Congressman Kennedy Would Prefer Less Dissent from the Catholic Church on Abortion and Healthcare

CNS News has posted a video of an interview with Rhode Island First District Congressman Patrick Kennedy, where he says that the Catholic Church's opposition to including funding for abortion in healthcare reform plans "is an absolute red herring" that does nothing but "fan the flames of dissent and discord".

Patrick Kennedy on Why He Has Better Things to do With His Time than Explain His Positions to the Public

Patrick Kennedy just explained to WPRO radio why he refuses to debate his opponent…

Debates at this stage are usually theatre and gotcha games.

So Congressman Kennedy considers discussing issues with his opponent in front of the public to be theatre.

Yet he considers traveling around his district in the company of an actor to be a substantive use of his time -- or maybe he just doesn’t care about keeping the public informed.

The Congressman, you may recall, just voted to spend $700 billion on a financial bailout for private businesses. His opponent, Jon Scott, has some ideas about how that money could have been better spent. Various members of the public may also have some ideas about how the $700 billion could have been spent, or if it should have been spent at all.

Doesn't Congressman Kennedy, at the very least, owe the public an explanation before the election of how he intends to see that the bailout money is well spent? Or does he consider the ideas of fiscal oversight and government accountability to be mere theatre as well?

Here's the series of debates that Jon Scott has proposed, where Congressman Kennedy could explain to the public how he thinks Congress should approach oversight of the bailout money, along with other issues...

Scott has challenged Kennedy to a series of four debates; one on Radio’s Buddy Cianci Show, one on Channel 10’s Sunday morning show hosted by Jim Taricani and Bill Rappleye, one hosted by the League of Women Voters (which will not happen) and a 90 minute debate with only a timekeeper, no moderator, to be hosted at Brown University. Kennedy’s spokeswoman has repeatedly denied that there has been a formal request for those debates yet the text of the formal request has been widely circulated and was sent to Kennedy at his campaign email at KennedyforRI.com

Reactions to the Bailout Bill

Reaction from Second District Congressional candidate Mark Zaccaria on the bailout bill that passed Congress on Friday…

This week Rhode Island's entire congressional delegation voted in favor of an open ended plan to nationalize private property on a scale that boggles the mind. If this had been done using the government's authority under Eminent Domain the legal term for it would be 'A Taking.' Since this bill has been characterized as the cavalry charging to the rescue from over the hill there has been no outcry against it in the press. Too bad. Life is full of compromises, of course, but I wish we had thought more about the pain we were trying to avoid vs the pain we will now induce as the federal government takes ownership of a giant piece of the country.

Think about it. With plenty of blame to go around in Congress you could make a case that those who induced this crisis, through misguided incentives to Fannie Mae and out-and-out quotas for sub-prime mortgages to private banks, have now taken management control of ⅓ of all residential properties. In the military the term for that is Screw Up & Move Up. What kind of financial horsepower have we just given to the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee? What will that kind of authority do to the men and women who now hold its keys?

This bailout bill, which supposedly benefits "Main Street America" contains tons or Pork Barrel projects that have nothing to do with the financial crisis. Mr. Kennedy's actions suggest that he is fighting to empower the power brokers on K Street at the expense of those who live on Main Street. Does he even know where Main Street is? It is time we asked him.

Jon Scott on the Bailout & on Alternatives

For the first time I can remember, the government is actually moving as fast as the blogosphere can keep up. I had scheduled up a follow-up interview with Republican First District Congressional candidate Jon Scott for Monday, to give him a chance to go on the record about the big bailout deal as it details were becoming clearer. They say that timing in life is everything. I sat down with Mr. Scott at about 1:00, so what follows in the Q&A section below are opinions expressed by Jon Scott BEFORE the bailout was voted down in the House…

Anchor Rising: Federalist 52 says that the House of Representatives, the office that you are running for, is supposed to be the branch of government having the most intimate sympathy with the needs of the people. Do you think that the House right now is doing a good job of fulfilling that function, with its work on the current bailout bill?

Jon Scott: There's a compromise being debated, but it's a compromise that's been brokered by the leadership solely. It doesn't have the opinions of all the Congressmen and Congresswomen -- that input hasn't been there, so I'm not so sure that it does represent the will of the people.

I will give credit where credit is due, and say that Congressman Kennedy is so far sitting this one out.

I said it the other night to the crowd over at the debate watch: this problem wasn't created over 72 hours. It was created over decades and to try and come up with a 72-hour fix is a mistake. I think you get those kinds of fixes that put the spotlight on the businesses and the executives and the class warfare when you don't have broad enough representation in Congress. Some of the people negotiating this bailout are so heavily invested in the market and in the oil companies and in the mortgage companies that it taints their view of how a bailout or a buy-in should go.

