After the Take Back the American Dream conference yesterday, we had a rally for Jobs and then lobbied SuperCongress to make sure their plans supported jobs, not just cuts.
As Nicole Sandler notes, the staffers in Jeb Hensarling and Fred Upton’s offices politely listened to what we had to say. Upton's staffers also gave us water and offered coffee.
Not so Dave Camp’s office. After locking the door of their office for about ten minutes, a staffer then walked out, apparently to get rid of us. After telling us clearly that Camp’s Legislative Director, whom we had asked to speak to, was in the Capitol, he ultimately handed me his card.
Unemployment in Michigan continues to rise month by month and many in Congress are going out of their way to protect millionaires over workers - but Michiganders were granted a unique opportunity when two of our lawmakers in Washington were appointed to the debt reduction super committee. However it has quickly become evident that the priorities of Rep. Dave Camp and Rep. Fred Upton are not with their constituents.
On Sept. 1, Nurses from the Michigan Nurses Association asked Rep. Camp to support the Main Street Contract for the American People. The seven principles behind the Main Street Contract are jobs at living wages; guaranteed health care for all; a secure retirement, with the ability to retire in dignity; equal access to a quality education; good housing and protection from hunger; and a just taxation system where corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share. A small tax on Wall Street transactions would fund investments in these priorities.
Rep. Camp has given no indication as to why he refuses to support these common-sense reforms to rebuild America and invest in Main Street, but it certainly comes as no surprise given his history in Congress. The facts speak for themselves:
Rep. Camp has voted in multiple sessions of Congress to cut Medicare significantly, which roughly 125,000 of his constituents rely on for treatment and medication.
Rep. Camp has not held a town hall in his own district for months, although he had time over the summer to meet with constituents in Utah. Sen. Orrin Hatch hosted an economic forum at Utah Valley University on August 31 that Rep. Camp found time to attend.
Rep. Camp is worth about $6.75 million - meanwhile life for his constituents gets harder and harder. In Michigan’s 4th District, nearly 80,000 people live without health insurance, 25 percent of families deal with hunger daily, and about 20 percent of residents live in poverty. Michigan’s unemployment rate has increased four months in a row and now sits at 11.2 percent.
This morning, nurses from the Michigan Nurses Association are holding a rally in the rain at Rep. Camp’s office in Midland to demand that he give his own constituents the same courtesy he gave citizens in Utah and hold a town hall meeting in his district. If Rep. Camp refuses to put Main Street before Wall Street, he owes his constituents an explanation.
In a nutshell, this bill updates pay-as-you-go (requires budget neutrality on new tax and mandatory spending).
Suprise, surprise! Mike Rogers (MI-08), Pete Hoekstra (MI-02) and Dave Camp (MI-04), all happy to describe themselves as fiscally conservative foes of guvmint waste, voted against it.
Lately there has been a lot of Debate over the number of Democratic Congressional Districts that Democrats could gerrymander out of the state of Michigan if they had complete control (right now they hold the Governorship and State House. They stand a good chance at taking control of the State Senate while the Governor's race is a tossup). A few people have said that it is possible to succesfully draw a map that would yield 12 Democratic seats and only 2 Republican seats. I've been trying for several weeks to draw a 12-2 map, meanwhile protecting endangered incumbents (specifically Schauer) and I've determined that a 12-2 map would be far overeaching and in a neutral or Republican leaning year might end up 9-5 or worse. I think the best Michigan Democrats could do is create 11 safe or Democrat leaning districts and 3 strongly Republican districts. I've drawn a map that I think does just that, although I still am not entirely confident that we could hold both of my "Thumb" districts in a Republican year. But without further ado, here's my map.
I just spent an interesting 30 minutes or so looking at the voting records of the MI Congressional delegation.
If Dave Camp, Vern Ehlers, Pete Hoekstra or Fred Upton represent your district, be sure to ask -- loud and often -- how they can square their votes in favor of the $700 bank bailout , with their votes against the economic stimulus package.
protect[s] Michigan schools, universities and health care providers from deep budget cuts. Also of significance, it also provides $1 billion in new Medicaid health care for the unemployed and their children in a state with a 10.6-percent unemployment rate. There's $1 billion for road construction.
Ask Dave, Vern, Pete and Fred why they think it's more important to throw money at the financial industry -- with no oversight and no accountability, with $87,000 carpets and corporate jets -- than to help unemployed Americans or rebuild our infrastructure.
Ask them why their much-vaunted sense of "fiscal responsibility" doesn't extend to Michigan families who are desperately trying to keep their jobs and their homes.
Republicans on the state Senate Appropriations Committee seemed to welcome all the federal cash coming Lansing's way. Sen. Tom George of Kalamazoo, who has formed an exploratory committee to run for governor in 2010, said Michigan was deserving of even more given the state's disproportionate loss of jobs this decade.
