warning to anyone thinking of getting in bed with her. You should tie a board across your ass so you don't fall in. Think she isn't a political whore? Take a better look at the picture above, schlempe has a lot of "miles" on her.....These from +Daily Kos 
Democrats Can’t Unite Unless Wasserman Schultz Goes!

To paraphrase the words of that Scottish master Robert Burns, the best laid plans of mice, men — and women — go often astray, or “gang aft agley,” as they say in the Highlands. No one knows this better than Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Twice now, the flight of her presidential aspirations has been forced to circle the airport as other contenders put up an unexpected fight: In 2008, Barack Obama emerged to grab the Democratic nomination away and this year, although all signs point to her finally grabbing the brass ring, unexpected and powerful progressive resistance came from the mighty wind of the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Certainly, Hillary Clinton is angered by all of this, but the one seemingly more aggrieved — if public comments and private actions are any indication — is Democratic National Committee chair and Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Hillary surrogate who takes umbrage like ordinary folks pop their vitamins in the morning.

As we recently wrote, “… She embodies the tactics that have eroded the ability of Democrats to once again be the party of the working class. As Democratic National Committee chair she has opened the floodgates for Big Money, brought lobbyists into the inner circle and oiled all the moving parts of the revolving door that twirls between government service and cushy jobs in the world of corporate influence.”

And that ain’t all. As a member of Congress, particularly egregious has been her support of the payday loan business, defying new regulations from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that would rein in an industry that soaks desperate borrowers. As President Obama said, “While payday loans might seem like easy money, folks often end up trapped in a cycle of debt.”

In fact, according to an article by Bethany McLean in the May issue of The Atlantic, “After studying millions of payday loans, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that 67 percent went to borrowers with seven or more transactions a year, and the majority of borrowers paid more in fees than the amount of their initial loan.”

A recent editorial in the Orlando Sentinel notes that 7 percent of Florida’s population “must resort to this predatory form of small-dollar credit – nearly the highest rate in the nation…” What’s more, “Based on a 14-day loan term, the typical payday loan… had an annual percentage rate of 278 percent. Many lenders advertise rates of more than 300 percent.” Let us repeat that slowly… 300 percent!

So why has Wasserman Schultz been so opposed to the CFPB’s proposed rules? She has said,“Payday lending is unfortunately a necessary component of how people get access to capital, [people] that are the working poor.” But maybe it has something more to do with the $2.5 million or so the payday loan industry has donated to Florida politicians from both parties since 2009. That’s according to a new report by the liberal group Allied Progress. More than $50,000 of that cash has gone to Rep. Wasserman Schultz.

But we digress. It’s the skullduggery going on within the Democratic Party establishment that’s our current concern and as we wrote in March, Rep. Wasserman Schultz “has played games with the party’s voter database, been accused of restricting the number of Democratic candidate debates and scheduling them at odd days and times to favor Hillary Clinton, and recently told CNN’s Jake Tapper that superdelegates — strongly establishment and pro-Clinton — are necessary at the party’s convention so deserving incumbent officials and party leaders don’t have to run for delegate slots ‘against grassroots activists.’ Let that sink in, but hold your nose against the aroma of entitlement.” 

Now Wasserman Schultz has waded into the controversy over what happened or didn’t happen last weekend when Sanders supporters loudly and vehemently objected to the rules at the Nevada State Democratic Convention. In truth, some behaved badly at the event and others made trollish, violent and obscene threats to Democratic state chair Roberta Lange via phone, email and social media. There’s no excuse for such aggressive, creepy conduct, and Sanders was quick and direct in apologizing for the behavior of the rowdies and bullies.

But there is a double standard at play here. Why, pray tell, shouldn’t the peaceful majority of Sanders people be angry at the slow-motion, largely invisible rigging of the political process by Wasserman Schultz and the Clinton machine — all for the benefit of Secretary Clinton?

