Friday Funday: Run For The Hills

In many places around the country, when the month of August begins, the thought of running as fast as possible for the nearest batch of cooler temperatures blasts to the top of the collective wishlist.

In other words, a vacation.

In our minds, however, a vacation is something that should be well-earned after a long period of hard work.

That's an opinion that since January 2011, has been almost completely missing in the Republican-led House of Representatives. In fact, right now there is a tsunami of major issues that still faces Congress: the Farm Bill, a drought aid bill, the upcoming budget crisis (a crisis Congress created themselves) with biting sequester penalties, the extension of the Bush Tax Cuts, the Postal Service crisis (that Congress created), and more. Most of these bills deal with taxes and budgets, and so their resolution MUST begin in the House - meaning that the House more than the Senate controls the Congressional calendar.

Yet, the far-right wing Republican "leaders" did what they've done nearly every time they've been faced with a tough decision since they got back into power.

They left Washington, D.C. on vacation for five weeks - but voted against leaving on vacation before they beat feet for home.

That may confuse a whole lot of people.

Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution says "Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days...." So if the full Congress wants a real vacation, simple majorities in each house must vote for a vacation.

For once, however, old-fashioned, non-Tea Party Republicans - the kind who used to care more about working for their constituents than appearing on Fox or Rush Limbaugh - decided to join with Democrats, and stand up for what's right. So the House voted 150-265 to not adjoin for a technical recess.

That wasn't the only bipartisanship seen in the increasingly partisan U.S. House this week.

A bi-partisan coalition led by Iowa Democratic Congressman Bruce Braley tried all week to convince their fellow lawmakers to pass a decent Farm Bill before the August recess. Even though their initial efforts failed, the bipartisan group is going to continue to use the arcane rules of the House to try and force through an upgraded Farm Bill, even in the middle of a month of "Pro Forma" sessions.

That's right; a group of bipartisan Congresspersons are going to keep working through the break, to try and get done what their cowardly leaders don't have the guts to do: the jobs the American people sent them to Washington to do.

If that's not a reason to celebrate, we don't know what is.

Good luck to those lawmakers who left DC for a vacation.
We'll remember you in November.

Deaf And Dumb

It should be no surprise to anyone who knows our staff members, or anyone who read our commentary Wednesday, that we far prefer the substance of the new detailed study about Mitt Romney's tax plans, over the ridiculous noise of the Chick-fil-A brouhaha.

In short, our opinion on the Chick-fil-A mess is simple: If a CEO's job is to make their company successful, rule # 1 should always be don't alienate ANY potential customers with your personal beliefs. That includes not donating corporate funds to hate groups of any kind. Any executive that  violates their professional duties so blatantly with personal opinions has committed professional malpractice, and should expect the negative reaction of shareholders and offended customers alike.

That said, anyone who expects corporate CEOs to like and respect all the same people that they do needs their head examined. Corporations don't care who you love. They just want your money.

Now that we've warmed up by taking on those more concerned with the image of their chicken vendor than taxes, it should be noted there are people who continue beating their own drum - loudly - about another subject with significantly more substance: health care in America.

In case you missed it, a study released by the University of Nebraska Medical Center this week found that the number of uninsured Nebraska residents grew significantly - by 67% - from 2000 to 2010, before the Affordable Care Act had truly taken effect. During that same time, Nebraskans with employer-based health insurance dropped by nearly 10%.

For anyone who is more concerned with the substance of responsibly managing their health care needs instead of obsessing over the politics of image, the results of the UNMC study confirm that the President's health care law came to be when Americans and Nebraskans needed it most.

What's more, according to the latest poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation,  Americans also believe - by a double digit margin - that President Obama is more qualified and more able to control the cost of health care than Mitt Romney. Two-thirds of Americans would also like to see Obamacare used to significantly expand Medicare.

All this data came down just as the next phase of the Affordable Care Act clicked into effect on Wednesday.

The next phase of the law requires insurance companies to refund millions of dollars that those companies had previously been wasting on frivolous costs like "administrative expenses", instead of spending customer premiums on patient care.

The next phase of the ACA law also requires insurance companies to finally treat women's preventative health services equal to that of men. Unsurprisingly, activating that part of the ACA law didn't prevent some religious zealots from continuing to fight the pyrrhic battle that we've discussed previously (more than once), with insane comparisons between allowing women access to birth control being on the same level as 9/11 or Pearl Harbor.

To those idiots who continue to bang their fearmongering drum, deaf to facts and dumb to the world, we have the same level of contempt for you that we do your chicken sandwich-focused brethren.

Americans - including your fellow Nebraskans - need access to health care. Thanks to President Obama and the Democrats, they now have it. Put down your drum, shove your chicken sandwich in your mouth, and when you need to go to the doctor, be glad your fellow citizens can now afford to do so too.

Image And Substance

There was plenty of news from the Olympics yesterday, including gold medals for our women's gymnastics team, and more medals from the pool - including the all-time record for most medals, now held by Michael Phelps. As we noted Monday, NBC's public image goose has already been cooked, due to how they've handled the live coverage of the games, as well as how they've handled criticism by other journalists.

In short, NBC fell on their collective faces - hard. Even if they get back up and win a medal for quality Olympics television production - which we have no doubt they can do - their initial failures and attitude problems will be the enduring image of NBC that will stick with many Americans when they think of these games.

NBC isn't the only one having a problem focusing on the difference between image and substance, however.

For example, that "old" problem of the housing and real estate market that we never seem to hear about in the media any more? That problem was never solved. Yet some analysts are cheering what they call solid signs that the real estate and housing industries have reached bottom and are growing again - like home prices rising for the fourth month in a row.

Many Americans who aren't financial analysts also believe the growing image those analysts are attempting to paint, that the worst parts of America's housing and real estate collapse are mostly behind us. In fact, that image could have come far closer to matching reality if Ed DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency hadn't tripped up the Treasury Department and Secretary Geithner on Tuesday.

For much of the last three years, most sane economists have agreed that the big Wall Street banks - along with the guarantee companies that hold up those troubled banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - should be allowed to reduce principle loan balances for some lenders, while the banks would take temporary losses.

The informed opinions of those expert economists don't seem to matter to DeMarco, who refused Secretary Geithner's request - and also refused to abide by the HAMP law passed by Congress and signed by the President. Instead DeMarco told the Senate that the FHFA would not be following the HAMP law, and would not give any debt relief to homeowners, as the HAMP law directs him to. That kind of destructive action could blow away any small positive image the housing and real estate markets have gained in the last three years.

There are many examples lately of those more concerned with image - like the Romney campaign, who recently came out against tax credits for wind power, because of the support of their coal and oil benefactors, like the Koch Brothers.

Then there are those concerned with substance, like the thousands of Iowans who depend on the growing wind power industry for manufacturing and power management jobs. Wind energy continues to be getting cheaper and more profitable, while coal power is getting more expensive and less profitable. Additionally, as the massive energy blackouts in India have proven this week, every nation needs as much energy as it can produce.

These three stories are perfect examples of the difference between image and substance.

One keeps you in the light. One puts you in the dark.
One lifts a burden from all of us. One makes keeping ownership of our homes more difficult for everyone.
One is about not seeing Olympic moments live. More than 600 million residents of India don't even have electricity right now.

When we look at the substance of it, a seven hour delay on televised Olympic coverage doesn't seem all that bad, now, does it?