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Republicans Take Control of the House of Representatives

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Republicans are projected to take control of the House of Representatives, giving the party a trifecta as Republicans also took control of the Senate and the presidency.

Decision Desk HQ projected that the Republicans had won enough seats for them to take control of the House. Republicans were projected to have secured a 218-209 majority.

House Republicans ended up making gains over their Democrat colleagues in the election. Republican candidate Rob Bresnahan won the race for Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District over incumbent Rep. Matt Cartwright.

Republican candidate Ryan Mackenzie also unseated incumbent Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA) in the race for Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District.

The Hill reported that there were “three freshmen New York Republicans” who were unseated in their races.

(Read more from “Republicans Take Control of the House of Representatives” HERE)

Photo credit: Flickr

Abuse Versus The “RULE”

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votingAbuse often occurs because the abuser believes that the degree of action is justified and acceptable, or even worse, sanctioned by peers.

In Alaska, current majority caucus rules are set up in a manner to sequester and control the outcome of a vote. If a representative votes NO against the “RULE,” it is incumbent on the administration of the caucus to act swiftly to deliver the disciplinary actions against the rogue representative to set an example to hold others in line who might consider a vote of personal conviction. One can argue the degree of discipline will determine the “managed control” going forward. One can also argue that there is a difference between discipline and abuse.

As Ayn Rand so eloquently stated, “Individual rights are not subject to a public vote. A majority does not have the right to vote away the rights of a minority. The political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities, and the smallest minority on earth is the individual.”

Further, as we look broader at the inspiration of our US Constitution, it was clearly written to protect the rights of the individual. It is the foundational basis of our belief in the sovereign rights of the individual. This is what makes our

Constitution unique and a shining example to all the countries of the world.

So, given this premise, are caucus rules which take away individual representative rights for the purpose of “timely management” justified? Is the “RULE” more important?

One must clearly ask, when is a vote not a vote?

Regarding the finances of the State, one would only consider that this is essentially the most important vote a representative can make during the session, for this vote determines our financial future.

One can argue that the “RULE” is justified, for a representative relinquishes their individual rights to “join the club” and enjoy all the benefits of membership.

One could argue that if a member of the club violates the “membership agreement” that their membership rights should be terminated, but certainly there is a moral and legal question regarding the retaliation against such “RULE.”

One can also argue that an orderly, efficient flow of legislation regarding the budget is in order to necessitate a “limited timeframe” and this is the essential mechanism of the “RULE.”

Well, consider this…

The “principles” set forth by the Majority Caucus state:

1. To live within our means

2. To save for future generations

3. Identify core government functions

4. Establish priorities for a long- range plan

Given these principles, reality clearly demonstrates that Representative Reinbold was following the principles of the majority caucus when she cast a “NO” vote.

Reality clearly demonstrates that the “RULE” is, to a great extent, why we are in our current and continuing financial mess. Is this contrary to the “principles” set forth by the Majority caucus? The House vote passed a limited decrease in spending while we have experienced a dramatic decrease in oil revenues in one year. Based on House figures, there is a $3 billion dollar deficit. Does this address the “principles” of the Majority caucus? Is the “RULE” more important?

In this Kangaroo court, presided over by a select few, did they consider “cruel and unusual punishment” for the perceived violator? Is the “RULE” more important?

Is the effective representation of a constituent base on trial here as well? Does the “RULE” supersede representation?

Also, reality currently demonstrates that losing your “membership” in the club, means that disciplinary action, or financial abuse will fall on your entire legislative staff immediately. The current “administrative caucus team” presiding over the discipline in Juneau reminds me of the movie “Spartacus” where all the associated legions were crucified.

Speaker Chenault recently stated on a local radio talk show that he is a big man and he can bear the burden of the attacks against his leadership.

It certainly takes fortitude to master over the “burning fields” of a rogue representative. It takes personal internal fortitude to assault the messenger in spite of the message.

Additionally, the Speaker stated that they must be very careful with the budget because people’s jobs are at stake. When was it the main function of state government to provide employment as a top priority over sound fiscal policy?

Who is really on trial here? Is it Representative Reinbold who stands firm against massive expenditures or Speaker Chenault who kicks the financial can down the road toward a raid of every Alaskan’s PFD?

Which representative is addressing reality for the better interest of Alaskans? Is the “RULE” more important?

