well fuck, they put Katrina funding in the defense bill

Dammit.

CSPAN2 - Sen Landrieu speaking.

ANWR, Katrina relief and I'll be damned if I can remember the other thing he cited. But, Stevens did say that he added those things.

He is using the Katrina disaster to get ANWR passed. Unbelievable!

x(

:argh:

attaching non related items to bills.

it should be outlawed to attach non related items to bills.

that is the best way to clean up congress.

keeps the prostitutes from slipping their diseases into the johns.

and both parties are equally guilty of doing this, depending on
who is in power.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/chinamart.htm

Lets just put every goddamn thing in there. That way nobody can deny it. :grr:

In the house Obey mentioned that this breaks a rule of germaneness.

from http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/RL30945.pdf

It is easier to circumvent committees in the Senate than in the House, primarily
because Senators generally have the right to offer non-germane amendments
(commonly known as “riders”) to measures being considered on the floor.4 For
example, a Senator could offer an amendment containing the text of a bill blocked
in committee. A Senator also could use Rule XIV (discussed earlier) to bypass a
committee that has not reported a particular measure. In this situation, the Senator
would reintroduce the bill, demand two readings, and then object to the second
reading. Under Rule XIV, the measure would be placed directly on the Calendar of
Business. Other Senate procedures for bypassing committees, such as the motion to
discharge a committee and the motion to suspend the rules, are employed so
infrequently they are not discussed here. Senate committees are sometimes
discharged by unanimous consent.

But, what makes this illegal, is this stuff was all all added AFTER THE CONFERENCE REPORT
WAS SIGNED OFF ON BY house DEMOCRATS, who do have germaneness rules.

This practice should be outlawed. It would go a long way toward cleaning up politics in this country.

a bill like this is anarchy.

This is outrageous! :grr: And the first I've heard of it.
How come the media hasn't been all over this?

that parents whose children are currently attending parochial schools (they were thinking of kids whose public schools were destroyed by Katrina or Rita and are now in religious schools out of necessity) will have to opt out if they don't want their kids to get religious instruction at the school. However, there is no provision in the bill to tell parents they have the right to opt out.

Is there a link?

while I was watching CSPAN. I can't remember which one it was.

Why don't they just close the public schools now and get it over with?

I've tried to figure a way to end the cycle of corruption and, it seems, there is ALWAYS a way to circumvent any plan towards accountability and transparency. :shrug: What happened to the importance of personal integrity in this country?

What? Do those jackasses think the only people suffering are Democrats? Fucking bastards!

what time do they start tomorrow and what time do they think they will get around to voting on this mess, do you know?

when he said that Stevens would be holding the soldiers and Katrina victims hostage to big oil.

Isn't he just SPECIAL.

I got the impression that he was making it sound like 20% of the profits from the drilling would be used for Katrina victims. Did anybody else get that from his babbling today?

I was left with the impression that he structured this so even taking ANWR out, someone would appear to be getting screwed beyond the oil companies and Stevens himself.

There was one other component that he added as well, according to what he said today, but I can't remember what it was. He stated very clearly (among all the gobbletygook he spewed today), that he added THREE things to this bill.

right away.

I thought this was a process of looking for oil, and then refining it. I thought I'd heard that we couldn't expect much benefit for years.

Do you know anything about that?

I think he is betting that NOLA and the rest of the Gulf Coast will be rebuilding for years and funds will be delievered to offset those costs for years to come. A reverse earmark, if you will.

I heard tonight that the Govenor of Alaska was saying, basicly, no way. He wants 90% of the profits for the state.

As we researched tonight, Alaskan residents don't pay an income tax. They get a dividend check from the oil that they are drilling instead. Permanent Fund Distribution. http://www.pfd.state.ak.us/ So, the profits from the oil pipelines mean money in the pockets of every resident in Alaska. This is why he is willing to stroke out on the floor to make sure it passes. The Katrina addition (and what ever else it was that I can't remember, sorry wish I could) are just insurance to help it to get squeezed through the system, added inproperly or not.

Same lie, different day. How can we let them repeat their BS?

Exactly! He can say this all he wants, but there is no way to enforce it that I can see. It's just a tactic to embrass eveyone else and make himself look like he was doing the right thing by breaking the rules to slide it into THIS bill AFTER the conference had signed off on the bill. The House portion of this conference have not heard about this portion of this legislation (they didn't vote on it with this in there), nor have they had the opportunity to examine this proposal. Therefore, it violates the rules to add it AFTER they had collectively signed off on it.