Wasserman Schultz claims the party rules over which she has presided (and manipulated) are “eminently fair.” She told CNN on Wednesday morning, “It is critical that we as candidates, we as Democratic Party leaders, everyone involved needs to make sure that we can take all the steps that we need to, to ensure that the process is not only run smoothly but that the response from the supporters of both candidates is appropriate and civil.”

In response to the DNC chair’s remarks, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver talked to CNN, too, and said Wasserman Schultz had been “throwing shade on the Sanders campaign since the very beginning… Debbie Wasserman Schultz has really been a divider and not really provided the kind of leadership that the Democratic Party needs.”

The Nation’s Joan Walsh, a Clinton supporter critical of the Sanders campaign, concurs: “Once again, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz escalated a conflict that she should have worked to defuse,” she writes. “… Wasserman Schultz is not helping her friend Hillary Clinton with her attacks on Sanders. Just the appearance of fairness can go a long way in assuaging worries about fairness. Wasserman Schultz’s defiant rebuke to the Sanders camp has made it worse.”

So, too, has her abolition of the restraints that had been placed on corporate lobbyists and big money — now they can write checks bankrolling what doubtless will be swank and profligate parties during this summer’s Democratic National Convention. At The Intercept, Lee Fang and Zaid Jilani report that a number of the members of the Philadelphia host committee “are actively working to undermine progressive policies achieved by President Barack Obama, including health care reform and net neutrality. Some… are hardly even Democratic Party stalwarts, given that many have donated and raised thousands of dollars for Republican presidential and congressional candidates this cycle.”

This is a slap in the face to progressives calling for a halt to big money and allowing lobbyists to buy our elected officials. And it’s contrary to what Hillary Clinton herself has said about money and politics on the campaign trail. The Sanders movement has shown that lots of cash can be raised from everyday people making small donations. His supporters and all of us should be outraged that Debbie Wasserman Schultz and convention officials have kowtowed not only to the corporate wing of their own party but also to those high rollers who back the opposition and ideas antithetical to a democracy.

Rep. Wasserman Schultz is facing a primary challenge for the first time this year, her opponent a law professor, activist and progressive Sanders supporter named Tim Canova. But the primary’s not until late August, long after the Democratic National Convention. Unless she steps down now or Hillary Clinton has her removed, Philadelphia will be dominated by someone who represents everything that has gone wrong with the Democratic Party and Washington. At the convention’s opening session, Debbie Wasserman Schultz will be bringing the gavel down squarely on progressive hopes of returning the party to its legacy as champion of working people and the dispossessed.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Time for her to go.

AN E MAIL FROM DAILY KOS ON PAYDAY LENDERS 23MAI16

Craig, payday lenders are known for their predatory practices, which include exorbitant interest rates (390% is the national average), transaction fees, penalties, and contracts which keep people in a vicious cycle of debt that is damn near impossible to break. 

These operations target the poorest populations, primarily operating in low-income and communities of color where they perpetuate the cycle of poverty. 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren, wants to change these practices by placing new rules on the industry, which currently operate on a state-by-state regulatory basis. 

Unfortunately, some Democrats are siding with the payday lending industry to restrict CFPB's ability to regulate the industry. 

The CFPB has been the target of Republican ire since its inception—and now corporate Democrats are jumping on the bandwagon. 

DNC chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is co-sponsoring a bill to restrict the CFPB from enacting rules, BEFORE they have been issued. 

The CFPB is scheduled to propose new rules on June 2, 2016 in Kansas City, MO. Daily Kos and our allies will be in attendance at the event, where we intend to deliver your support to members of the CFPB. 

These rules would be a huge financial victory for low-income workers and communities hardest hit by these practices. 

Keep fighting, 
Rachel Colyer, Daily Kos

Debbie Wasserman Schultz goes to bat for predatory lenders

My god, she’s a horrible person. 

Wasserman Schultz is co-sponsoring a new bill that would gut the [Consumer Finance Protection Board’s] forthcoming payday loan regulations. She's also attempting to gin up Democratic support for the legislation...