Well, I ask the Speaker this…

When you go home at the end of the day with those big shoulders holding onto your burden of leadership, do you think for one moment, the severity of your punishment against Representative Reinbold and her constituents, but moreover, about those individual staff members, charged with the spirit of service to our state, who have lives filled with the financial burdens of family and the expenses of maintaining a living? Do you think for one moment regarding the burden they have sir? Is your burden more than the one you levied on them because you felt obligated to make a swift example of their associations with Representative Reinbold? And word in the street has it that you gave orders to all representatives to “stay away” from hiring her staff. If this is true, I must warn you, this may be a personal labiality issue. Is the “RULE” more important?


Are your burdens less restrictive because you have Representative Charisse Millett and Representative Craig Johnson by your side to administer the punishment and spin the news cycle against the messenger? Is the “RULE” more important?

Through this all, Representative Chenault, with your 7 sessions of presiding over the House and previous Co-Chair positions on the House Finance committee, there is no single person in Alaska who is more responsible than you regarding the financial mess we are in. You presided over the extreme largess of government, but then you hold Representative Reinbold in contempt as she stands alone against this financial abuse. Is the Rule more important?

In conclusion, in your own justifications, you think you are able to ride the wave of dissent, regarding your overt discipline of Representative Reinbold, but you can never cover your actions against her staff. Those actions sir, are reprehensible. They are not the actions of a leader. They are the actions of a tyrant mastering over the “RULE.” Alaskans deserve better.

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE..

Establishment Corruption: The Nevada GOP Central Committee elected its chair to the House in 2011

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Photo Credit: Tea Party 911

Since 1789, the U.S. House of Representatives, the Peoples’ House, has been elected directly by the citizens. In Nevada, that’s no longer true. In September 2011, the party elite of the Nevada State GOP Central Committee changed We the People to We the Party, and set a dangerous precedent by appointing its own chairman to represent the 2nd Congressional District of Nevada.

Suitably, the story of how it happened begins with infidelity.

The Beginning

On May 3, 2011, U.S. Senator John Eric Ensign (R. NV.), first elected to the Senate in 2000, formally vacated his office just as the Senate Ethics Committee had begun to investigate his 2007-2008 extramarital affair with a married, female staff member.

Earlier, on April 25, 2011, Nevada Republican Governor Brian Sandoval appointed third-term U.S. Congressman Dean Heller (R. 2nd CD.) to complete Ensign’s Senate term. Sandoval set September 13, 2011 as the date for a special election to fill Heller’s now vacant House seat.

At the time, Nevada had three CDs. The map shows how the 2nd CD encompassed a majority of the land mass of Nevada, while the other two CDs covered the more densely populated urban areas.

The pending special election surfaced a generous list of candidates from both major political parties, and triggered two court battles between Nevada’s Democrat and Republican Parties.

The GOP Candidates

On Monday, May 9, 2011, Mark Amodei, Chairman of the Nevada State GOP, announced his candidacy for the 2nd CD.

For 14 years, Amodei had represented Carson City, in the Nevada Assembly (1996-1998) and in theNevada Senate (1998-2010). He’d been a Republican candidate in the 2010 U.S. Senate race, but withdrew before the GOP Primary Election Day. Sharron Angle won the GOP primary (with 40.1%) against Sue Lowden (26.1%) and Danny Tarkanian (23.3%). Angle was defeated by Sen. Harry Reid in the General election.

By the time Amodei entered the 2nd CD race, several other GOP candidates had already announced – most notably: Angle; former USS Cole Commander Kirk Lippold; and State Senator Greg Brower. All three sought support from Republican conservatives, and Tea Party organizations. Amodei did not have a reputation for being particularly conservative.

The entry of Amodei into the GOP race prompted speculation concerning back-story political motives offered by local and national media sources, including these:

Las Vegas Review-Journal, May 9, 2011: “GOP leaders who fear a victory by a Democrat or Angle — an outsider who enjoys a tea party following — have sued Secretary of State Ross Miller, a Democrat who set the free-for-all special election rules. Republicans contend that because there’s no primary, the parties’ central committees should nominate one candidate each.”

Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2011: “Sharron Angle, a former Reno assemblywoman and ‘tea party’ favorite, carried the [2nd] district in her losing 2010 campaign against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and figures in much of the intrigue surrounding the special election…Angle has never gotten on well with establishment Republicans, and many were infuriated by her bumbling campaign against Reid. They hope that Miller will allow party leaders to pick their nominee, which would almost certainly mean that Angle would be passed over, perhaps in favor of Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, State Sen. Greg Brower of Reno, or Mark Amodei, the state GOP chairman. On the Democratic side, party leaders are hoping to coalesce behind a single candidate, with State Treasurer Kate Marshall an early favorite.”

