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MarkusQ writes "A few days ago a bi-partisan bill (PDF) to create a searchable on-line database of government contracts, grants, insurance, loans, financial assistance, earmarks and other such pork was put on 'secret hold' using a procedure that does not appear to be mentioned in the Constitution or in the Senate bylaws. This raised the ire of bloggers left and right and started an all out bi-partisan effort to expose the culprit by process of elimination. As it turns out it was our old friend the right honorable Senator from Alaska, Mr. 'Series of Tubes', Ted 'Bridge to Nowhere' Stevens."
It is said: Power corrupts, while absolute power corrupts absolutely.
My theorem: The longer any party or group remains in power the closer they come to corrupt.
While some may draw a bead on Mr. Stevens and his 37 years in office. Remember pork is often a reward for having been loyal at some point. It's not simply Sen. Ted Stevens rolling up his sleeves for a reach into the Pork Barrel, but his reward for long, loyal service to his contemporaries. There's doubtless a bit of influence due to his seniority, but he's been a good soldier when his party has needed some. We can expect a lot of red faces when same bi-partisan muck-rakers get their hands on the online database and equally glib Senators and Representatives have to answer for decades of funny business which has passed beneath the radar in a long game of "I'll scratch your back, if you scratch mine."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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Turns out he's just concerned that this bill would cost too much of the good American taxpayers' money.
Seriously--the man deserves his seat in Congress, if only for being able to sling such profoundly obvious bullshit with a perfectly straight face.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
The smoke is not from cigarettes, I know because I toured the Capitol Building. The smoke is actually from the candles light the place. The candles produce a lot of smoke because instead of being composed primarily of wax they're made of torn pieces of the Constitution, Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.
Just to illustrate a little further where Sen. Stevens' priorities (and shame) lie, remember that this is the man who said, when the Senate voted NOT to allow drilling in ANWR earlier this year, that it was the "saddest day of his life." Remember also that his wife died in a plane crash in 1978.
Now, maybe his wife was a very nasty person, but when an 83-year old man thinks that the saddest day of his life is not getting Exxon into a wildlife preserve....
Ted Stevens and his counterpart in the House of Representatives, Don Young, are very popular in Alaska for the very reason everyone on Slasdot is up in arms - Pork.
The Knick Arm bridge is seen as a shot in the arm for local developers and construction critters. Remember, pretty much the only economic engines in Alaska are Oil and Government. Nothing else but a bunch of trees, rocks and the occasional brown bear.
So they bring in the Pork. Christ, half of Anchorage is named Ted Stevens this or Ted Stevens that. It's a GOOD thing. Really. It's representative government at its finest....
The other way to look Mssrs. Stevens and Young is that they are pretty cheap dates. For one genuine vote in the House or Senate, you need only to bribe a couple hundred thousand people. You got the money, honey, they've got the time.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The thing I like best about this story is that its part of a larger reframing of the conflict, from a red-team vs. blue-team battle where you're stuck choosing the lesser of two evils to a more clear-cut battle between We The People and those who would like to take advantage of us.
As a life long Republican that can't stand Bush, I probably have deep ideological difference with half (or more) of the people who worked on this, but I respect not only their right to hold opinions that differ from mine, but to know where their tax dollars are going, and who doesn't want them to know.
--MarkusQ
Damnit. And that was at the top of my Netflix queue.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
A hold is an implied promise to filibuster. So when a senator places a hold on the bill, the senate generally agrees to move on rather than force the issue of an ugly, inconvenient showdown. They're then traded, logrolled, and used as bargaining chips in the legislative process.
To answer your question, it doesn't happen constantly because if it did the hold system wouldn't be an effective means of negotiations. The senate would constantly be in filibuster (if the people issuing holds follow through on their threats) and voting for cloture (to end the debate). It works because in general the senate at least wants to appear to get things done--and perhaps actually wants to get things done--and not waste a bunch of time on filibusters and attempted filibusters.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
You've never been married, have you?
