Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Legislative Update for December 14, 2010 Meeting

!!! HIGH ALERT !!!
LAME DUCK SESSION of Congress


S.3991 - Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act of 2010

This bill is a newer version of S.3194, introduced by Harry Reid on Dec. 1, 2010. The aim of the bill is the unconstitutional compulsory unionization of state and local public-safety workers. It would eliminate local government control over the labor relations of their own workers.

Fortunately the bill failed a Dec. 8 vote cloture which required 60 votes. The cloture vote failed with 53 yay votes to 43 nay votes, and 2 senators abstaining.


S.3772 - Paycheck Fairness Act

Introduced by Harry Reid This bill narrowly failed a cloture vote on November 17 with 58 Ayes, 41 Nays, and 1 senator abstaining.

The following description from Eagle Forum summarizes why we should be glad cloture failed:

Originally introduced by Hillary Clinton during her time in the Senate, and reintroduced by Sen. Harry Reid, the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 3772) (PFA) would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA) in the following ways:

  • Allows for unlimited compensatory and punitive damages to be granted, even without proof of intent to discriminate. Currently, an employer must be found to have intentionally engaged in discriminatory practices in order for an employee to receive monetary compensation, and even then, the employee is entitled only to back pay. The provision in the PFA is unacceptable and unnecessary, as damages are already available under Title VII for pay discrimination.
  • Changes the “establishment” requirement. The EPA currently requires that employees whose pay is being compared must work in the same physical place of business. The PFA would amend the word “establishment” to mean workplaces in the same county or political district. It would also invite the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to develop “rules or guidance” to define the term more broadly. This leaves the door open for the EEOC to compare a woman’s job in a rural area to a man’s job in an urban area that has a much higher cost of living, which would drive up the cost of employing the woman in the rural lower cost area. Such increase in employment costs would result in fewer people being employed, and would also result in employers shipping jobs overseas.
  • Replaces a successful pay discrimination-determining system with a proven failed system. The PFA would invalidate the successful, Supreme Court-endorsed system for determining whether pay discrimination has occurred (known as the Interpretative Standards for Systemic Compensation Discrimination), and would replace it with the highly inaccurate Equal Opportunity Survey, which has found true discriminators to be non-discriminators 93 percent of the time.
  • Increases the numbers in class-action suits. Under EPA, if an employee wants to participate in a class-action suit against his employer, he must affirmatively decide to participate in the suit. The PFA would automatically include employees in class-action suits, unless they affirmatively opt out. This change would result in booming business for trial attorneys, and huge costs to employers, who may decide to ship jobs overseas to avoid such costs altogether.
In addition to these changes, the PFA would institute a system of “comparable worth” effectively allowing judges, juries and unelected bureaucrats to set employees’ wages, instead of employers. Thus, an employee’s compensation level would be based on some vague notion of his “worth,” instead of on concrete factors like education, experience, time in the labor force, and hours worked per week. The PFA would also cause employers to avoid hiring women in low-paying positions, since the employers may then become targets for burdensome lawsuits. This trend would result in even higher unemployment for low-skilled women, potentially increasing the number of families dependent on government assistance.



H.R. 5987 - Seniors Protection Act

From OpenCongress.org: "Directs the Secretary of the Treasury to disburse a $250 payment to recipients of Social Security, SSI (Supplemental Security Income under title XVI of the Social Security Act), railroad retirement benefits, and veterans disability compensation or pension benefits if no cost-of-living adjustment is payable in 2011."

We already know that Social Security is broke since Bill Clinton robbed Social Security to claim he balanced the budget in the '90s. Since then Social Security has been funded by later generations who are still currently working, and who will likely never receive compensation for the money they are coerced to pay into the system today. The politicians are attempting to placate current Social Security recipients by offering this one-time disbursement, paid from money we will have to either borrow or print.

On Dec. 8 there was a motion to suspend the rules and vote on this bill, which would have require a 2/3 majority vote to pass. This vote failed with 254 Ayes, 153 Nays, and 27 abstentions.


H.R.6416 - American Traveler Dignity Act

OpenCongress.org Summary: Removes legal immunity for government employees so that TSA screeners would be subject to the same sexual harassment laws as the general public. In the word's of Ron Paul, "if you can't grope another person, if you can't x-ray people and endanger them with dangerous x-rays, if you can't take nude photographs of people, why do we allow the government to do it?"

This bill was introduced Nov. 17 by Representative Ron Paul in the midst of the latest controversy about the TSA and its molesting of travelers and it's deployment of DNA-unzipping body scanners.

Despite all of the TSA controversy this bill only has two cosponsors at the time of this post. They are Representatives Walter Jones and John Duncan.


Dream Act [H.R.6497 / S.3992]

The pro-amnesty bill for illegal aliens under 35 years of age was passed in the House on Dec. 8. with a 216 to 198 margin, with 208 Democrats and 8 Republicans voting for the bill, and 160 Republicans and 38 Democrats voting against it.

The eight Republicans who went against the tide of common sense were:
Joseph Cao (LA)
Mike Castle (DE)
Lincoln Diaz-Balart (FL)
Mario Diaz-Balart (FL)
Charles Djou (HI)
Vernon Ehlers (MI)
Bob Inglis (SC)
Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (FL)

For the complete roll call, visit: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2010/roll625.xml.

In the Senate on Dec. 9, Harry Reid attempted a cloture vote on the Dream Act and came up one vote short, and was forced to table the bill.


S.510 - FDA Food Safety Modernization Act

For the context of previous discussion of this bill, refer to this article.

There is a long saga of deception surrounding this bill. At its core it is actually a measure toward bringing the United States in line with the globalist Codex Alimentarius agenda, which seeks to totally and globally, corporatize and control the worlds food supply, and deny small farmers and individuals the right to produce and sell their own food. The even bigger picture is that Codex Alimentarius is one dimension of the eugenics depopulation agenda.

On Nov. 30, S.510 passed the Senate with an amendment by a 73 to 25, yay or nay vote. Nevermind that the Constitution requires all bills that raise revenue to originate in the House. (This constitutional requirement was also ignored when TARP bill was originated in the Senate when the House voted initially voted it down.)

Many in the patriot community thought that the unconstitutionality of the S.510 originating in the Senate would be enough to stop the bill from proceeding. Unfortunately, they were incorrect. The language of S.510 was shamefully attached to H.R.3082 via H.R.1755, a continuing resolution bill for funding military operations and veterans benefits.


The Tax "Deal" between Democrats and Republicans

According to Campaign for Liberty:

You may have heard that Obama and the Republicans reached a deal to extend the current tax rates for two more years.

But what the statists are trying to sweep under the rug is that part of this "deal" is that the Republicans will agree to a continuing resolution to fund the government until September 30, 2011.

That means the Republicans are selling out to fund ObamaCare for at least the next ten months.

It's vital you contact your senators immediately and DEMAND they blow up any shady deals to link extending the current tax rates to funding ObamaCare.

No comments:

Post a Comment