Anyone that thinks the drilling in ANWR is going to single handedly pay for rebuilding the Gulf Coast is mistaken. He is looking for a win-win offset to allow his misdeeds to stand and get his ANWR passed, no matter who he has to hitch his wagon to to do it.

Not sure what the alternative is. She was showing pictures of destroyed homes in NOLA. 275000 homes destroyed. 10x as many as Andrew.

Its really a shitty thing. Maybe the lowest Republican dirty trick yet.

back down for us.

:nuke:

There are concrete things we can do.

WE CAN CALL OUR REPS EVERY DAY AND TELL THEM OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS ON THE GULF COAST ARE BEING SUBJECTED TO CRIMINAL NEGLECT.

YOU can make a difference.

DU it. Those families in tents in the dead of fucking WINTER are depending on YOU.

THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

Does the house have to come back this week and work something else out? The whole process start all over again?

More importantly what is ANWR and Katrina funding doing in a DEFENSE bill? Oh yeah, so Republicans can satisfy their Corporate lobbyists. :grr:

But we keep our eyes on the prize.

If they have the gall to screw Katrina survivors, we play offense.

:nuke:

Either they drop the ANWR piece and vote on the bill as it left conference and leave Stevens twisting in the wind to find a new piece of legislation OR they call the House back, create a new committee and run the play again, with or without the ANWR piece.

The easiest thing would be for Stevens to withdrawl his additions. I am not sure "mini-hulk" is going to do that without needing his wubbie and his nanny. If he refuses and the point of order (that it was added improperly) is upheld, then they have no option than to go back to the drawing board.

On the other hand, they could vote that, improper or not, they are going to include ANWR and then the real fun will begin. The votes on that will be very important. That is why they are flying Cheney back in, so he can cast the tie breaking vote to leave it in, I believe.

edit - typos .. again!

,...irresponsible in tracking expenditures, over and fucking OVER AGAIN!!! They LOST BILLIONS,...BILLIONS,...some fucking how,...and they have been called on that by the GAO!!!

Katrina victims won't get a DIME!!! Alaskans won't get a DIME!!!

What the FUCK has happened to this country? We must be completely dysfunctional to place funds in the hands of the DD!!!

This is total bullshit!!!

I am sick of his shit!!! SICK OF IT!!! :mad: :grr: :mad:

and Weller wanted Will County control over it (the county where the airport is to be built and part of his district) and Jesse Jackson wanted his district to have control of the airport, which only has a small portion of Will County in it. Weller called in HASTERT and HASTERT had it put in THE DEFENSE BILL TO GET IT PASSED FOR WELLER. I kid you not. Honestly, wtf does a midwest airport, in the middle of NOWHERE, have to do with DEFENSE? NOTHING! It was the ONLY way Weller could get it passed so they stuck it in the Defense Bill. :grr: UNFREAKINBELIEVABLE!

Like at midnight.

This bill is fucked up on so many levels.

We can't do better than that? Here, at DU?

:wtf:

I am sick of this crooked bullshit!!! SICK OF IT, I tell you!!!

The freakin' crazies are in charge of the asylum. This has GOT TO END!!!

Thank you, Just Me. :hug:

Sometimes, I just want to walk away from the insanity.

I do.

But, my love for this country and our people and humanity is bigger than "Just Me".

Dear MoveOn member,

We are down to the wire on drilling in the Arctic. After Congress stripped controversial drilling provisions from the budget, pro-drilling advocate Sen. Stevens just couldn't accept defeat. Now, he is trying to sneak drilling into a defense bill. A vote could come in the next 48 hours.

Sen. Stevens is even holding Hurricane Katrina relief hostage to get his way. Stevens was quoted as saying, "The levees will be paid for when we drill in ANWR."1

:nuke:

If I got what he said today right, he added that Katrina piece as part of the ANWR shit that he added. It was not the intention of the regular committee to tie Katrina stuff to the defense appropriation bill ... it was STEVENS that did that.

If the ANWR part comes out, Katrina is no worse off (nor no better) than they would be if Stevens hadn't added this portion to the bill. He added as he did to assure that he had the most mud to sling if he was refused.

Again, I think I heard him say that 20% of the profit from the oil would be earmarked for Katrina relief. That is another way he is trying to make it more acceptable to ram this through.