Anchor Rising: From what you've learned so far, what parts of the plan do you like or not like?

Jon Scott: I'm not so sure I like any of the plan. I think the wrangling has improved the plan and made it less of a socialist plan. I'm not so sure that any plan that breaks new ground in creating new relationships between government and business should ever be seen as a good plan.

At this point, Mr. Scott went into the details of an alternative plan that he favors. Since the interview, he's placed an outline of the plan into written form, which I will reprint below…

Make no mistake about it: Congress must fix the problems that they have created. They must act and they must shore up our economy but they need to do so without expanding their own power and scope.

I call on Congress to stay in session and pass a plan that mimics one devised by economist James Galbraith and laid out in the Washington Post. The Galbraith plan would have the government shore up the markets by using an existing vehicle: the FDIC. Five hundred billion dollars would get put into the FDIC’s coffers with a portion of that money allocated to the hiring of an expanded work force of forensic accounting experts and investigators who could probe the causes of the failures.

At the same time, the $100,000 FDIC limit would be lifted and another $200 billion put into reserves with the expressed purpose of re-capitalizing failing banks through the purchase of preferred shares – in the same way that investor Warren Buffet sparked the market last week with Goldman Sachs.

This approach does not saddle the American people with the purchase of bad debt. It does not create any wider partnership between government and business than that which already exists. It does not attempt to put a random value on illiquid assets which are not easily valued. It simply shores up the economy and helps spark the markets again.

It is not a fix that will turn the situation around overnight but there is no such fix that preserves the Republic as it was intended to be. There is no solution that will right, in 72 hours, that which has been created over decades.

Mark Zaccaria on the Big Bailout

On Saturday, I had the chance to interview Second District Congressional candidate Mark Zaccaria on the big bailout plan that was taking shape. Details were still emerging and not yet final, so I still wanted to keep the questions general.

I opened with a reference to Federalist 52. Mr. Zaccaria responded with the best explanation that I've heard so far of how the financial crisis has spread from the housing market to the wider economy…

I think that one of the reasons that you are seeing such a quick and deep response on the part of the Executive Branch is that the people like secretary Paulson stopped breathing a week ago Wednesday, when basically credit came to a halt in this country. We think of this in terms of the sub-prime mortgages and people buying houses they couldn't afford, and so forth and so on, but there is also this huge credit market in the United States.

When McDonald's needs hamburger, they use short-term paper and overnight loans. They call Merrill Lynch and say I need a billion dollars until noontime…

When UPS buys diesel fuel, they do it that way. Their cash flows on a cyclical basis, and their expenses are on a cyclical basis, and if the waves are out-of-synch, they use very short term borrowing.

That all stopped a week ago Wednesday. They just couldn't get it. That would have brought the entire economy to its knees very, very rapidly, and that's what made Secretary Paulson leap out of his chair and do something.

The real problem that they really don't talk about in the media quite a lot, was that [the bailout plan] was an opportunity for members of the majority party in both the House and Senate to say let's hang a couple of ornaments on this Christmas tree. So, there were provisions inserted into the plan to use a certain amount of the money to fund future proposed low-cost housing authorities, and to do a variety of other things that were not directly related to resolving the crisis. Now, Paulson agreed to these things -- I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he grudgingly agreed – because of how important it was to restore confidence in the marketplace, by starting to buy up some of those bad loans, so that banks didn't just sit on their cash and started it moving around the track again.

Rep. Hensarling and the House Republicans didn't want to take 15 or 20% of 700 billion dollars and divert it to pork. For that, my hat is off to them.

(p.s. McCainiacs will want to click here).

Mark Zaccaria on the Big Bailout

On Saturday, I had the chance to interview Second District Congressional candidate Mark Zaccaria on the big bailout plan that was taking shape. Details were still emerging and not yet final, so I still wanted to keep the questions general.

I opened with a reference to Federalist 52. Mr. Zaccaria responded with the best explanation that I've heard so far of how the financial crisis has spread from the housing market to the wider economy…

I think that one of the reasons that you are seeing such a quick and deep response on the part of the Executive Branch is that the people like secretary Paulson stopped breathing a week ago Wednesday, when basically credit came to a halt in this country. We think of this in terms of the sub-prime mortgages and people buying houses they couldn't afford, and so forth and so on, but there is also this huge credit market in the United States.