Stop the presses ... after reading this story in today's Midland Daily News, I surveyed people in my household. 100 percent of them came away unsatisfied that the basics of journalistic inquiry had been met.
A day after U.S. Rep. Dave Camp launched an online survey of constituents in mid- and northern Michigan, nearly 70 percent of respondents favored exploration for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and 75 percent say Congress should take an up-or-down vote on it.
More than 2,800 people had responded to the survey by Thursday morning, reported Camp’s press secretary, Sage Eastman. Some 68.83 percent favored exploration in the ANWR while 31.17 did not. Some 77.04 percent favored oil and gas exploration in the waters of the Outer Continental Shelf while 22.96 percent did not.
The last time Dave Camp surveyed his constituents, it was via a survey e-mailed to people who'd signed up for Dave's dispatches from the front lines of Congress. The results are predictable -- most people surveyed think that Dave's doing a super, bang-up, terrific job.
At fault here isn't Dave Camp's office. They're only doing what they've learned they can get away with ... time and time again. Notable in the article is how the reporter blew past all questions of whether the online survey could be trusted (hint, hint: it was produced internally, and produced results heavily tilted in favor of the source), and got reaction to it.
Camp asked if a better policy is to expand exploration through mining, drilling and building power plants or through conservation and regulation. Hugh McDiarmid, communications director for the Michigan Environmental Council, took issue with lumping conservation and regulation together. “Regulation is a red flag for many people,” he said.
McDiarmid was an excellent reporter back in his day. He also makes a more diplomatic communications guy than I would. My response would have been, "So he surveys a hopelessly skewed population sample, and comes up with results favorable to him ... how is this a story?"
In recent months, the economic situation in Michigan has gotten increasingly worse. People are worried about their employment and their access to healthcare. Just this week, General Motors terminated access to healthcare for its retirees in order to cut costs. General Motors took this action at a time when employees all over this District and State are worried about meeting their future healthcare needs.
Given our economic situation in Michigan, Rep. Dave Camp's vote to sustain the President's veto of H.R. 6631, a bill that would prevent the reduction in payments for Medicare and help ensure that seniors have access to doctors, is simply inexcusable. Once again, Mr. Camp has sided with President Bush and the ideological right-wing of his party instead of making his constituents and their well-being his priority.
The veto override received overwhelming bipartisan support, by a vote of 383-41. The law that has now gone into effect provides for improved reimbursement rates of physicians, which was designed to prevent physicians from opting out of Medicare participation in rural and low income areas. As one of the most rural districts in the state, residents of Michigan's 4th district cannot afford a representative in Congress who cares so little about their access to healthcare.
This is just more of the same from Mr. Camp, who has repeatedly voted against the interests of constituents in his District by siding with special interests. He has sided with pharmaceutical companies over our seniors, the mortgage companies instead of homeowners, and insurance companies over children.
It is time for voters in the 4th District to take a hard look at Mr. Camp and his priorities. Instead of working in the interests of hard-working regular people - the families in Midland, children in Big Rapids, and senior citizens in Traverse City - he has served a different constituency: the special interests in Washington.
It is time that Michigan's 4th District got its voice back and had a Representative with a different agenda, one whose priority is to try to make life better for people in our District. I am running for Congress to do just that.
Andrew Concannon Democratic Candidate - Michigan's 4th Congressional District
ANDREW CONNCANON, DEMOCRAT RUNNING FOR CONGRESS IN MICHIAGAN'S FOURTH DISTRICT SENT THIS OUT EARLIER TODAY:
We are now entering into a new phase of our campaign. We are increasing our presence in all 14 counties, and we've had great success in energizing voters in the 4th District. Our campaign has been able to do that because of the support of people like you.
Dave Camp's campaign has been funded by big business and special interests in Washington. It's no wonder he's lost touch with the concerns of the average Michigander.
In order to have the resources to remain competitive, we need the continued help of supporters like you. Your donation will be used to bring Andy's message of change to all corners of Michigan's 4th District. Now is the perfect time to step up and own a piece of this campaign. If you make a donation right now, you'll receive a special gift. Make a donation of $50 or more, and show your support for Andy with an official campaign shirt and two bumper stickers.
To assist in the conservation of rare felids and rare canids by supporting and providing financial resources for the conservation programs of nations within the range of rare felid and rare canid populations and projects of persons with demonstrated expertise in the conservation of rare felid and rare canid populations.
It was Walberg, Peter Hoekstra and, Dave Camp! among Michigan's Congresscritters who voted against this.
The bill, if you read through it, appropriates money to studying big cats and preserving their habitat, as long as the money is actually available.
The U.S. House today voted to extend unemployment benefits an additional 26 weeks in hard-hit states like Michigan -- 13 weeks for states that aren't suffering as badly.
An amendment extending the benefits passed by a vote of 256 to 166.
...snip...
Voting against the amendment that included the jobless benefits were Pete Hoekstra of Holland, Mike Rogers of Brighton, Vern Ehlers of Grand Rapids, Tim Walberg of Tipton, Thad McCotter of Livonia and Dave Camp of Midland.
Offered a chance to support something that would specifically benefit unemployed workers in the state of Michigan, these people said, "Nah ... not interested."
If there's one thing Dave Camp has been adept at doing, it's been maintaining the image that he is engaged in his district. In my college days, I used to get wave after wave of press releases from his office, and his press person used to provide me regular updates of what the Congressman was doing.
One day, he showed up to the campus of CMU for an awards ceremony and got his photo snapped a couple of times passing a scholarship check (alas, not one of those oversized checks). While I was writing up the story, a photographer (Bonnie, my roommate at the time) came back from taking shots at a local CMU clothing store because there was some significant sporting event coming up (un-riot-related), and there was a featur-y story running on school spirit. She said some guy saw her shooting photos and offered to model with the shirt. Yes, indeed, when we looked at the photos, it was Dave Camp, hoping to get his mug into the school paper twice in one edition.
He'd go on to become an expert in smothering various newsrooms in press releases. A friend of mine at the Mt. Pleasant paper kept them in what was first a manilla folder. Then, an expanded folder. Finally, a drawer was dedicated to Dave Camp press releases. And, when you'd look at papers from across mid-Michigan, you'd regularly find stories about how Dave Camp had blown into some little crossroads VFW hall to award some veteran some medal he'd earned 50 years ago, but that no one had gotten him. In stories involving controversy, he developed a habit of issuing incredibly vanilla statements.
When you'd press him on issues of real importance, he'd claim amazement. Once, when asked about membership issues involving the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe (background, members of the Tribe get a cut of the casino profits, a stipend called colloquially "per caps," so being a member of the Tribe carries with it direct financial advantages), he said, "There are membership issues?" The casino and central reservation territory of the tribe, mind you, is about 20 miles west of Camp's home town of Midland. When asked to visit the cleanup and mess in and around Alma and St. Louis involving the Pine River, while stirring up the petroleum-soaked muck of Horse Creek, Camp said something like, "I had no idea it was like this."
The point of this is that Dave Camp was among a handful of Michigan Congressmen who yesterday voted against expanding the G.I. Bill. The list of 'no' voters includes such bright lights of legislating like Tim Walberg (natch), who also voted against Head Start. Other Michigan Congresscritters who voted against it include Peter Hoekstra, Thaddeus McCotter, and Vern Ehlers. Voting in favor of it was everyone else, including all of the state's Democrats. The bill passed the House, 256-166, and is expected to go to a vote in the Senate perhaps early next week. The president said he thinks he might veto it.
AA News: U-M approves 7.4% tuition hike. "The total academic year tuition and all required fees for first-year undergraduates in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts will be $10,447 (a $724 increase) for Michigan residents and $31,301 (a $2,170 increase) for nonresidents." Thanks for the hike, Mike! The Michigan Daily has more.
Capitol Journal: Eagle tries to unseat Jones. Mark Eagle is gearing up to take on Grand Ledge Republican Rep. Rick Jones.
Conservative Media: Hune bill will do little but earn brownie points. The Guru takes a look at House Bill 5030, introduced by Rep. Hune last week, which would "require Novi-based International Transmission Company (ITC) to bury transmission lines that stretch more than five miles in townships with populations between 10,000 and 15,000." Head over there for the details.
Lessenberry: Photo ID. Jack's take on the new Photo ID requirements passed by the Michigan Supreme Court.
ICDP Dispatch: Anti-tax Nuts Looking for Dweebs in Mount Pleasant. "The giant pig that Drolet's anti-tax group haul's around the state was sitting outside the Holiday Inn and even despite several notices and ads in the local publications, Drolet's group isn't having much impact."
ICDP Dispatch: Banning Planned Parenthood Centers, and Dave Camp. "[Rep. Mike Pence] is introducing an amendment that specifically seeks to ban Planned Parenthood health centers nationwide from receiving family planning funding." JT is encouraging folks to call Rep. Camp and urge him to vote NO on the Pence amendment.
Walberg Watch: A Question of Competency. Fitzy highlights the latest wacky stuff to come out of Rep. Walberg's office.
Living Blue: Part-Time Legislature Buzz Focusing on Wrong Issue. The LivCo Dems examine some of the recent talk about moving Michigan towards a part-time legislature.
BFM: World's Largest Podcaster Has Its Eye On Michigan. Christine: "Is Wizzard's Detroit move another sign of our emerging knowledge economy? I suppose I can't say that for sure. But last week, Wizzard secured $7.5 million in equity financing, and today they announced their expansion into New York and Detroit. I'll take that as a sign that something good's goin' on in Michigan."
Did I forget anything? Drop your links in the comments section...
