I guess Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) isn’t overly proud of his pre-congressional career as a “small business owner.” His official bio says he was a small business owner for 27 years, but it doesn’t mention what kind of business or businesses he owned. His official Wikipedia page says that “In 1987, Meadows started a small restaurant. He later sold it, and used the proceeds to start a development company in Florida.” Unfortunately, this statement has been flagged as needing a source.
Maybe if I cared more, I could Google around and learn a little bit about Rep. Meadow’s development company in Florida. Feel free to do this if you are having a slow Sunday.
The only reason I was remotely curious about this man is because he just got stripped of his chairmanship of some lowly subcommittee for pissing off Speaker Boehner.
House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) has removed Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) from his post as a subcommittee chairman, according to a Chaffetz spokesperson.
The removal comes after Meadows bucked House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in opposing a vote that would give President Obama expanded powers to “fast track” his trade agenda.
Boehner meted out less serious discipline to several other members, as well.
Meadows represents Western North Carolina. It’s basically Heath Shuler’s old territory. He’s a big Tea Party guy whose greatest legislative contribution so far has been to pass a bill related to Hizbollah. I can pretty much guarantee that Rep. Meadows doesn’t know how Hizbollah did in the latest Lebanese elections. Someone told him they were a terrorist organization and he probably pictures them as hiding out in caves in Afghanistan or something. You see, Rep. Meadows is a moron.
He didn’t want to give us any federal aid to assist us after Superstorm Sandy hit the Mid-Atlantic. Do you know that hurricanes often land in North Carolina?
He supports a Balanced Budget Amendment, which is the stupidest, most irresponsible idea to be introduced by the leadership of a party in the history of the country.
He wants a balanced budget, mind you, after we repeal the Estate Tax, the capital gains tax, and enact a flat income tax that will eliminate most revenue from that source.
He not only opposes reproductive rights, he opposes churches giving their parishioners information about birth control.
He was also a leader of a rump group of lunatics who demanded that Speaker Boehner default on our debts and destroy our country’s credit rating to avoid funding Obamacare.
John Ostendorff of the Asheville Citizen-Times wrote Meadows “said it’s best to close the government in the short term to win a delay on ‘Obamacare’, despite the potential negative impact on the economy.” Ostendorff wrote that Meadows said he was doing what Tea Party members in Western North Carolina wanted him to do. Meadows said his constituents wanted him to fight against “Obamacare” “regardless of consequences.” Jane Bilello, head of the Asheville Tea Party and political action committee said Meadows “truly represents us” on the issue of “Obamacare”. Meadows reportedly holds conference calls with members of the Asheville Tea Party, telling them what’s going on in Congress, and about challenges he faces promoting their agenda.
At this point you won’t be surprised to learn that he’s a climate science denying member of the “Drill, Baby, Drill” camp and wants to put his state’s beautiful beaches at risk by opening up the coastal waters to oil and gas exploration.
But he was some of kind of small businessman, so you can’t question his judgment.
But what really upsets you is that he opposes fast track? My mind boggles. Would you please explain what is so wonderful about fast track and TPP, other than the Great God Obama wants it?
Pardon, but what I think Booman said was that he (Meadows) pissed off Boehner, which got him removed.
Perhaps the fact that I never mentioned trade policy at all could serve as your first clue that you’re totally off-base.
Other than that there is nothing notable about this typical House Republican to designate him “Wanker of the Day”. He is entirely representative of his fellow Republicans with the sole exception of being against fast track.
Again wrong.
While he is unfortunately not alone by any means, he stands out as a real loon. He voted against Boehner as speaker. His birth control position is fringe enough to have sunk other politicians. He led the nihilists in the shutdown war. Even his tax policies are are the very extreme end. In other words, there’s no one to his right.
Sorta what you figured was elected in 2014, a product of the minds of angry voters with moonshine hangovers. And then there are the native voters and then there are the Cherokee.
As we’ve often noted a Balanced Budget Amendment is not a balanced budget and Republicans hate balanced budgets as the 2011 sequester smoked out.
But shutter the military, turn out the lights in governmental DC, and repeal all of the IRS code but a 10% tax on income over a million for all legal taxpayers, and you might have a deal on the budget. The BBA is just neon sign saying “Coming shortly.” Shortly never comes.
Maybe we can require elected members of Congress to provide public background checks as a means of accountability. How to legislatively bell that cat is a different matter.
So, in other words, he’s just a plain-old ignorant, stupid, and bigoted Republican douche-canoe!
High-value end of real estate market – few to none in sales accomplished …
○ Mark Meadows – Political Campaign Contributions 2008 Election Cycle
Doncha hate it when a crazy moron politician gets one thing right, albeit for the wrong reasons? Whereas so many of his more educated and intellectually gifted colleagues are being played for suckers.
