Massa v. Foley
Just when you thought we didn’t have to talk about Eric Massa anymore….
Not so fast. John Boehner is demanding a full ethics investigation – not of Eric Massa, he’s gone – but of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer and how they handled the Massa mess.
If Democrats held us responsible for not acting sooner on Mark Foley, they say, then we should hold Democrats responsible for not acting sooner on Eric Massa.
Nonsense! This is pure political posturing.
First, even though he quit Congress, Massa’s not yet been found guilty of anything. Mark Foley admittedly was dating, hitting up on, and sending pornographic emails to House interns.
Second, House Republican leaders had been warned repeatedly and specifically about Foley’s sexually predatory activities, yet did nothing.
Yet, when someone from Massa’s office warned Steny Hoyer that the Congressman may have stepped over the line with male staffers, Hoyer told him immediately: You either report this to the Ethics Committee within 48 hours – or I will do it myself.
Warning received, action taken, problem solved. Just as it should be.
Republicans are wasting their time trying to keep the Eric Massa scandal alive. Democrats did the right thing. He’s dead. He’s gone. Not even Glenn Beck wants to talk about him anymore.
That’s my parting shot for today.
This entry was posted on Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 11:09 am and is filed under BILL BLOG. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Plan given to Whitehouse/Congress will pay for public option w/o new taxes or fees; And it cuts the carbon footprint of gov buildings by 50%?. An answer from the heartland. Details at http://whitecollargreenspace.blogspot.com/
Call anytime: Tim Albright: 989-701-8813
This could be Obama’s hail Mary.
Here is a major proposal I just shared with CBO, GSA, GAO, EPA, Senator Levin’s office, Senator Stabenow’s office, and professors at Georgetown, MIT, Yale, and GWU.
The fact that the federal government uses over a billion square feet of office at an efficiency level of only 30% borders on malfeasance from a budget and environmental viewpoint. Someone needs to let the White House know there is a way to pay for the public option.
This proposal would save the Federal government close to $50 billion per year enough to pay for the public option with only an executive order. We should get more congressman to sign on if we can show it is paid for and requires no new taxes or fees. We can no longer afford to let all white-collar workers that still have jobs work banker’s hours when we can work two shifts per day in government and private industry and cut our overhead costs in half. This simple paradigm shifts solves three problems: It jumpstarts economy and fights poverty, cuts pollution, reduces budget deficits.
Most office space is very expensive yet white collar workers only us it 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. This amounts to only 30% efficiency which is completely unacceptable in today’s economic and ecological environment. As an American, I would like to present my answer the health care mess, global warming which actually should be called over-pollution, unemployment, empty buildings and state budget shortfalls.
Per the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) FY 2010 budget summary.
The physical space that our agency needs in order to serve the public is becoming more expensive each year. We have over 1200 field offices and numerous other offices. There areplans to build new filed office, hearing offices, SSN card centers and a teleservice center. According to SSA’s FY 2010 Budget Overview, our agency will spend about $ 1.5 billion next year on facilties and equipment as follows: Rental payments to GSA $733,724,000
Rental payments to others $ 2,272,000
Communications, utilities, misc. $461,062,000
Equipment $303,668,000
Land and structures $ 39,050,000
Insurance claims and indemnities $ 22,279,000
Total $1,562,055,000 ($1.5 bilion)
Using the office space in current Social Security Offices could save at least $1 billion per year and is available immediately without signed new long term leases or starting new construction projects. Additional savings come from the computer hardware, office furniture, security and safety systems, janitorial services and utilities. Add to that the substantial savings that would result from not having to cover the administrative expense of building out new space and or monitoring new space, it is possible to see a savings of of $2 billion or more. SSA has about 65,000 employees which represents about 1/30th of the full number of employees paid by federal funds. 30 times $2 billion equals $60 billion in annual savings possible if the double shifting of white collar workers is expanded government wide. That is $600 billion over 10 years. In his first health care speech, President Obama put the 10 year cost around $900 billion.
Having two shifts of white collar employees in each SSA office would allow us to serve SSA customers from 6 AM to 2 PM and serve the new health care clients from 2 PM to 10 PM, including the workloads generated by mail, phone, and the internet. To make up of employees inconvenience, we could afford to give them paid lunches. When Medicare first started, SSA office had to be open at night and on the weekends to get everyone enrolled.
Copies of plan given to
GSA – Scott Connor, Chief Greening Officer – 303-236-8000 ext 5053
GSA – Michael Robertson, Whitehouse Liason – 202-501-2771, cell 202-834-0316
EPA: Mathy Stanislaus of EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, 202-566-0200 and his assistant Antoinette202-566-0200 and
., Managing Director, Health Care, Government Accountability Office, (202) 512-7114.
Senator Levin’s Press Office, Brian Thomas – 202-228-3685
Senator Stabenow’s Office – Alex Sheff, Chris Adamo – 202-224-4822
CBO – David Auerbach (uninsured analyst) 202-226-2666, Holly Harvey co-author of health care bill budget estimate. 202-226-2800
Michigan OMB – Troy Bos – 517-241-4530
Michigan Governor’s press office – Megan Brown – 517-335-6397
Michigan Environmental Council – David Guard – 517-487-9539
CEQ(Whitehouse) – Juan Lopez (sustainable buildings) – 202-343-9125
Rebuilding Exchange – Elise Zelekowski 0 773-847-3761
Sierra Club – David Willett – 202-547-1141, cell 202-491-6919
Health Care For America now-Jackie Schechner, 202-454-6200 or 6196 & K. Barker-202-579-6092
Physicians for National Health Program – Don McCanne – 949-493-3714
Dept. of Health and Human Services press office – Nicholas Papas – 202-384-5321
Public Policy Institute, Georgetown Univ – Donald Marron – 202-687-5932
Congressman Pelosi’s office: Wendell Primus – 202-225-4965
Michigan State Senator Tony Stamas, 517-373-7946
Michael Moore
Bill, Peter and Dan,
I remain a faithful listener to the show though last week my health had me two steps away from hell. I really wanted to hear your take on SNL’s double spoofs on Eric Massa. Bill being a San Franciscan, I love how you constantly root for California. I have to say that Bill you are a great commentator and possibly far too trusting. There was always something suspicious about Eric Massa. He just seemed too right with his answers. Hindsight is 20/20. But he has done major damage to himself and even to the LGBT community. It is sad to see a half centuried old closet case fumble as stupidly as he did. I hope we can all agree, good riddance to bad rubbish. I wouldn’t tolerate listening to Glenda Beck, the bad witch’s program….especially in my state of health last week. Maybe its time for me to sign up for that podcast. Faithfully Yours, Kirk Bonin