#seanpatrickmaloney

Despite claims from Washington Democrat leadership that Democrats will be "proud to own" ObamaCare in 2014, a troubling trend is continuing among Democrat candidates in competitive races.

Yesterday, Congresswoman Cheri Bustos (D-IL), refused to give a "yes or no" answer when asked if she would have voted for ObamaCare: 

In a telephone conference with reporters Wednesday, Bustos declined to answer Sauk Valley Media's question about whether she would have voted for Obamacare - yes or no.

Earlier this month, Sean Eldridge (D-NY) would not say if he would have voted for ObamaCare:

True to his otherwise circumspect approach, however, Eldridge declined to say whether he would have voted for the bill, knowing what he does now about its implementation, had he been a member of Congress in 2010.

"It's impossible to speculate on something when I wasn't there and wasn't in the room and didn't have an opportunity to vote on it," he said. "But what I would say now moving forward is that I would not vote more than 40 times, as my opponent has, to repeal the Affordable Care Act."

I would like to start off with some food for thought Information:

-       Over 50,000 people die every year from lack of healthcare.

-       A few thousand people die every year from our failing infrastructure.

-       Over 1,500 people die every year from poor nutrition and starvation.

-       Less then 10 people die from a terrorist attack.

-       The US doesn’t rank in the top 10 in any education discipline (Math, Literacy or Science)

I think the NY18 where I live is pretty endemic of a lot of other Congressional districts around the country. People work long hours and don't have a lot of time for politics, not only local politics but national politics. In the last election we had a choice between a Republican Nan Hayworth and a Democrat Sean Patrick Maloney. People in the district were very upset with Representative Hayworth in the wake of two hurricanes that devastated the area, hurricane Irene and Lee. After the two hurricanes hit the area was devastated including local farmers and everyone turned to Representative Hayworth for help, but received very little. It was unfortunate, and she was very unresponsive. As a result of dissatisfaction with Representative Hayworth's job performance combined with increased Democratic turnout for a Presidential election led to Representative Sean Patrick Maloney being swept into office.

Representative Maloney was not really properly vetted at the time. The primary was moved up in the district and with strong support from former president bill Clinton and the shortened primary season people gave Rep. Maloney a pass as being another Democrat with good backing. And here in lies the problem. Part of the dissatisfaction with Rep Hayworth from Democrats came from her support of legislation rolling back financial reform, her support of CISPA the Cyber Security Bill, her support of Keystone XL Pipeline, and her willingness to sacrifice bringing back hard earned tax dollars back into the community where it could do the most good in favor of more military  and defense spending.

Representative Maloney put himself forth as a moderate Democrat who would bring common sense solutions not only to the area but also to Congress. But I think Rep. Maloney, given that he lived in NYC and never really lived in our community, had a real lack of understand of the needs of our community. Like most communities throughout the US ours suffers from budget deficits, infrastructure failures, decreased funding from the state government, cuts in education funding, and increased property and school taxes. With large Big Box retailers like Walmart combined with decreased funding from the state and federal government, more and more communities are finding their hard earned money leaving their communities and not returning in the form of investment. This poses many problems for local communities which are limited in the ways they can raise money, and thus putting a higher burden on individuals within those communities to provide support.

In the wake of those two hurricanes, Rep. Maloney spoke about bringing investment back to our community, which I believe is what people wanted, especially in the wake of Rep. Hayworth who believed the Federal government had no role within or communities, that the Federal governments role was limited to defense, a typical tea party attitude.

Now Rep.Maloney has been in office for six months and has proven to be just another Washington insider catering to special interest groups over the community for which he represents. Unfortunately something I predicted prior to the election. Like Rep. Hayworth, Rep. Maloney is pushing for the same legislative agenda as not only Rep. Hayworth but also the Republican Party. Some of his votes including rolling back financial reform set forth in Dodd/Frank (for which Citigroup threw him a $2,500/plate fundraiser), a vote for the Keystone XL Pipeline, a vote for CISPA the Cyber Security bill, a vote for the NSA Spy Program (voted against the AMASH amendment in the NDAA), and a vote to cut SNAP by $20 billion per year, a vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act and his position against universal background checks for gun purchases. And these are just a few of his votes and positions.

To date he has not had to explain his votes, and when asked he usually gives some type of Washington double talk which sounds reasonable but when thought about isn’t really. The issue really comes down to the fact that most people see 30% of their hard earned income go to the Federal Government in the form of taxes. Those Tax dollars are then suppose to come back to the communities in the form of services, roads, bridges, infrastructure, education, healthcare, etc…

However, as we have seen over the last few months, Congress continues to cut services that help local communities while continuing to pour money into so called defense and security projects. CISPA would have costs taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars for an entirely separate and new Cyber Security program to spy on Americans (gather emails and computer data from individuals/taxpayers within America). I was told by Congressman Maloney’s office this was to protect us from China who we are not at war with, who most of our major corporations do significant business with and who the US is indebted to to the tune of over $3 trillion. So not sure why we need to spend the money on this or what collecting emails from Americans has to do with China, but Rep. Maloney thought this was more important then bringing this money back to our community in some form or another. The same goes with PRISM, the cyber security program run by the NSA. The US spends hundreds of billions of dollars on a program for which Americans receive very little benefit. Also, the Senate in their immigration bill poured over $300 billion into defense spending, including military equipment, a boarder fence and yet even more cyber security. All to protect a boarder with Mexico who we are not at war with and have a free trade agreement with. But I am digressing.