Democratic voters still haven’t come to terms with the fact that both GHWB and Clinton got it wrong on NAFTA. It’s not known if any or all of the 20 million voters that refused to vote for Bush or Clinton did so solely on the basis of Perot’s opposition to NAFTA (and as nutty as Perot was, he was relatively sane compared to the latest group of GOP grifters seeking the Presidency).
All it takes for the voters is to blow some David Ricardo “free trade” smoke their way. Never is any discussion of what comparative advantage we might have as a result of “free trade”. Before NAFTA we still had comparative advantage in manufacturing and had to subsidize agriculture. NAFTA was however predicated on the US having comparative advantage in (subsidized) agriculture like Europe’s subsidized agriculture and let the manufacturing go to China. Now we don’t even have comparative advantage in agriculture, only weapons and military services.
So what comparative advantage to we have after the ISDS trade deals are signed? An expensive Navy guarding the Malacca Straits with all of Southeast Asia waving flags and shouting “Go get ’em”. While domestically, the US continues its decline to third world economic status with its concomitant corruption.
But Meadows just wanted to stick to Obama. We needed more useful fools like him for the trade votes, but still why have fools at all.
…why have fools at all.
But of course. Except, we Democrats still support and/or excuse all those that supported and/or voted for Gramm-Leach-Bliley (and other regressive economic legislation during Bill’s tenure), the Iraq War resolution, bankruptcy “modernization,,” etc. that was equally foolish to the nonsense Meadows supports. The difference being that the hurt inflicted on the public by the foolishness of Democrats is real because the legislation is real and Meadows nonsense remains in coo-coo land.
The Democratic Senate caucus and President Obama are now preventing the full repeal of the ACA and the rest of the worst that Meadows would want to pass.
The Blue Dog caucus was horrible, as were the few Democratic Senators who supported the worst policies passed in the last 20 years. Their shitty votes didn’t save them from losing their offices over the last decade, and good riddance to them. It’s healthy to recognize that almost all of the worst D.C. Democrats are gone, long gone.
Does this mean that today’s Democratic Congressional Caucuses is perfect? Hell, no. Is President Obama engaging in an upsetting, divisive fight on fast-track trade? Yep. Of course we have to hold them to account. Proper perspective is valuable, however.
I trust Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton on policy, any day. Sanders has received my campaign donation, and Clinton has not. Hillary remains far superior to anyone stuffing the GOP clown car, and the issues she is emphasizing are a much better set than she emphasized in ’08.
A surprisingly good and fair article at Politico: When Bernie met Hillary
One thing relevant to my prior comment:
Relevant to Bernie’s campaign is that he doesn’t have to retool the policy positions that he’s taken over the past twenty odd years, doesn’t have to run focus groups to test out his message, and doesn’t have to hire a bunch of high priced ghost speechwriters. On all the major and most important stuff, he always got it right and did everything he could to move others in power to the right place. Alas, those others in power preferred to dismiss and denigrate Bernie as they merrily did the wrong thing again and again.
Great news for Mexico … Manufacturing Base Rebounds, Expect Reshoring
○ Mexico on par with China and other LLC (low labor-cost) countries 🙁
In the 20 years since the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, Mexico has become a global manufacturing leader and a prime destination for investors and multinationals around the world. Yet the country’s economic growth continues to disappoint, and the rise in living standards has stalled.
○ A tale of two Mexicos: Growth and prosperity in a two-speed economy
Have I mentioned before how much I distrust anything issued by McKinseyCo? Based on first hand-experience, their analysts kept telling my employer that the subject new product would produce significant revenue and profit with extremely low risk. I and two of my colleagues risked getting fired for balking at McKinsey’s analysis. Later, outside company events, proved the McKinsey hadn’t been just wrong but dangerously wrong.
While I never endorsed Perot, I did note at the time (1992) that a lot of my co-workers who were totally uninterested in politics suddenly took interest and even became campaign workers. That should tell us that a lot of the disinterest in politics is not apathy but is because a substantial number of people are disgusted with BOTH parties. Unfortunately, this seems to lead them to Ross Perot or Ron Paul not Bernie Sanders. The Green Party had a lot of promise but destroyed itself with Nader. Now it is a joke.
In 1992, the media gave Perot a big megaphone. Initially he didn’t display his true nuttiness and had an advantage over GHWB and the stereotypical Democrats which was that he didn’t sound like a mealy-mouthed wimp. By election day 1992, a vote for Perot was nothing but a protest against GHWB, Clinton, and/or NAFTA. With NAFTA a done deal by 1996, his votes were reduced mostly to Republicans that weren’t anymore interested in Dole than they had been GHWB. IOW GOP leaning voters.
The Democratic Senate caucus and President Obama are now preventing the full repeal of the ACA and the rest of the worst that Meadows would want to pass.DMIT SoftwareDMITDMIT in indiaDMIT Price