Twelve days ago, at a town meeting in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) accused Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) of obstructing his porkbuster-database bill with an anonymous hold.
That's according to an Aug. 18 article in the Fort Smith (Ark.) Times Record:
One of the senators most criticized for his personal projects, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has a hold of his own on Coburn's bill to make public the spending patterns of the government. Called the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, the legislation calls for the creation of a database open to the public where citizens can track government spending.
"He's the only senator blocking it," Coburn said of Stevens.
Coburn's office was not available for comment this evening.
The article has gone largely unnoticed in recent days, as hundreds of bloggers and blog-readers (at TPMm and elsewhere) have called Senate offices in an effort to determine who placed the "secret" hold on Coburn's bill. The piece does not turn up in a Nexis search, although it is in Google.
Stevens has been the odds-on favorite since the hunt for the Holder Who Dare Not Speak His Name began.
But did he really do it? Well, he had a motive: As the paper and others have noted, Stevens and Coburn have clashed before -- in particular over Stevens' now-legendary "bridge to nowhere." Coburn attempted (and failed) to block the $233 million boondoggle. And revenge certainly fits the senior Alaskan's m.o. "Stevens can play rough," the Seattle Times noted in June. "Despite denials from his staff, he retaliates - and doesn't mind waiting years to do so."
Stevens' office has so far refused to comment on the hold. Ninety-five other senators have confirmed they were not responsible.
Doesn't it give someone entirely too much power to let a single Senator be able to block and entire bill indefinatly and anonymously? Isn't the whole point of a body like the Senate to make multiple people have to agree on something so one lone quack can't screw things up like this?
The reason for these holds is that Senate rules require unanimous consent to put something to a vote. It's basically a way of saying "Some of us haven't made up our minds yet." Without such a rule, you'd could easily have Senators forcing votes on issues that the potential opposition hasn't had time to consider. Expect to hear something like this from Sen. Stevens.
Clearly, it is being abused in this case, but I just wanted to make it clear that these rules exist for basically good reasons.
Is anybody going to actually press charges and put this guy in jail? Can we PLEASE start jailing all the politicians that are breaking the constitution left and right, STARTING with every one who voted for the patriot act?
These people need to go to jail. How do we get them there?!?!
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I just called and asked politely that Senator Stevens remove his hold on Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act. I encourage everyone to do the same.
The Honorable Ted Stevens
United States Senate
522 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-3004
(202) 224-2354 FAX
That might be true if Alaska had a federal tax deficit, but they don't. According to The Tax Foundation, Alaska paid a total of about $4.1 billion in federal taxes in 2004 but received about $8.4 billion in federal spending. The only state to get a higher return on its tax dollars was New Mexico ($9.2 billion out and $19.9 back). A lot of that, of course, is precisely because Alaska's Congresscritters are so good at bringing home the pork.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
The latest version of Steven's telecom reform bill has the broadcast flag, the RIAA's audio flag, and compulsory web labelling for US adult sites. The bill is currently unpopular among some senators because there's no network neutrality provisions -- but there's a lot more in there that stinks.
More information at the EFF. Please write to your senator, and tell them to stand against Steven's bill.
Linky
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
First of all, any Senator can block almost any bill already, using a filibuster. So it's not like this is a new concept.
Furthermore a "hold" is not secret to everyone; otherwise it would be pointless. The Senate leader is informed by the cloakroom that Senator so-and-so has placed a hold on Bill X. And it's rarely a "secret" within the halls of the Senate who placed the hold and why...it typically flows from dissention that is already there. Most Senators and staff can guess or find out who placed the hold. That does not mean they will share it with the public.
The hold process is just one of many ways the Senate operates to get things done. There are finely graded degrees of escalation in a debate--necessary in a legislative body that can be stopped cold by any one person. Think of the filibuster as a nuke and you'll start to get it...there needs to be many levels of diplomatic tools below that, or shit will blow up too easily.