The CFPB hasn’t issued final regulations, but Republicans and the person supposedly running the Democratic National Committee have been fighting hard to protect those predatory lenders (and other enemies of American consumers). 

According to DWS, the feds should stay out of it and adopt Florida’s approach to payday lenders, a law that she proudly admits to “helping write.” And what about that law? 

The average interest rate on Florida's payday loans is 304 percent -- only slightly better than the 390 percent annual average. Critically, the average payday loan amount of $389 is equal to 35 percent of average paychecks in the state -- in line with national figures.

Odious. And, I suspect, getting rid of her is something that both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters can agree on.

House Republicans Get An Earful At Town Halls Back Home 19AUG11

WELL at least not all repiglican and tea-bagger representatives are the blatant whore rep paul ryan r WI ($15 a session) is and don't charge their constituents to meet with them, but there are a handful who have decided their pay from their corporate masters just isn't enough and so are charging constituents for their time. A session with rep chip cravaack r MN cost $10, rep lou barletta r PA charges $30, rep renee ellmers r NC $13, and rep ben quale r AZ will let you chew his ear off for $35. Shameless political whores, each and every one. It is good these repiglicans and tea-baggers are hearing from their constituents, and that their constituents are realizing what a mistake they made in electing these fools! From HuffPost...

WASHINGTON -- On Thursday, more than 200 protesters impeded traffic in Washington state as they gathered near the offices of GOP Rep. Dave Reichert, chanting, "We need jobs. Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!" This is the third protest targeting Reichert since the vote on the debt ceiling, Patch reported.
He's not the only House Republican getting an earful from his constituents during the August congressional recess. In town halls from New Hampshire to Minnesota, GOP members have been bombarded with complaints.
In New Mexico last week, a woman angry about Congress’ partisan squabbling over the debt ceiling cursed at Rep. Steve Pearce. In Alabama, several constituents blasted oil subsidies at an event hosted by Rep. Mo Brooks. More than 150 showed up in Pennsylvania to express their frustration to Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick about everything from student loans to Social Security.
Taxes have been a major theme at several town halls. In Illinois, when Rep. Randy Hultgren proposed making the U.S. tax code “flatter, fairer,” his constituents responded by demanding that he support more taxes on the rich.
In New Hampshire, Rep. Frank Guinta -- who serves on the committee on oversight and government reform and the committee on the budget -- faced criticism from hurting voters. "I need desperate help," said John Cochrane, an attendee at Guinta's town hall who has been out of work for more than three years, according to Seacoastonline. "I want to be a good American again. I don't want to be a second-class American."
At an Ohio event for Rep. Steve Chabot, protesters held signs that read "Chabot Shame" and "Hands off my Medicare." Chabot promised the roomful of senior citizens that Medicare changes would affect only those 55 and younger. But one attendee, Teresa Law, told the Cincinnati Enquirer that she was unhappy with his answers. “I want to understand what in the world is going on here. We’re just hearing more rhetoric and we’re sidestepping the issues. It’s maddening,” she said.
Some Republicans sought to lower the temperature by holding virtual town halls or only appearing at forums where attendees had to pay to attend. Rep. Chip Cravaack (Minn.) spoke at an event this week for which a business trade group set an admission price of $10. Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) went to an event hosted by a local Rotary Club that cost attendees $15. Reps. Lou Barletta (Penn.) appeared at a $30-per-plate "CEO-to-CEO" event last week, and Rep. Renee Ellmers (N.C.) appeared at an event that cost $13. The event Rep. Ben Quayle (Ariz.) showed up to cost $35 a head for a Q&A session and catered lunch.
This tactic may have helped some Republicans avoid protesters, but others weren't so lucky.
House Speaker John Boehner and Minnesota Rep. Erik Paulsen held a $10,000-a-person golf outing. (Lunch but no golf with both congressmen and Rep. Cravaack cost $1,000 a head.) Nearly 200 protesters showed up outside with signs accusing Republicans of protecting corporations over people, and a plane flew overhead with a banner that read, "Where's our piece of the pie? Jobs now."
WATCH the local Fox affiliate’s report on the protest:


http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/politics/bachmann-boehner-golf-outing-protest-aug-17-2011#ixzz1VJJt35CI