I could have misheard him, as I have said before. He was in melt down all day, mumbling and bumbling and hard to follow.

They are selling us outright.

:kick:

:grouphug:

Where are our heads that we can let the Thuggery cut taxes for their cronies and shake off the Gulf Coast?

Is there a memo I missed?

:nuke:

Help vote this to the greatest page! :kick: Stevens' ass out of the Senate!

but he is NOT trying to take money away from Katrina victims. He piggybacked his legislation/amendment to the defense bill and ADDED the Katrina portion to it too to make ANWR more acceptable. Katrina victims will be no worse off than they were yesterday if this does not pass because he broke the rules adding it in the first place. See, he tied the two together to make it appear that if you voted against one you were voting against the other, which is just true but only to the extent that one can not exist without the other.

He made the promise that 20% of the profits from the oil from ANWR would be earmarked for Katrina relief. See how much easier it might make the medicine go down? He could give a shit about Katrina (as evidenced by his insistance on his bridge to nowhere), but if it makes the Senate look bad NOT to support it (even though it was added against the rules), and it gives him more mud to sling by saying "We COULD have had this for the Katrina victims, but they refused to support it."

The proposal is bogus! It was not part of this bill until Stevens MADE it part of this bill. It was NOT included in conference. The Senators don't want Katrina relief tied to Stevens pet projects.

to the Katrina funding? What if the Dems shut down the Senate? Will the Katrina funds be available? I understand that it wasn't part of this bill until he did this, but it IS part of this bill now, right? What happenes if it goes down? What happens to the funds?

They are only using Katrina funding to get ANWR passed.

OR was the Katrina funding seperate? OR is this just funding they pulled out of their ass today?

Patriot Act renewal
Defense Budget
Deficit Reduction

Unless there were minor ones, Im not aware of other Katrina funding.

Katrina funding was NOT part of this bill until Steven had his way with it. Why would they attach that to a defense appropriation bill? It doesn't make sense. It would be a seperate bill with funds clearly earmarked for Katrina, as the two emergency relief bills were earlier this year.

they remove this because they uphold the point of order that it was added against the rules, then it will be removed and the bill will be voted on as it was agreed to in conference. If it fails, then they must call the House back and create a new conference and start over writing the bill.

If they don't uphold the point of order, it will get voted on with this included and stands a good chance of not passing because the point of order really is valid and to vote for it after knowing that it was added against the rules leaves a horrible precident for the future. If this slides by, then anyone can do this at any time and cite that Stevens did it and got away with it, why can't I type bullshit. That's the moral dilema.

Stevens could opt to take his additions out after the point of order is upheld and then it would revert back to what it was before he tampered with it.

I think at that point, the Katrina funding and the Bird Flu funding would be gone as well as the ANWR appropriation.

It's a very slippery slope no matter how you look at it. There is plenty of mud slinging to go round. If you don't vote for it as Stevens changed it, then you are hurting the Katrina victims and those that might need Bird Flu vaccines, they will say. If you vote for it with it in, they will own the Senate and there will be NOTHING we can do to stop them from running ruffshot over ANY legislation in the future. Committees will mean nothing if they can just add what they want later anyway.

We, the American people, will totally be their bitch if we allow them to pass this with these additions because we didn't hold their hands to the flames and make them play by the rules.

edited to add - I could have gotten something wrong or misheard. Stevens was in melt down everytime he appeared today and was hard to follow. If I am mistaken about any of this, I apologize in advance. I present here the facts as I believe them to be right now.

It's hard to watch an asshat melt down and keep it together. ;)

:hi: What a damn nightmare.

:hi:

He has been in melt down since early this morning. I thought I had tivo's his big melt down today, but I had the press conference instead. I wish I had, so I could have tried to transcribe just what he said.

I am not even sure *I* have it all straight, but I think I have the general idea of what was going on.

Here's hoping that they vote their conscience tomorrow and can stop Stevens in his track, for all our sakes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5647041&mesg_id=5647199

I found my post explaining the three things he added to this defense bill. ANWR, Katrina Relief, and Bird Flu monies. I am not sure if they are all hinged on ANWR passing, but I do remember the 20% pledge of the profits for Katrina. Perhaps there was a number assigned to the Bird Flu portion as well, but I missed it if he said it.

I have been watching and posting about this asshat all day today. He has been in full melt down mode since early this morning, saying ANYTHING trying to convince them not to allow the point of order that he added these things against the rules.