When McDonald's needs hamburger, they use short-term paper and overnight loans. They call Merrill Lynch and say I need a billion dollars until noontime…

When UPS buys diesel fuel, they do it that way. Their cash flows on a cyclical basis, and their expenses are on a cyclical basis, and if the waves are out-of-synch, they use very short term borrowing.

That all stopped a week ago Wednesday. They just couldn't get it. That would have brought the entire economy to its knees very, very rapidly, and that's what made Secretary Paulson leap out of his chair and do something.

The real problem that they really don't talk about in the media quite a lot, was that [the bailout plan] was an opportunity for members of the majority party in both the House and Senate to say let's hang a couple of ornaments on this Christmas tree. So, there were provisions inserted into the plan to use a certain amount of the money to fund future proposed low-cost housing authorities, and to do a variety of other things that were not directly related to resolving the crisis. Now, Paulson agreed to these things -- I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he grudgingly agreed – because of how important it was to restore confidence in the marketplace, by starting to buy up some of those bad loans, so that banks didn't just sit on their cash and started it moving around the track again.

Rep. Hensarling and the House Republicans didn't want to take 15 or 20% of 700 billion dollars and divert it to pork. For that, my hat is off to them.

(p.s. McCainiacs will want to click here).

Jon Scott on Hot Dogs & the Big Bailout

Republican First District Congressional Candidate Jon Scott kicked of his Work-a-Day campaign this past Friday at the Spike's on Thayer Street in Providence…

Jon Scott has invited his opponent, Congressman Patrick Kennedy, to join him as he works one day with various businesses around the First District in the weeks leading up to the November 4th election. He issued the invitation, along with a challenge for a series of four debates via email to Kennedy's new Press Secretary earlier today.

Scott will make a brief statement to the press, will answer questions and then serve customers at Spike's Thayer Street Providence location until 5pm. In coming weeks he plans on doing work days with a small construction company and an independent lobsterman, as well as other (as yet unscheduled) jobs. Kennedy, who once boasted that he had "never worked a day in (his) life", has been invited by Scott to join him on these work days.

"We're kicking this off at Spike's because they're not going to be in business after Sunday", the candidate continued. "Spike's is an iconic establishment with dedicated owners who put their hearts and souls into building something for themselves. The rising cost of rents and supplies and some missed signals on a possible contract have taken their toll, and now the Ocean State is losing a fixture. I wanted to start our Work-a-Day

Anchor Rising: I hope you don't think it's too much of a softball if I ask you if you think that the owners here at Spike's are as deserving of help as much as the people who the government wants to hand $700 billion to in the next couple of days.

Jon Scott: I think they're more deserving, because of the hot dogs!

The owners here put their heart and soul into the business. The difference is that they they never expected to be bailed out. Garreth and Dana are going out of business, but when they got into business, they knew what the rules were.

Their rents have gone up and their costs have gone up. The part they really didn't expect was ethanol subsides to corn farmers that caused prices to go up.

They didn't expect the government to interfere in their business. They didn't expect their taxes to go through the roof. They didn't expect all those other things that come along with government interference. All of that bad side is what's caused what we have going on right now. This crisis is one that's caused by Congress, and it's one that could be fixed by Congress, but the fix isn't to nationalize more private wealth than at anytime in the history of the United States.

More from RI's Congressional candidates on the big bailout to follow…

Mark Zaccaria on How the Federal Government is Killing the Fishing Industy in Rhode Island and Elsewhere

Second District Congressional Candidate Mark Zaccaria doesn't think that it makes sense to ask a fisherman to go out to sea and come back with less than a full haul...

If you're about to go buy a $7,000 or $8,000 load of diesel fuel, but are only allowed to catch some small amount of the total amount of fish you're actually capable of catching, then you're in big trouble.

The fishing catch is based on the number of pounds of a particular type of fish, and the numbers are low enough so that they are well below a boatfull.

We should devise a new way of doing that that's consistent with the way the fishing industry really works. Rather than say let's take this boat out, but you can only catch 3 fish – with a boat capable of hauling tens of thousands of pounds – what we need to say is that when you do go out, knock yourself out. We'll limit the number of times you can go out, and on an annual basis limit the catch, rather than in a given week.

I'd be jumping up and down about the fact that we're killing an industry that contributes mightily to our economy, which means we're going to export that industry to others who are not going to do it as well as we do while, at the same time, not doing a good job of doing our stated goal, making fisheries sustainable forever. We're screwing everything up.

Zaccaria Challenges Langevin to A-Debate-Per-Town

According to Cynthia Needham of the Projo, Republican Congressional candidate Mark Zaccaria would like to offer each city and town in Rhode Island's Second District an opportunity to host a Congressional debate...