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Republican congressmen charged their constituents admission fees for town hall events. Many Republican congressmen spoke at events held by outside institutions where there was an admissions fee. This article also incorrectly stated that Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.) appeared at a $10,000-a-person golf outing with House Speaker John Boehner and fellow Minnesota Rep. Erik Paulsen. Cravaack does not play golf, according to his office, but he did show up to the luncheon after the game.

Unemployed Constituents Stage Sit-In At Paul Ryan’s Office, Ryan’s Staff Calls The Cops & Paul Ryan's Office Calls Cops On Jobless Protesters 19AUG11

PEOPLE are condemning Pres Obama for going on vacation to Martha's Vineyard, playground of the rich and famous, while rep paul ryan r WI gets away with this????? His own constituents have to pay $15 to meet with him??? He is paid by their taxes to be their representative in the House!!! paul ryan really is a political whore! How dare he, and shame on the mainstream media for ignoring this!!!! What bullshit! From ThinkProgress & HuffPost....

By Marie Diamond 

Yesterday, seven unemployed constituents of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) staged a sit-in at his office in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to protest the congressman’s decision not to hold any free public town halls during the August recess. An additional 100 protesters picketed outside the office. Politico reported this week that Ryan, Chairman of the powerful House Budget Committee, will only speak to residents who are willing to pay $15 for access.
It’s customary for representatives to host free town halls open to the public so constituents can ask questions and weigh in on their elected officials’ votes. But Ryan and other conservative congressman who have been facing angry crowds recently have decided to limit their availability to only those willing to open their wallets. This didn’t sit well with many of Ryan’s constituents who are struggling just to get by and don’t think they should have to pay to get an audience with their congressman:

Ryan is currently vacationing with his family, but the seven individuals sitting in his office say they have all tried to contact Ryan, multiple times, and have received the same generic email response. Traditionally when members of Wisconsin’s Congressional Delegation break for the August recess they hold town hall meetings where they listen to concerns off constituents in their districts. Ryan, so far, has only scheduled one “public” appearance at the Whitenall Park Rotary September 6 banquet. Attendees will be required to pay a $15 fee to be one of the lucky 300 to meet with the Representative. I spoke with four of the Ryan Seven this afternoon and they all said they were planning to stay “as long as it takes.”

One of the protesters, Scott Page, says he’s been let go from two jobs in the past two years. One position was outsourced to Mexico, and for the second, he was required to train an individual in China to be his replacement. Page said he hoped Ryan would “have a heart” and “take time to listen to the unemployed in his backyard instead of only the business owners.” “I don’t have $15 to ask Rep. Ryan questions,” he added, “so I guess this is the only means I have to talk to him.” Several of the protesters have posted testimonial videos on the Wisconsin Jobs Now website. Unemployment in Ryan’s home state has been growing recently.
Instead of meeting with the protesters, Ryan’s staff called the police. The seven protesters occupying Ryan’s office left the building last night after negotiations with police to end the sit-in peacefully. The seven praised Ryan’s office staff for being “amazing” and “polite,” but had no warm words for Ryan.

Paul Ryan's Office Calls Cops On Jobless Protesters

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/19/paul-ryan-protesters-police_n_931508.html

