[Iran Press TV] The mayor of Washington DC has been jugged by US police while participating in a protest rally against a federal government budget bill that will enforce major spending cuts.
Vincent Gray, who was among a group of protesters blocking traffic, said the government has not offered a "response" to his recent letter regarding budget cuts that affect the Washington DC public, a Press TV correspondent reported on Tuesday.
"In the recent past, I sent a letter just a couple of days ago to (Republican) Speaker Boehner (of the House of Representatives) and the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, ... the charismatic former Senate majority leader ... making the case once again and asking for their support to give the citizens of this city ... [but] I got no response," he said.
"What Congress has done is just complete disrespect and contempt for us as colonial subjects," said a member of the DC Statehood Green Party.
One of the protesters, who had left Ethiopia for lack of voting rights, said she did not expect the same thing in the United States, describing the matter as "upsetting."
Despite US promotion of democracy throughout the globe, the residents of the US capital city do not have the right to have representative in the US Congress. Washington D.C. is "Federal City." In theory the government can buy up all the land in the city for federal use. Until relatively recent times it was run by the federal government as an island of political neutrality. The denizens of any capital have the capacity to exert pressure on the government through simple proximity. The Founding Fathers were familiar with the Roman republic's long series of gang wars between the Sullan and Marian factions -- which led to the eventual emergence of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus -- and wanted to avoid the possibility in their own republic. Yon Gray hath a lean and hungry look.
Many years of protest and the city's official efforts to gain the right of representation in Congress has produced no results, despite promises by a number of Democratic presidents, including Barack B.O. Obama, to push for the basic right.
US politicians had earlier agreed on a record $38 billion in spending cuts to avert a government shutdown that would seriously affect its troubled economy.
The budget bill would prohibit the capital from spending its own local money for reproductive health care services -- affecting low-income women -- on procedures such as abortion, etc. It could also even eliminate initiatives that help prevent the spread of AIDS.
The White House earlier expressed concerns in case the congressional Republicans fail to raise the $14.29 trillion debt limit by May 16.
Republicans at the House of Representatives say that Obama has to agree to further budget cuts, other than the $38 billion, in exchange for his demand over raising the debt limit.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/13/2011 00:00 ||
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See also TOPIX > DEBT CEILING OR NO DEBT CEILING, THE BUDGET BOMB IS COMING.
The US Budget is gonna blow like a righteous
"2012" massive Solar Storm, + there's nothing the Fed = US Congresscritters can do about it anymore as per staving/putting off unpopular across-the-board cuts.ITS ONLY A CHOICE BETWEEN CUT-DEEPER-VS-CUT-DEEPEST - THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS "EXCESSIVE BUDGET CUTS" ANYMORE.
#2
OOOPPPSIES, forgot PEOPLE'S DAILY FORUM/DRUDGEREPORT AM > US SEES [15.7% < 16.0%] BUDGET DEFICIT INCREASES.
POTUS BAMMER + FED = NOT-OZZIE/SHARON OZBOURNE = GETS A "BANK NOTICE" OF PAYMENT OVERDUE? The US is being asked by the UNO to make to make some kind of "down payment" on its obligations.
#3
when DC elects Marion Barry as Mayor and sends that racist idiot Eleanor Holmes Norton to Congress (thank Gawd she can't vote) you don't deserve respect. I too have nothing but contempt for you
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/13/2011 7:54 Comments ||
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They should follow the model of the land the feds returned to Virginia on the other side of the Potomac. The purpose of the Federal District was to be a place outside the influence and control of states. That's hardly a problem or issue anymore. Keep the federal property as is and which you can find in many other states as far as jurisdiction issues and autonomy. Return the rest of the place back to Maryland. That way the inhabitants can get direct representation through the state, just as those south of the Potomac get today.
Here's what you need to know: Bush did it. Every single cut proposed by Paul Ryan amounts to stealing food from a starving child. Rethuglicans are evil. More defense cuts -- rocks are perfectly adequate weapons. We can have it all if we tax the rich except for the ones who make large campaign contributions to Bambi. Any questions?