The Court Battles

At the outset, it was unclear as to how Nevada would conduct its first ever special election. Two courts, first the Carson City District Court and then the Supreme Court of Nevada (SCONv), were called on by the Democrat and Republican Parties to interpret the application of, primarily, two Nevada election statutes.

The key issue, in the minds of the party officials on both sides, was whether or not both parties would run a single candidate or multiple candidates in the special election. The Democrats wanted multiple candidates for each party. The Republicans wanted one.

On May, 2, 2011, Nevada Democrat Secretary of State Ross Miller interpreted the NRS (Nevada Revised Statues) to indicate that the special election would be an open contest wherein multiple names would appear on each major party’s list of candidates on the Election Day ballot.

The Nevada Republican Party, chaired by Amodei, sued Nevada Secretary of State Miller claiming that a nominating process that resulted in just one candidate per party, exercised through the central committee of each party, was the proper interpretation of Nevada’s election statutes.

In the midst of the debate that followed, the more fundamental issue of whether or not the Nevada election statues cited were being properly used went unaddressed by both parties in the law suit, as the court’s attention focused on NRS 304.240 and 293.165.

NRS 304.240: “Procedure for filling vacancy in major or minor political party nomination or nonpartisan nomination. 1. If the Governor issues an election proclamation calling for a special election pursuant to NRS 304.230, no primary election may be held.”

This law, bypassing the primary process, was passed in response to the 9/11 attack and was intended to define the process to fill a vacancy caused by a “catastrophic” cause resulting in the vacancy of at least one-fourth of the U.S. House of Representatives. District Judge James Todd Russell ignored the legislative intent by, first, not ruling that the Governor couldn’t make such a proclamation because there was no catastrophe, and, second, by disallowing a primary. The only time the primary process is to be removed is when a catastrophe has caused the vacancy of at least a quarter of the U.S. House of Representatives.

To be specific: In the NRS, “catastrophe” is defined as “a natural or man-made event that causes, by death or disappearance, a vacancy in at least one-fourth of the total number of offices in the United States House of Representatives, including any number of offices representing the State of Nevada, or at least one-half of the total number of offices representing the State of Nevada.” Obviously, no catastrophe was involved in this case.

That begs the question: Why did Governor Sandoval call for a special election in the absence of a “catastrophe”? (Might the intent have been to assure that the candidate most favorable to the Nevada GOP was selected?) In 2004, upon the recommendation of Senator Harry Reid (D. NV.), Sandoval was nominated by President George W. Bush to the bench of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada. The Governor surely would have been aware of the intent of the NRS 304.230.

NRS 293.165: “Procedure for filling vacancy in major or minor political party nomination or nonpartisan nomination. 1. Except as otherwise provided in NRS 293.166, a vacancy occurring in a major or minor political party nomination for a partisan office may be filled by a candidate designated by the party central committee of the county or State, as the case may be, of the major political party or by the executive committee of the minor political party subject to the provisions of subsections 4 and 5.” (Subsections 4 and 5 refer to calendar matters.)

This statute pertains to a vacancy in the nomination that occurs after a primary-elected party nominee drops out, or dies. In those cases, so that the party is not bereft of a candidate on Election Day, the party central committee may select a new nominee to run in the general election. In the 2nd CD case there was no need to fill the office before the 2012 election when a primary would have routinely occurred before the general election.

Continued in Part 2: The Nevada GOP Central Committee elected its chair to the House in 2011 (Part 2)

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Since 2007, Lee Cary has written hundreds of articles and blogs for several conservative websites, including the American Thinker and Breitbart’s Big Journalism & Big Government (as Archy Cary), been quoted on national television (Sean Hannity) and on nationally syndicated radio (Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin). His articles are cited in Jerome Corsi’s The Obama Nation and in Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny. Cary now writes for the Texas-based site teaparty911.com.

Ethics Committee Investigating Rep. Don Young Of Alaska … Again

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Photo Credit: Marc Lester

The House of Representatives Ethics Committee is investigating Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young over allegations of wrongly taking gifts, using campaign funds for personal purposes and lying to federal officials.

The ethics committee said Tuesday that it was creating an investigative subcommittee to determine whether Young broke the law or House rules. The decision to move forward with an investigation follows an initial probe by the ethics panel in which it reviewed evidence against Young.

