The Informed Voter

Accountability

2012-02-01T11:59:00.000-08:00

Despite re-sending my letter multiple times to Newt Gingrich and his staff, I did not receive a response. I am not surprised that I did not receive a response just saddened that there is a lack of accountability in his presidential run at this time.

I urge any of you readers to hold your particular candidaes accountable. If they say something that is incorrect or something that you question, please question them on this. If candidates are not held accountable, in all likelihood, they will continue talking about incorrect things. If you are to question your candidates, I recommend doing actual research from independent oganizations. Do not rely on websites that are put out there by partisan political giants. I recommend Project VoteSmart, PolitiFact, and factcheck.org. Those are my personal favorites. If candidates make broad sweeping claims such as "creating jobs", "balancing the budget", "repealing ObamaCare", etc. Please ask them how they plan on doing this. Do not allow them to only make broad sweeping claims tha sound good during debates. If we, as a people, continue to allow our candidates to not contribute anything to the political debates or discussion, then we will not solve anything.

I'll leave you with a quote from Fangraphs author Matt Klaasen. He is not a political writer but he brought up a great point. "Progress in political discussion is not aided by uncharitably misconstruing the position of one's opponents."

Twitter Handle

2012-01-31T12:45:00.000-08:00

If you're interested, I'll do some quick hits on twitter. My twitter handle is @josiahshanks

It'll be interesting.

Grrr blogger

2012-01-25T11:59:00.000-08:00

I was checking my school e-mail which is associated with g-mail and it kicked me out of blogger after I had written about a page for my explanation about impartialiy and a longer explanation about this blog. I will have to re-type it out. Today is my last day of work this week, so I may be posting fast and furious the next couple of days.

Lee Terry's voting record

2012-01-25T11:54:00.000-08:00

This will be a look at some of the votes Lee Terry has cast since the last time he was elected in November of 2010.
We're not going through all of them in this one post. But we'll cover the vast majority of them over the next series of posts.

We'll go in alphabetical order of the different categories from the database we're using to get these votes. We're not supposed to mention where we're getting them for some reason. But if you're curious just google congressional voting records.

Abortion Issues
1. House Amendment 95- Prohibits federal funds from being made available to Planned Parenthood, or to any of its state and local affiliates.
Lee Terry voted to prohibit federal funds.
This Amendment was adopted February 18, 2011.
In case you were curious, here's some information about Planned Parenthood.

2. Listed as HR 3 on our database- Prohibiting Taxpayer Funding of Abortion-prohibits the use of federal funds from being used for the providing of abortions, except in the following cases: rape, incest, or the life of the woman is at risk.
Lee Terry voted to prohibit federal funds.
This bill was passed on May 4, 2011.
In case you were curious, about 10 Democrats voted to prohibit federal funds.

3. HR 358- Amends Federal Health Care Law to Prohibit Abortion Coverage- prohibits federal funds from paying for any part of a health care plan that would include abortions. Prohibits any federal, state, or local entity from subjecting any health care entity to discrimination on the basis that they will not perform abortions, undergo training for the performance of abortions, or provide referrals for the performance of abortions.
Lee Terry voted to amend the Federal Health Care Law.
This bill was passed on October 13, 2011.
In case you were curious, since Terry's first election there has been only been about 20 times that voting on abortion issues have come up. That's a little over 1 per year.

Agriculture Issues
1. HR 3082- Continuing Appropriations- Amends the Appropriations Act of 2011 to extend the expiration date. Prohibits pay adjustments for all federal non-military employees from beginning of 2011 to end of 2012. Extends deadline by which service members, veterans, and their benificiaries may apply for Retroactive Stop Loss Special Pay. Extends various programs relating to transportation and highways.
Lee Terry voted against continuing appropriations.
Passed through the house on December 21, 2010.
In case you were curious, this falls under Agricultural Issues for reasons we can't comprehend. Probably why we're not in Congress.

2. HR 2751 FDA Food Safety Modernization Act- Allows the secretary to stop companies from distributing food that would cause seriously adverse health consequences or death, if the companies refuse to do so. Requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to identify high-risk facilities and allocate resources to to inspect those facilities. Increases the inspection of these companies. Requires that the food be tested by independent food testing laboratories to test this food. If there is a recall, there must be a press release describing the food and the illness. This is a quick summary. It was an important bill for food safety, if you're curious, I'm sure you can find a more detailed summary of this bill online.
Lee Terry voted to pass this act.
It was passed in the house on December 21, 2010.

3. HR 2112- Appropriations for Agriculture, Rural Development, and the Food and Drug Administration- prohibits funding to nutritional programs under the Richard B. Russell National Lunch Act and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 that do the following: requires crediting of tomato paste or puree based on volume, establishes a whole grain requirement without defining whole grain, initiates a sodium reduction target beyond the target specified in Nutrition Standards in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs. It prohibits the use of funding the projects seeking to use the power of eminent domain. The Secretary of the Treasury may obligate more than $100 million for a single natural disaster event for emergency relief projects for the following damages caused in 2011: Hurricane Irene, The Missouri River basin flooding, and excludes events involving closed hydrological basins.
Lee Terry voted against the appropriations.
It was passed on November 3, 2011.
In case you were curious, I'm not sure what the first two parts of this bill really means. Although, we find it humorous that one has to define what whole grain is. Is it possible that people were saying things were whole grain that really weren't? I'm also using Wikipedia as my source for defining eminent domain (in your face, teachers and professors who say Wikipedia is not a reliable source*). Here you go.

Lee Terry and the 2nd Congressional District

2012-01-25T11:51:00.001-08:00

I am currently living in the 2nd Congressional District in Nebraska. The incumbent for the House of Representatives is Congressman Lee Terry. He was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1998. While he was running in the primary to become the Republican choice for Congress in the 2nd District, he signed the U.S. Term Limits Pledge. He pledged to serve no more than three terms in the United States of House of Representatives. This means that he pledged to no longer run after the completion of his 2002 term.

My professor for Introduction to American National Government at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, Richard Fellman was the first one to alert me to this bit of information. In 2008, Lee Terry spoke to my class about the Bailout bill. It's important to note that Barack Obama was not the president when the first bailout was voted on and was not the one who started the talks about having the bailout (I thought it might be important to note that). Professor Fellman asked Jim Esch, who ran against Terry in 2006 and 2008, if Esch was going to call Terry out on this former pledge he had signed. Esch stated that he would not.

A Letter to Newt Gingrich

2012-01-23T11:53:00.000-08:00

I visited Newt Gingrich's site for the first time. I e-mailed him and his staff the following letter. I hope he answers all of my questions. If not, I will not be surprised.

Dear Speaker Gingrich and staff,
I am a registered Independent voter in the 2nd District of Nebraska. I am a senior political science major at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. My area of interest is particularly in American political behavior and elections. Because of this, I am paying very close attention to the 2012 election.
I have a few general questions about the various issues that you have posted here on your website. On the website, you claim that we should repeal Dodd-Frank because it is killing small independent banks. On politifact.com, they ran that statement and found that community banks have nearly doubled their returns on assets. Chris Cole, senior vice president of the Independent Community Bankers of America has saved the community banks about $4.5 billion dollars in FDIC fees. He goes on to state that Dodd-Frank "has not been all that bad." In fact, most experts that I have read seem to indicate that Dodd-Frank is not that bad to community banks but rather is tougher on larger banks and corporations. I would like to know what information you are using to justify your claim that Dodd-Frank is killing independent or community banks?
Additionally, I am confused how you, as President, would balance the budget with the tax cuts you are putting in place? I see that we would have an optional flat tax of 15%, which is the effective tax rate of Mitt Romney. However, if we continue with the example of Mitt Romney, in your new tax plan his tax rate would be closer to zero as most of his income was from investments. Additionally, eliminating the death tax would limit the amount of revenue you are going to bring in, as well. I was curious as to what figures you were using that showed that eliminating different governmental bureaucracies would be able to cut enough money off the deficit to make up for the loss of revenue these tax cuts would make?
Your strategies for defeating radical Islamism seem like they would violate Constitutional rights of Islamic-Americans. If for instance, an American citizen was practicing radical "Islamism" in America, his rights are guaranteed through the Constitution under the First Amendment. Once the American radical Islamist moves to attack America, only then would he breaking the law but if you are in fact marginalizing and punishing him/her before then you are viiolating his/her Constitutional rights. This seems incompatible with what you say about the 2nd Amendment rights. I also think that marginalizing radicals would make them more likely to join in a terrorist attack. Osama bin Laden said that because America is interfering in the Middle East then they deserve the terrorist attacks. I would like more clarification on how marginalizing the radical Islamists will, in fact, stop radical terrorists. Also, is the war in Afghanistan effectively a war on Islam or on terrorists or are they the same thing?
On your website, you claim that we should remove bureaucratic and legal obstacles for the responsible development of oil and natural gas in United States both offshore and on land. What exactly are the bureaucratic and legal obstacles in the way right now? What classifies as responsible development of oil and natural gas? What if instead of devoting time, energy, and resources on non-renewable energy sources we devoted the same time, energy, and resources on developing better uses of renewable energy sources? If we were to develop our own renewable energy resources and be the best at that, would that not a) create jobs and b) develop new energy sources that are not from dangerous countries, especially the Middle East? A company in Michigan stated that for each kilowatt of wind energy produced, they created 4.8 jobs. I am curious as to why with your focus on creating jobs, expanding the economy, and ridding America of the dependence on foreign energy, that you are not discussing the need for the development of renewable energy resources?
Further, we could rely less on foreign oil if we are able to re-drill in some of the places we have already drilled because our technology has improved so much that we would be able to get more oil from where we already drilled.
I don't see how re-naming the EPA is going to solve any of the issues. While this may be a good talking point for some of the more conservative of your constiuents, it does nothing to address the issues that you have brought up. I think that by re-naming it and trying to re-shape it we are going to instead be terminating jobs and rely on the states to find the cheapest way to produce energy. In doing so, we are allowing there to be energy monopolies in states instead of innovating for newer technologies. We have an agreement in Omaha, Nebraska with OPPD and MUD.
I would also like some clarification on 2nd Amendment rights. Are you in favor of no restrictions of what arms I am able to bear? In the Constitution it states a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. As I read it, that means that I am allowed to have a gun if I am connected to the militia. However, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the court ruled that I have the right to have a gun unconnected with the militia service. I would also like clarification about whether or not that was a judicial activist judge since strictly in the constitution it states that a well regulated militia is necessary and that is why we need guns. I fear that your claims about judicial activist judges are trying to make sure that you have judges who only agree with your interpretation of the Constitution and that is not the intent of checks and balances in the Constitution. But I digress. Setting aside the issue of the militia, if I am a strict constructionist of the Constitution does that mean I can only own guns that the Constitution knew about? For instance, since there were no automatic or semi-automatic weapons during the Constitution, do I have a right to this gun because the framers of the Constitution could not even imagine this gun? Where does it become a limit on what time of arms I might bear? Since the Constitution does not directly forbid me from owning bombs, am I allowed to own bombs? Is it not my right to own those, as well? Is there a limit?
Your Keystone Pipeline day one plan states that it would bring 120,000 jobs to the United States. I was curious as to where you got that figure. According to the testimony of Alex Pourbaix of TransCanada Corp., his estimation was that it would bring 20,000 jobs. The Washington Post stated the chief executive of TransCanada, stated that there would be 13,000 direct construction jobs that were one person one year, meaning that if the job was two years that would be 6500 jobs. Also, the Washington Post stated that most of the indirect construction jobs would come from outside of the United States. I would imagine that this is because of the cost of labor, parts, etc. According to factcheck.org, the United States Department of State's Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs study concluded that, the construction jobs would 5,000 to 6,000 workers, including Keystone employees, contractor employees, and construction and environmental staff. Since your figures are anywhere from 6 times to 20 times what others have said, I am curious where this number is coming from.
I have additional questions, too, but I was hoping to keep this as short, as I could. I know I failed at that, as well. At any rate, I am hoping that my questions get answered as I would truly want to be fully informed and want to avoid the misinformation that is out there. As we get closer to the 2012, I am hoping that politicians such as yourself, address questions such as these, so each voter can actually decide based on the correct information which candidate is right for them. Additionally, I think that the American public deserves to have politicians tell them the truth instead of a series of misdirections in ploys to get themselves elected.
Sincerely,
Josiah

Newt Gingrich Won South Carolina

2012-01-22T10:08:00.000-08:00

Newt Gingrich won the Republican primary in South Carolina. He received about 40% of the votes. The Informed Voter strives to be non-partisan and should be used for educational purposes, almost exclusively. We, here, will not endorse one candidate over another but rather we will provide you, the reader, with information and hope that you make choices based on who you think best represents your views or best voices your own opinions.

So, we'll profile Newt Gingrich a bit here.

Finances:
Here is his opensecrets page
As you can see from his financial records, 1.2 million dollars has been raised from small individual contributions and 1.6 million dollars have been raised from large individual contributions.

If we break it down by industries, over $300,000 have been raised by something that opensecrets labels as retired. My assumption is that, retired means those are individual contributors who are, in fact, retired. Approximately $250,000 was given by the label of miscellaneous business. His third highest, was finance, insurance, and real estate at approximately $200,000. In fourth place, was health at approximately $90,000. Rounding out the top 5 was lawyers and lobbyists at approximately $80,000.

This report was given in September 2011.

Newt Gingrich and Debates:

1. The foodstamp president.
Gingrich has stated that more people have been put on food stamps under Barack Obama than any other president. While the number of people currently on food stamps is at its highest level, the number of new enrollees being added to foodstamps under President Barack Obama is currently at 14.2 million (according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service) but during George W. Bush's presidency the number of enrollees rose by 14.7 million. Factcheck investigated this claim and stated that "It’s possible that when the figures for January 2012 are available they will show that the gain under Obama has matched or exceeded the gain under Bush. But not if the short-term trend continues. The number getting food stamps declined by 43,528 in October."
Of those who had income low enough to qualify only 54 percent actually signed up for it in 2002 but that number rose to 72 percent in 2009. USDA has stated that the rise in those signing up for foodstamps has been because of the efforts of state and local governments who streamlined the application process, as well as reduced the amount of information that applicants have to report in order to maintain their eligibility and benefit levels. Others have speculated that since there are no longer actual food stamps but rather EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) cards that are used similarly to credit cards.

2. Balancing the budget
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich likes to claim that he balanced the budget for four years. This is not true in the first place, as two of the years that the budget had a surplus for were after Gingrich was no longer the Speaker of the House. There are legitimate debates on how much he was responsible for the second year of the balanced budget, as well, since he was done by the end of the fiscal year.
Further, how much responsibility did Gingrich have in balancing the budget?
Per politifact.com, "The budget ended up balancing faster than either party expected simply because economic growth was so strong," said Chris Edwards, an economist at the libertarian Cato Institute. "I don’t think either party had much to do with that."
In his 1996 budget, "Clinton proposed to stabilize the deficit at around $190 billion. He did not propose to balance the budget. The Republicans under Gingrich pushed him into it," Edwards said, and that materialized in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.
Steve Ellis, vice president for Taxpayers for Common Sense stated that the tax increases in 1993, which generated more revenue, was at least somewhat responsible for Congress to be able to balance the budget.

3. Right to work states vs. Union States

This one is a bit of an old claim but Gingrich claimed that the right to work states are creating a lot more jobs than the unionized states. Since April 2001, there was a slight increase in private sector jobs in the 22 right to work states. In the 28 other states, there was a small decrease in private sector jobs.

To read politifact's ruling, click here

4. Gingrich "reminds people who probably didn't know that she was on the ethics committee, that it was a very partisan political committee and that the way I was dealt with related more to the politics of the Democratic Party than to ethics. And I think in that sense, it actually helps me in getting people to understand, this was a Nancy Pelosi-driven effort. They filed 85 charges and 84 were dismissed. The only one was a conflicting lawyer's letter. And then the Democrats just held out for partisan reasons."

Well, no. Politifact rated that as a "pants on fire" claim. The ethics committee is the only committee in the House that has an even number of Democrats and Repubicans. The committee does not move forward with a formal investigation unless the committee has majority support. In case, you are scoring at home, that means that at least one member of each party has to vote to move forward with the full investigation.

Per politifact, "on Jan. 17, 1997, the full committee held nearly six hours of televised hearings before voting 7 to 1 to accept the subcommittee’s recommendation. Voting to accept it were three Republicans -- Chairwoman Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, Steve Schiff of New Mexico and Porter Goss of Florida."

The House voted to pass the ethics report, 395 to 28. 196 Republicans voting for it and 26 Republicans voting against it.

Further, Gingrich accepted what some have called a plea bargain. He agreed to admit one count of wrongdoing and pay $300,000. It seems to us, at The Informed Voter and Politifact, if Gingrich really thought that the process was unfair, he could've taken his case to the House floor where the Republicans held the majority.

To read politifact's statements, click here
5. The war on Christmas.
Gingrich claimed that no federal official at any level can wish anyone a Merry Christmas. Politifact "checked with the American Federation of Government Employees, a labor union for federal workers. A spokeswoman said she checked with the union’s legal staff and they confirmed the view that federal workers are allowed to say 'Merry Christmas.'"

While it is true, that the White House fits the political party for the bill to send out their Christmas cards, this is because of the separation of church and state, as well as the idea that the Christmas cards might be political in nature.

The House and Senate are both restricted with their use of taxpayer funds to send out Christmas cards, birthday cards, anniversary cards, condolence cards, etc.

Per politifact, the House regulations are dated back to June 1998 when he was the Speaker of the House and John Boehner was on the committee that wrote the rules.

To read politifact's ruling, click here

6. Gingrich continually claims that Dodd-Frank is destroying community banks.

Thank goodness for politifact, "the first thing to note is that one year after the passage of Dodd-Frank, community banks are healthier. By convention, any bank with assets of less than $1 billion is a community bank. According to the latest report from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, for that group of banks, a key measure of profitability, return on assets, has doubled in the past year, growing from 0.26 percent a year ago to 0.57 percent in the second quarter of 2011. Return on assets has been higher this year than in any quarter going back to the start of 2008 before the great meltdown."

Chris Cole, senior vice president of the Independent Community Bankers of America stated that the community banks are actually healthier than they were last year. While Dodd-Frank has done both some good things and bad things to the community banks it has saved community banks about $3.5 billion in fees that they pay to the FDIC.

"'A lot of the stuff in Dodd-Frank is really meant to be targeted at the big guys, not the small ones,' said Arthur Wilmarth, a law professor at George Washington University Law School who testifies regularly on Capitol Hill on banking issues. Wilmarth said many more rules could exempt smaller banks depending on how they are written. The ultimate decision on debit card fees is a good example. Not only did regulators raise the allowable fee, the law exempted all banks with assets under $10 billion from the new rule."

There are other issues that may come up later, but these are the major ones I've been hearing. If there are other issues that you want to see addressed here, put it in the comments.

Arm yourself with knowledge so you're not ready when people make ignorant statements. Get yourself ready because ignorant statements will always be around.

Keystone Pipeline

2012-01-18T12:03:00.000-08:00

According to the New York Times, the Keystone Pipeline is expected to be placed on an indefinite hold. The Keystone Pipeline is a pipeline that allows there oil companies to extract oil from the tar sands in Alberta, Canada and transport the oil to refineries in the United States.

There are a few issues that we would like to discuss here at The Informed Voter.

1. There has been talk about how the pipeline would create 20,000 jobs. This is mainly from the testimony of Alex Pourbaix, president of Energy and Oil Pipelines for TransCanada Corp. In fact his testimony can be found here. That testimony was using figures from the Perryman Group, a Texas company that was hired by TransCanada (per factcheck.org). According to a Washington Post study, that the chief executive said there would be 13,000 direct construction jobs that were one person, one year. Essentially, this means that if the construction was two years, it would be 6,500 jobs. Still, that is a lot of jobs. However, the Washington Post notes that most of the indirect construction jobs would come outside of the United States. According to factcheck.org, the United States Department of State's Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs study concluded that, the construction jobs would 5,000 to 6,000 workers, including Keystone employees, contractor employees, and construction and environmental staff. The study can be found here.

2. According to Paul Roberts in his book, The End of Oil, each year daily consumption of oil rises by nearly 2 million barrels. In order to match this consumption, oil companies need to find a new billion barrel oil field each week. At least, according to Paul Roberts, we have burned through about half of our easily available oil. This means that we are being required to find tougher oil, such as tar sands, deep sea oil drilling, drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, etc. Trying to get oil out of the tar sands in Canada reeks of desperation of oil companies trying to be the first to get to these tougher to reach oil spots.

3. Getting all this oil or energy from Canada does not represent becoming energy independent. It merely is being less energy dependent on those countries that we deem as oil cartels, including the members of OPEC.

4. There will always be an argument of creating jobs vs. saving the environment. Creating jobs will always beat saving the environment, as creating the jobs will be a tangible asset. We can always look at the numbers of jobs being created by a particular outcome but we cannot always quantify how we are saving the environment.

5. Focusing time, energy, and resources on trying to get the Keystone Pipeline, as well as trying to get the oil from the tar sands could be time, energy, and resources that we could be spending on creating or developing renewable energy sources such as windmills, solar energy, etc. According to Detroit Edison's Wind Projects study, for every megawatt of installed wind capacity, 4.8 jobs were created. It is possible for us to both create new jobs and save the environment.

About The Informed Voter

2012-01-18T11:33:00.000-08:00

Our goal here at this blog is not to force you to vote one way or another. Hopefully, we will post things that you agree with and then others that you disagree with. Our goal in putting this blog out there is to actually inform voters of what is going on. We're not here to persuade you to vote one way or another. If you feel that we are leading you to vote in a certain way by only representing the facts on a certain party, let us know, we'll research both sides. All of our facts will come from other sources and we'll quote them as needed.

We have run into problems with people posting on their Facebook and having general conversations with people that show that they do not know what is actually happening in the world. Too many times, we've been told that we do not know how the world works because we are too young or other excuses along the same lines.

We will provide you with facts that you can use in everyday life and try to make the choices of voting into a way that you can actually vote for the candidates that best represent your beliefs. We are hoping that in providing a service to better educate the public that the public will in turn be able to make smarter choices. After all, the United States is a democracy. Please make your voices heard.

The Politics of Envy

2012-01-18T11:10:00.000-08:00

Mitt Romney paid an effective tax rate of 15% according to the New York Times, as well as Romney's own tax records.

He earned well over $300,000 in speaking fees in the last year.

The New York Times reports that the taxes for capital gains will jump to 20 percent for the 2013 tax year, while the rate for dividend income will jump up to 39.6 percent. Romeny has argued for permanent Bush tax cuts that will keep both of those incomes at an effective 15 percent rate.