The "hold" is just one of those tools--a way for a Senator to demonstrate that they are more than a little unhappy, and to slow down the process until they are satisfied. It's effective precisely because it usually is back-channel...so it avoids pointless public posturing, and allows the people to compromise out of the public eye. This is not always a bad thing...think of the difference between how people act in normal life and how they act on a reality TV show. Putting people under the microscope 100% of the time distorts their decision-making process. The Constitution doesn't require all deliberation to be open. Our system of government calls for the election of leaders, and allows us to petition them. But it is designed, on purpose, to provide some insulation for the elected leaders.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I have never known a man who didn't make similar comments about his wife.
I have also never known a man who has lost his wife and didn't grieve.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I've been tossing around the idea that, one month every year, legislators should work on repealing stupid old laws. It'd make great press, and it might encourage public debate about progressive versus traditional values.
Wow dude, you really need to read an economics textbook. I'm not saying that to be cheeky or insulting, but what you're suggesting would destroy the US. First off, "full employment" is an economic term that does not mean "100% of all people employed." This may seem weasily to you at first, but the reason is simple: due to frictional unemployment, it is not possible to have sustainable 100% employment (or even 100% employment at all, probably) in an economy which depends on the market to assign jobs. 100% employment is possible in a planned economy, but the US isn't a planned economy.
In case you're not aware, frictional unemployment refers to unemployment that is the result of "shopping around." When you look for a job, you typically have several leads but unless you're absolutely desperate for income, you're unlikely to take the first job offered to you -- you'll look around, see what else is available, see if there's anything better. On the other side of the fence, employers do the same thing: they don't take the first job applicant that responds, but instead shop around for a while to see who the best applicant is. How long this process lasts depends on how badly the worker needs a job and how badly the employer needs an employee. Frictional unemployment is not the only kind of unemployment. Obviously, you can have unemployment as a result of structural changes in the economy (buggy whip manufacturers, for example, had a needless skillset after the rise of the automobile, and were thus structurally unemployed) and unemployment due to overall poor economic conditions, but it is important to recognize that even if everything is completely hunky-dory in the economy and there is a job for everyone, there will still be a certain amount of frictional unemployment.
The result is that 100% employment is not an achievable goal, so instead economists talk about full employment as meaning the full natural rate of employment, not including people who are frictionally unemployed. I believe full employment in the US is estimated to be around 95% of the labour force.
Of course, 95% of the population is not employed, but it's important again to realise that a large percentage of the population is not considered part of the labour force by economists. People in the labour force include people working and people looking for work -- something like only 60% of the US is employed at any given time, but that's because there are lots of children, old people, students, bums, and other folks that for whatever reason are not actively seeking employment. They are not considered "unemployed" by economists because they are not participating in the labour market.
Further, consider that the Fed is helpless to do anything at all about structural unemployment, which results when the structure of the economy changes and results in people being unemployed because their skillset is no longer required by the labour market (the aforementioned buggy whip manufacturers lost their jobs for this reason.) Structural unemployment is a reality in a dynamic economy -- those VAX/VMS experts are out of a job these days, unless they learned some other, more marketable skill in the meantime. The Fed is helpless to stop this, so when they talk about bringing about full employment, you have to be fair and recognize that there are some kinds of employment they can't do anything about, nor should they be expected to.
What they can help with is cyclical unemployment, at least theoretically. Cyclical unemployment is a result of the natural recession-boom-peak-bust cycle: during a recession, people lose their jobs. The fed can temper how eratic the business cycle is with countercyclic monetary policy. When we enter a recession, the fed generally buys US treasury securities on the open market, and when we enter a boom, they sell them. This stimulates the economy during a recession and tempers it during a boom (because when the fed "buys" something, it creates money out of thin a
Alexis de Tocqueville said it best, at the time of Our Great Country's inception:
The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.
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