“I look forward to a vigorous race against my opponent and I would like to challenge Mr. Langevin to a minimum of 20 public debates: one in each town in the Second [Congressional] District,” the former North Kingstown Town Council member said in a release.

“It is time for our elected officials to stop avoiding political debates. The voters deserve to be able to hear directly from the candidates in an open forum.”

Mark Zaccaria on the Republican Energy Policy Floor Revolt

Republican Second District Congressional candidate Mark Zaccaria, last Friday, issued this statement on the U.S. House Republican floor revolt regarding energy policy and domestic drilling for oil...

Mark Zaccaria today denounced Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her fellow House Democrats for adjourning for the August recess without having allowed a vote on the offshore drilling ban. Speaker Pelosi refused to allow a vote that could repeal the Congressional ban on offshore drilling. The White House recently repealed the executive ban on offshore drilling, and has called on Congress to do the same.

“I find it very disturbing that my opponent would follow Speaker Pelosi in adjourning for August recess without addressing the most pressing issue facing us today,” said Zaccaria. “Gas prices are having a devastating effect on everyone. Unfortunately, my opponent finds his vacation more important than the livelihood of his constituents.”

As part of his energy plan, Zaccaria has illustrated how speculators are the driving force behind high gas prices; however, initiating domestic oil exploration could drive the price of gas down within days.

Jon Scott Applauds the Republican Floor Revolt on Energy Policy

Last week, Congressional Democrats voted to take their summer vacation without voting on a bill that would expand the Federally-owned lands and areas of the outer continental shelf that could be drilled for oil. In protest of the Democrats non-action, a number of House Republicans remained on the House floor after Friday's adjournment, making public calls for Congress to return and take a position on domestic drilling.

According to the Politico, the Republicans have returned to the House floor today to continue their protest...

House Republicans vowed to continue their talkathon on the House floor "as long as it takes," saying Monday they would continue their protest indefinitely if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi does not allow for a vote on domestic oil drilling.

"There are plans underway to be here into next week," said Rep. Mike Pence, one of the organizers of the protest. "We will be here as long as it takes."

Allow me this moment to applaud Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) and his Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives for exercising political courage on behalf of the American people. Last week's Republican floor revolt was an appropriate response to the Democratic majority's unacceptable failure to address our nation's energy concerns.

America faces an energy crisis that threatens our economy, standard of living and national security. Real leaders act in times of crisis. Nancy Pelosi, Patrick Kennedy and the Democratic majority failed America on Friday. They should be replaced.

Congress created this energy crisis, common sense can solve it. Congress must authorize more drilling. At the same time we need to pursue all alternative energy options including wind projects such as Cape Wind. We need to create solar panels, build nuclear power plants and use more natural gas. Every energy option must be placed on the table. Energy prices will drop when the supply increases.

The people of Rhode Island need representatives who are patriots first and party members second. Those who feel well served by the Democratic majority's failure to address the energy crisis should vote to send our current representatives back to Washington. Those being harmed by the burden of unprecedented and unnecessarily high fuel costs should vote for new representation in November.

Expanding the First Congressional District, to Include the South Kingstown Town Council?

The Rhode Island Secretary of State's website lists 3 candidates who have qualified for the ballot for the U.S. House of Representatives seat for Rhode Island's First Congressional District. The candidates are Patrick Kennedy of Portsmouth, Jon Scott of Providence and Kenneth Capalbo of South Kingstown.

You read that right. Somehow, for the purposes of this Congressional election, South Kingstown has moved to the First Congressional District. The Federal Election Commission's website, in the link to the one filing that Mr. Capalbo made during his 2006 candidacy for the same office, lists "South King" as his community of residence (type the name "Capalbo" in here, to see for yourself), so this appears to be more than a typo.

There's more. Campaign finance paperwork filed with the state Board of Elections on July 8 shows that Mr. Capalbo indicated "Town Council" as the office he is seeking. An entry for his South Kingstown Town Council candidacy appears on Secretary of State's website, though no signatures are indicated. The entry for his Congressional candidacy, on the other hand, indicates over 600 signatures.

So how does a guy who says he's running for Town Council in South Kingstown end up collecting over 600 signatures for Representative in the First Congressional District?

ADDENDUM:

Commenter "Brassband" reminds me that there is no Constitutional requirement that a Congressional candidate live in the district he or she seeks to represent...

A candidate, or Member, of the U.S. House of Representatives must live in the state from which he or she serves, but need not live within the district that he or she represents. Here are the qualifications for the House, from Art. I, sec. 2 of the U.S. Constitution:

No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen.