You probably read that the GOP failed to pass their Farm Bill last week. Even though every Democrat voted against it, the GOP should have been able to pass it with just their own members.
Yesterday, ever single Democrat-- even the Blue Dogs-- voted against the GOP Farm Bill, Michael Conaway's Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018. The bill failed, H.R. 2, 198-213 because 30 Republicans voted against it, a weird combination of Freedom Caucus extremists and mainstream conservatives who didn't want to see food stamps cut 5 months before an election. Oddly, even Paul Ryan voted against it!
Sam Clovis speaks in Johnston, Iowa after quitting former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s struggling campaign. (AP/Charlie Neibergall)
It has been a long and some say tortuous process to get the federal government to legalize industrial hemp, but the scales have finally tipped. The Pennsylvania Senate just unanimously passed an industrial hemp bill that signifies a tipping point for the country.
With Steve Israel's policy of never targeting GOP leaders, policy makers and committee chairman keeping the DCCC out of the MN-02 race that pits progressive Mike Obermueller against reactionary incumbent John Kline-- chair of the powerful and destructive House Committee of Education and the Workforce-- Blue America was over the moon that Bill Maher has stepped into the breach.
Matt Cartwright: "I did not come to Congress to kick the most vulnerable Americans off of food assistance."After all Obama's talk about equality of opportunity in the State of the Union last night, at 11 this morning House conservatives rammed through a horrendous $100 billion farm bill taking another $800 million a year from the food stamps program and preserving subsidies for wealthy farmers.
Kansas is one of the reddest of the red states. In 2012, Obama only managed to get 38% of the vote there. He won only two counties in the entire state, Wyandotte (Kansas City) and Douglas (Lawrence). Earlier, Rick Santorum won the GOP primary with 51%-- with more than double the votes Romney got. There are no Democrats in their delegation to Congress and in the 40 member state Senate, there are only 9 Democrats.
House Republicans may not have "the time" to vote on important measures with wide popular support like comprehensive immigration reform, ending workplace discrimination against the LGBT community (ENDA) or raising the minimum wage-- none of which Boehner will allow onto the 2013 schedule-- but they do have time to further attempt to steal the food out of the mouths of children by
Earlier today I got into a bit of a revery about my days working at the Rainbow Cattle Company and the Cinch in San Francisco. What I didn't get into is that it was part-time work and the pay didn't even cover my meager pre-gentrified Mission District rent. Without food stamps… well, I don't know what I would have done. Certainly not start a record label that led to eventual payments of millions of dollars in taxes into the U.S. Treasury.
Republican in-fighting between conservatives and the neo-fascist radicals that have been challenging them, derailed the Farm Bill in 2012. This year Boehner, Cantor and McCarthy agreed to slash food stamps really badly and figured they would pass the bloated bill subsidizing wealthy farming operations (and scammers on the Upper East Side of Manhattan).