Now with the budget looming Republicans are threatening to shut down the government over spending. Well given the approval of hundreds of billions of dollars for defense and security spending, most of which doesn’t defend or protect our local communities (that is done by our local police force) they want to prevent even more of our hard earned tax dollars from coming back to our communities. And unfortunately Rep. Maloney like other Congress people are of the belief that the budget needs to be cut, and that we need to address federal security concerns at the expense of local communities (something Detroit Mich and Harrisburgh PA are all too familiar with given their recent bankruptcies). But the problem with this philosophy is that our local communities are struggling and a lot of them are failing. This is putting significant strain on local services, infrastructure and education. And at the end of the day what good is a strong national defense and military if our local communities fail?

Our forefathers understood that our national defense was only as strong as our local communities. This is why they developed the national income tax, not just for an army, but to provide support to the other states in the union to ensure their success. The Constitution makes it clear from the start we are all in this together, not struggling as individuals, but succeeding collectively as one nation. If American had all the money in the world, then spending all the money we do on military and security concerns wouldn’t be a problem cause then we could still provide the services the communities need to not only get by but to be successful and thrive. Today, I don’t believe anyone would view their local community as thriving, most are just getting by. As stated above our infrastructure is failing, people are dying cause they don’t have healthcare and our education system is lagging behind. Americans are dying every day from things we can prevent so really how effective is our national security if it refuses to save American lives? Does it make sense to spend hundreds of billions on these defense and security programs that don’t help Americans and our communities? No, we would certainly save more lives and be better off investing that money in our communities especially since we are told we don’t have all the money in the world.  Something Rep Maloney and other Congress People have forgotten is that the strength of our nation does not lie in our national defense but in the strength of our local communities.

  PS:

 I was originally going to write an article discussing the Democratic Primary held in the Congressional 18th district of New York on June 26. However, after a few days of solemn contemplation I decided there is a broader story here. These primaries are suppose to be to pick the best candidate to represent the interests of your district both socially and economically. As in any democratic government, there is suppose to be a broader social pact with the State. We as citizens pay taxes to both the Federal and State government, and that money comes back to the community in the form of roads, infrastructure, community development, education and security. We go through these election cycles and both sides, Democrats and Republicans ask us to elect them and they will in turn cut out the waste in Washington. “Waste” is a code word; for the Left it means cutting boondoggle defense contracts and eliminating tax breaks for corporations; for the Right it means cutting Medicare, Social Security and Welfare. We as good citizens go to the voting booth polarized by the news medias’ rhetoric and vote based on those polarized beliefs. But none of it is true. Neither side has any interest in eliminating their respective “waste” as it continues to polarize people and help them raise money from their respective interest groups.

So what are we really seeing. The politicians we are electing to congress are affluent, in most cases have multiple homes, send their kids to private schools and don’t have an economic interest in the district they represent. That’s the key, don’t have an economic interest in the district they represent. A Congressperson’s responsibility is to represent that district and bring federal dollars to their constituents, in the form of education, infrastructure and security. With the growing lack of economic interest in their communities, Congresspersons no longer have a vested economic interest in bringing that money back to said district for education, infrastructure or security. Don’t get me wrong, if they have a chance to slap their name on an earmark they will do it, but not much incentive after that.

Over the last 10 years we have seen over 40 municipalities go bankrupt in this country, and a number more are under emergency financial managers, and thousands are on the verge. One significant reason for this is that the Federal and State governments are allocating less money back to the municipalities, forcing these different localities to raise property taxes and school taxes, as well as issue more municipal debt. This is to pay for crumbling infrastructure, increased education costs associated with federal mandates and growing population and of course security. The discussion of “Waste” in Washington is a ruse, to keep people distracted enough so they wont see that more and more money is being extracted from the communities they live in, and those that do see it think it’s that “Waste.” It is not, it is just money being extracted out of the communities and into the hands of large corporations and large donors.

So what does this have to do with the Congressional 18 of NY. Everything. In that election we had five candidates running for election, only three of which actually lived and had an economic interest in the district. One of them Sean Patrick Maloney, who subsequently won the nomination, was hand picked by the Democratic Party to represent the 18th district. So instead of the district picking, the DNC poured money into Maloney’s campaign to ensure they had someone loyal to the party, irrespective of whether the candidate actually lived in the community or would be loyal to that community. The DNC lined up the unions to mobilize the democratic vote and it worked. However, as we have seen in Wisconsin and all throughout the US, the Democrats really don’t care about unions, they are only good for mobilizing the vote, when it comes to standing and marching with them they don’t really care about their issues.