Staffers for Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called police on Thursday evening to disperse unemployed protesters staging a sit-in at his Kenosha, Wis., office, according to the protesters and police.
Two protesters told HuffPost they're unhappy with Ryan's proposals to gut social programs and also his new policy of not holding free public meetings with constituents during the congressional recess.
During the summer of 2009, Ryan hosted some 17 town halls. Admission to Ryan's one town-hall style event in his district this summer will cost $15, according to the Whitnall Park Rotary Club, which is hosting the Milwaukee-area event on Sept. 6.
"People don't realize that they have every right to stand up and talk to their congressman," Shanon Molina, 31, told HuffPost on Friday.
Molina, who lives in Kenosha with her daughter, said she lost her full-time job as an office administrator in 2009. For 18 months she received unemployment benefits and picked up a few shifts as a waitress and bartender. In January, she landed a new job as an office administrator, but at half the hours and half the pay of the previous job, which she said she'd had for 10 years.
"I have a child to support, I have a house to keep up," Molina said. "I didn't choose to be in this situation. I'm in an emergency here."
The unemployment rate is 10 percent, unchanged from a year ago, in nearby Racine -- the closest city with numbers available.Molina said she and other members of Wisconsin Jobs Now, a coalition of community groups, neighborhood associations and labor unions, organized the Kenosha protest, which at one point on Thursday she said attracted more than 100 people.
"I went there to talk to Paul Ryan," Molina said. "They said he was on vacation with his family in Colorado."
Shortly after the protesters arrived, said Molina, Ryan's staffers handed them a written statement from the congressman. She described the staffers as cordial and polite.
"Although I was unable to personally meet with those who stopped by my Kenosha office, I appreciate hearing from so many on the urgent need to create jobs in Southeast Wisconsin," the statement said, according to a YouTube video of protesters reading it into a bullhorn outside the Kenosha office. "I pride myself on being accessible to those I represent."
A spokesman for Ryan did not respond to requests for comment.
Lt. Eric Larsen of the Kenosha Police Department told HuffPost that Ryan's office called the department around 4 p.m. on Thursday, and that the officers who responded found seven protesters inside the building where the office is located and about 50 protesters outside.
"They left peaceably," Larsen said.
Some of the protesters returned on Friday. Kenosha resident Scott Page, 32, said he brought his laptop so he could look for jobs from inside Ryan's office. He said he hasn't been able to find anything better than temporary and part-time work since being laid off from a factory at the end of 2007.
"My rent's due in a short time here, and I honestly don't know where I'm going to come up with that money," Page said. "We're just gonna sit here until we get to talk to Ryan face to face. Every day we're going to sit here."
Ryan has boasted that he hosted lots of town hall meetings during the summer recess of 2009.
"I had 17 and shattered attendance records at my town halls," Ryan said during an appearance on MSNBC. "You know, at the end of them, I was asking for a show of hands of the people who had never been to a town hall before, and it was about 95 percent. They were very civil."
During town halls in April of this year, Ryan heard from hecklers opposed to his plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system.

Bachmann said Standard & Poor's downgrade proved she was right from POLITIFACT 12AUG11

HERE'S another Christian republican presidential candidate who finds it necessary to lie about, distort and manipulate information on the national debt and the recent debt ceiling "crisis". One might excuse her because she is stupid (and I think she really is stupid) but I don't buy that as an excuse. I think michele bachmann is a scheming FOTZE, a political whore who is completely controlled by the gop and tea-bagger political parties, serving their corporate masters. From Politifact...

The Truth-O-Meter Says:

When Standard & Poor's "dropped our credit rating, what they said is, we don't have an ability to repay our debt. ... I was proved right in my position" that the debt ceiling should not have been raised.

Michele Bachmann on Thursday, August 11th, 2011 in a debate in Ames, Iowa

Bachmann said Standard & Poor's downgrade proved she was right

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Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., was one of eight candidates to participate in a presidential debate in Ames, Iowa, on Aug. 11, 2011.

If you made a list of House Republicans who were the biggest opponents of raising the debt ceiling, Michele Bachmann would be near the top.

Bachmann, R-Minn., and a Republican candidate for president, said consistently that she would not vote for an increase in the debt ceiling -- the legal limit on how much money the government can borrow -- regardless of the terms of the deal.

She repeated her opposition at a Republican debate in Ames, Iowa, on Aug. 11, 2011, when asked if she was concerned about the United States defaulting and not paying its debts.