Posted by: Matt ||
04/13/2011 15:36 ||
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Paul Ryan's reaction When the President reached out to ask us to attend his speech, we were expecting an olive branch. Instead, his speech was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to address our fiscal crisis. What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our commander-in-chief; we heard a political broadside from our campaigner-in-chief.
Last year, in the absence of a serious budget, the President created a Fiscal Commission. He then ignored its recommendations and omitted any of its major proposals from his budget, and now he wants to delegate leadership to yet another commission to solve a problem he refuses to confront.
We need leadership, not a doubling down on the politics of the past. By failing to seriously confront the most predictable economic crisis in our history, this Presidents policies are committing our children to a diminished future. We are looking for bipartisan solutions, not partisan rhetoric. When the President is ready to get serious about confronting this challenge, we'll be here.
#4
Then, as the Baby Boomers start to retire and health care costs continue to rise, the situation will get even worse. By 2025, the amount of taxes we currently pay will only be enough to finance our health care programs, Social Security, and the interest we owe on our debt.
The Liar in Chief takes us all for stupid. Karl Denninger: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare and Unemployment consume 100% of tax revenue right now.
#5
I thought the call for defense cuts was especially rich coming from a guy who just started a war. But maybe it's a little tiny war that we'll fight with little tiny weapons.
Posted by: Matt ||
04/13/2011 20:23 Comments ||
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Henry Fonda remembers K-A-YDET RYAN.
* ION CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > [US TreaSec] GEITHNER: US WILL HIT DEBT LIMIT BY MAY 16.
POTUS BAMMER + GOP-DEM Congresscritters M-U-S-T raise the DEBT CEILING NLT 05/16th/2011 as Geithner = US Treasury Dept. may only be able to forestall de facto US DEBT DEFAULT widout change to the curr Debt Ceiling until JULY 8th, 2011.
IIUC ARTIC = after July 8th of this year, US DEFAULT WILL BE CERTAIN + UN-PREVENTABLE.
* PEOPLE'S DAILY FORUM > IMF SAYS WORLD GROWTH NOT ENOUGH TO CREATE JOBS.
* TOPIX > IMF: US HAS THE BIGGEST DEFICITS AMONG MAJOR WORLD ECONOMIES.
[via Weekly Standard Blog] Sez Nancy San Fran Nan Pelosi Congresswoman-for-Life from the San Francisco Bay Area, born into a family of politicians. Formerly Speaker of the House, but it's not her fault they lost. Really. Noted for her heavily botoxed grimace...:
To my Republican friends: take back your party. So that it doesn't matter so much who wins the election, because we have shared values about the education of our children, the growth of our economy, how we defend our country, our security and civil liberties, how we respect our seniors. Because there are so many things at risk right now -- perhaps in another question I'll go into them, if you want. But the fact is that elections shouldn't matter as much as they do...But when it comes to a place where there doesn't seem to be shared values then that can be problematic for the country, as I think you can see right now.
Lemme translate that:
"Dump the Tea Party, dump the civil libertarians, dump the social conservatives, become just like us. That way if the balance does somehow tip nothing will change. The taxes will still be levied, the borrowing will go on forever and ever, the same old cows will remain sacred until there's no money left, anywhere, to pay for them and we quietly collapse into something like Greece, or Detroit, or maybe even Zim-Bob-We. Like in Greece and Zim-Bob-We and in all the decaying cities in the present U.S.A. the rubes will continue electing the same old crooks using the same old slogans, who'll continue picking through the rubble for any leftovers."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/13/2011 10:00 ||
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This woman has something wrong with her. Statements like this and "you have to pass the bill so you can find out what's in the bill" and how Rethuglicans want to kick 6M seniors out of their nursing homes show an inability to recognize, accept, and/or deal with reality. Look at her eyes when she speaks. She's in anoher world.
#5
For the most part they don't matter - both parties are very much the same. Polling has gotten so effective that each party is, in effect, fighting over that one voter in the middle.
I'm sure she would prefer the other traditional democratic election system - one (wo)man, one vote, one time. It worked for Chavez, Castro, Mugabe, etc.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
jugged
Harry Reid,
Nancy 