Young declined a request for an interview to discuss the allegations. “We have no comment at this time,” Young spokesman Michael Anderson said, adding that Young has cooperated with investigators and will continue to do so.

The allegations are that Young “or persons acting on his behalf improperly obtained, received or accepted gifts, improperly used official resources or campaign funds for personal purposes, failed to report certain gifts on his annual financial disclosure statements and made false statements to federal officials.”

Corruption investigations have dogged Young for years. At one point, the Justice Department drew up a draft indictment that included the synopsis that “Donald Young, in his capacity as congressman of Alaska, accepted and expected things of value (trips, meals, golf, etc.) from lobbyists, and in exchange he would provide them with official actions (meetings, letters, legislation).” The indictment wasn’t used, and Young has not been charged.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ron Paul Republicans Win Closely Contested House Races

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Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul will retire from Congress next year after serving for 12 terms, but several Republicans influenced by the iconic libertarian-leaning lawmaker will be arriving to take his place.

Thomas Massie won the race to replace retiring Kentucky Republican Rep. Geoff Davis, beating Democrat Bill Adkins by 20 percentage points. Massie, an ally of Paul’s son, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, raised nearly 10 times as much money as Adkins, according to the Lexington-Herald Leader.

Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash, who was already vying to be the House’s next “Dr. No” in his first term, was re-elected with 58 percent of the vote. Democrat Steve Pestka had hoped to win the votes of independents and moderate Republicans who might regard Amash as too extreme, but failed to gain traction against the 31-year-old congressman.

In a neighboring Michigan district, Ron Paul Republican Kerry Bentivolio was elected to the House seat formerly held by GOP Rep. Thaddeus McCotter. McCotter, who had failed to gather enough valid signatures to appear on the ballot, resigned from the House amid a petition scandal. Bentivolio beat Democrat Syed Taj.

Bentivolio spent four decades in the U.S. Army, but was painted by opponents as an eccentric. He raised reindeer and was an occasional Santa Claus. He was elected to Congress by a 7-point margin.

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP likely to keep control of U.S. House in November

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Democrats need to gain 25 seats this year to regain control of the House of Representatives from the Republicans. The prospects are dim.

Even a strong showing by President Barack Obama would be unlikely to swing the House to the Democrats and return the majority they lost two years ago. Redistricting, in effect in most places for the first time since the 2010 census, is helping Republicans. So are problems faced by Democratic moderates in conservative and Southern states.

Then there’s history. The last time a previously elected president seeking re-election saw his party pick up more than 25 seats was in 1892, according to research from the Rothenberg Political Report – and that president, Benjamin Harrison, lost.

“It’s possible, but not likely” Democrats will get a majority, said Nathan Gonzales, a political analyst at nonpartisan Rothenberg.

Republicans now control 240 House seats. The Democrats hold 190. Five seats are vacant. Rothenberg projects anywhere from a nine-seat Democratic gain next month to a one-seat Republican pickup. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report projects Democrats could pick up as many as eight, or Republicans could score a net gain of two.

Read more from this story HERE.

Whistle-blower: state employees forced to attend political event with Pelosi, Jackson

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Photo credit: Leader Nancy Pelosi

Documents and a whistle-blower affidavit obtained by The Daily Caller charge that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., and Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., participated in an unethical — and possibly illegal — effort to force 76 employees of an Illinois state agency to engage in political activity on the taxpayers’ dime.

According to the whistle-blower, Rev. Jackson also encouraged the government employees to load first-generation and low-income college students up with student loan debt — because Democrats in Congress, he allegedly promised, would eventually pass laws to forgive that debt later. “[T]hose people will continue to vote Democratic,” Jackson Sr. said, according to the whistle-blower.

On March 3, Pelosi flew to Chicago to endorse Rep. Jackson Jr., 17 days ahead of a heated March 20 Democratic primary he later won. Pelosi was scheduled to make the endorsement at a press conference later in the day, after she participated in an hour-long “forum” hosted by the elder Jackson at the headquarters of his progressive Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

Pelosi politicized that forum, jumping the gun and endorsing Jackson Jr. earlier than planned.

“One of the reasons I am here, and I will do this following this wonderful meeting, is to publicly state my endorsement of Jesse Jackson Jr. for re-election,” Pelosi said at the Rainbow PUSH forum. “I do so with great pride. I remember when he came to the Congress with a great name and a great tradition of his parents. But he came and he made his own mark in the Congress from his own generation.”

Read more from this story HERE.