Newt Gingrich: an ethical vacuum - Oliver Twist returns

Newt Gingrich defends his child education plan for poor children. Newt Gingrich stated he felt poor children grew up to be unemployed because they had no role models. Newt said the kids grew up in poverty because their parents had no jobs and the kids never learned what it was to go to work everyday. Newt said the poor kids needed to learn a work ethic and what it meant to go to work everyday. With this goal in mind, Newt Gingrich proposed that poor kids be put to work cleaning the floors and cleaning the bathrooms at schools...oh yeah, and painting the building.. HUH!!!!!
When the news media asked Newt if he was serious, Newt said he was. He said people are poor because they don't work, so the kids never see people going to work everyday and, hence, do not have a work ethic.
Newt is far out f touch with poor America? Poor is defined as people whose incomes fall below the US poverty level. There are many people who are employed, yet are poor. These are the working poor. They are only able to get hired to lower paying jobs. So, they go to work regularly, but barely make enough to pay their bills. For various reasons, they are stuck in poor neighborhoods. Often these people are younger adults, especially those with kids, and older adults who are disabled, ill or aged out of the job marketplace.
Children in the US are protected from hazardous material exposure which includes feces, and chemicals. Kids are also allotted shortened work days, so they can experience childhood. As an American citizen, I have some of my earned money taken every year by the government to get kids into schools daily and teach them about life and work. If the schools are not working, tear them down and send the kids elsewhere.
There are people who are poor financially, but are not poor in social conditions. So, many poor children grow up in great families and have the benefit of a healthy supportive environment. Newt did not grow up in poverty, but he was sodomized by a pedophile teacher as a youth, who he later married and with whom he fathered two children. Most would say Newt led a life of poverty in that he lived in a pedophile-based relationship for about 25 years and never learned regular American ethics, morals and mores.

Congress adjourns for week with no help to citizens

Congress is unable to function and will lead our country into further disaster.The dysfunction and political division has made Congress a place for grandstanding and hot rhetoric, but at the cost of national unemployment and no confidence in the economy. Politicians can't even decide if the federal government should give FEMA money to help citizens who are victims of national disasters. Republicans say they will vote to fund FEMA, if the money comes from current programs that help US children and the poor.
I think most Americans want to help people who suffer from natural disasters. The stagnation in Congress is hurting us all - a different type of national disaster. Republicans had hoped they could force Senate Democrats to accept a partisan budget cut on the threat that disaster victims would otherwise be deprived of assistance for days or even weeks.
We in the valley must assuredly work to get Denham out of the valley as a representative. We will never get a reduction in the deficit via the congressional super-committee with this group in office - that means cuts in Medicare, social security, medicaid, etc.. We must vote the obstructionist Republicans out in 2012, so we can move forward.
Then, after spending billions of dollars fighting whether to fund FEMA or fighting  to suspend clean air and water regulations and spend billions on studies to see if clean air improves health, the Congress adjourns for a week-long vacation.
This Congress takes too much time arguing and needs to spend more time in DC in session working and attempting to come to some needed agreements.
Americans are suffering, but congressmen are deaf to the cries.

Denham wants EPA out as he violates ethical standards

Rep. Jeff Denham (CD 19 Stanislaus,Fresno, Turlock, Madera, Sonora) spoke in the House on Sept. 23rd  urging the House to pass the Train Act and give the job of information gathering required in the Act to his friends in the House balcony. Republicans feel the EPA is a rogue agency and want to end the regulation of mercury, etc.
HOUSE’S TRAIN ACT THREATENS TO DERAIL CLEAN AIR | “The House is slated to vote this week on a proposal that mandates at least a years-long delay of two major air pollution rules and, senior Democrats say, badly weakens EPA’s ability to limit mercury and other air toxics from power plants,” E2 Wire writes. The White House has threatened a veto. Last night, the House Rules Committee set the rules for debate on the TRAIN Act (HR 2401), a “bill that mandates interagency economic analyses of EPA rules, and delays two rules on power plant emissions.” The White House has threatened a veto.


Paying for a huge study to report the effects of muecury, etc. is a huge waste of public money. WE MUST CUT UNNECESSARY COSTS AND WASTE - not continue the old wasteful ways of spending and increasing the deficit - especially when Denham stated on the House floor that he had a pecuniary, unethical interest which is related to his political campaign.