"If you had your way, the debt ceiling would not have been raised," said Susan Ferrechio, a debate moderator. "What do you say to analysts who insist that Americans' investments, their 401(k)s, their college funds would have been far worse off today?"

"I think we just heard from Standard & Poor's," Bachmann said. "When they dropped our credit rating, what they said is, we don't have an ability to repay our debt. That's what the final word was from them. I was proved right in my position. We should not have raised the debt ceiling. And instead, we should have cut government spending, which was not done. And then we needed to get our spending priorities in order."

Is that what Standard & Poor's said? And did the report support her position that the debt ceiling should not have been raised? Her statement was a disputed point in the post-debate analysis, so we decided to check it out for ourselves. (We should also note that her claim that the deal did not cut government spending is questionable at best. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that the deal would cut "at least $2.1 trillion" between 2012 and 2021.)

A little background: Standard & Poor's is a New York-based ratings agency that studies the financial markets. It issues guidance to investors and rates various investments for financial risk. On Aug. 5, it downgraded its credit rating for the United States one notch, from the top-rated AAA to AA+. (The other two ratings agencies, Moody's and Fitch, did not lower the U.S. rating.)

The Obama administration strongly objected to the ratings downgrade and disputed Standard & Poor's analysis. Others criticized the company for its performance in previous years, when it gave high ratings to mortgage securities that subsequently proved worthless.

The downgrade didn't seem to have much effect on investors' desire to hold U.S. Treasury bonds and other securities, which are still widely perceived as safe investments.

Bachmann said that when Standard & Poor's dropped the rating, "what they said is, we don't have an ability to repay our debt" and she said it supported her position that the ceiling should not have been raised and that spending should have simply been cut. Bachmann also opposed any type of tax increases, including closing loopholes, which Democrats supported.

To fact-check Bachmann, we read Standard & Poor's original report on why it issued its downgrade.

To put it in simple terms, Standard & Poor's had two main reasons for the downgrade: First, that the size of the U.S. debt is very large and growing, and second, that politicians seem unable to agree on what steps to take to reduce it. It called the political process "contentious and fitful," and said the firm was "pessimistic" that the White House and Congress would be able to agree on measures to significantly reduce the debt anytime soon.

"The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy," the report said.

The report does not say that the debt ceiling should not have been raised. If anything, there's an unstated assumption that increasing the debt ceiling was necessary. "The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy," the report said.

And in an interview on Fox News, Standard & Poors' managing director John Chambers seemed to express disapproval that it took so long for Congress to raise the debt ceiling. He said President Barack Obama "characterized the political system as dysfunctional, I think that's a good word. We got to a position where we were within 10 hours of having a major cash flow problem. This is not what happens in other countries," Chambers said on Aug. 8.

Another official with Standard & Poor's, director Joydeep Mukherji, told POLITICO that the stability of American political institutions were undermined by the fact that "people in the political arena were even talking about a potential default." He didn't mention who those people were. "That a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable," he added. "This kind of rhetoric is not common amongst AAA sovereigns."

As to which political party was in the right, the ratings agency did not explicitly tip its hand. The report said it took no position on whether taxes should be raised or spending should be cut.

In the Fox News interview, Chambers was asked if the tea party movement was responsible for the downgrade as Democrats alleged. He declined to take the bait and assign blame.

"I think that there's lots of blame to go around, and what we need to come to in the United States is a way of forging consensus, so that we can take the tough choices that lie ahead, because the fiscal situation in the United States is not sustainable," he said.

Bachmann said that when Standard & Poor's "dropped our credit rating, what they said is, we don't have an ability to repay our debt. That's what the final word was from them. I was proved right in my position. I was proved right in my position."

In fact, because the debt ceiling was raised, the United States is paying its debts. What Standard & Poor's actually said was that politicians in Washington can't agree on long-term solutions for how to reduce the debt -- not that the country is or was unable to pay its debts. The notion that the report supported her position is wishful thinking. For that, we rate her statement False.