My Representative

Many people do not know who their representative is in the House of Representatives. My Representative is Howard (Buck) McKeon of California. He began his work in the House of Representatives in 1993 and has consecutively been active since. He is a Republican and the ending of his term is going to be in 2008. At opencongress.org if you type in the name of your representative, you can find out whom he or she is and if their beliefs parallel yours. Buck’s “recent voting history” has been on issues like the SCHIP Extension Bill, which was a “Nay”, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, which he abstained and a plethora a others which range from terrorism and taxing on mechanic’s work gloves. Buck votes most often with Rep. David Dreier (R, CA-26) and least often with Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D, NY-22). It also has a section from opensecrets.org which lets me know what donations have taken place.
I learned more about Buck McKeon from browsing all of the bills he has or has not supported and looking through his voting history. It’s great that I can who votes most and least like him because I can see where they are from. I find it very interesting that he votes most like David Dreier, and not some other Republican from another state. This may mean that McKeon and Dreier have a relationship and thus are voting on the same issues in the same way, but how Conservative is McKeon? After all, California is a liberal state. I got a better idea of the networking that can go on from each state, and thus, maybe there is a certain level of skewed voting. I recommend that anybody reading this find out who their Representative is at http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ find out who your rep is and then go to opencongress.org.

The Interactive Constitution

There are many things in the Constitution that may be confusing for numerous reasons. Sometimes the way in which a sentence was written in 1787 may not parallel with our modern syntax, or the topic that is being addressed doesn’t make sense and the list goes on. Fortunately there is a website that can clear up many misunderstandings of the Constitution. Here the National Constitution Center offers an interactive Constitution. You can go through the whole Constitution and click on the highlighted parts (every sentence is highlighted) and it explains what the Framer is conveying. I clicked on this sentence: “The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.” This may seem vague, so here is what I got from the explanation that followed.
The Vice President is a member of the executive and legislative branch, thus he is a member of two branches and the only person who enjoys this duality. He is also the Senate’s “presiding officer” and has the ability to be a swing vote for when the House is divided. This “is one of the checks and balances the executive branch has over the legislative branch.” Now, read the selection from the Constitution. It should make more sense the second time through. I believe that this site (http://www.constitutioncenter.org/constitution/) is very useful and beneficial to the understanding of American government and of the document that binds a nation together. So next time you hear a reference to the Constitution, or have some research or just want some clarification, visit this website and it should be immensely helpful; it was for me.

Choose Your Candidate

The 2008 presidential election seems closer than it actually is. Candidacy has already been announced for the presidential election and we have over a year before we get to vote. With all of the candidates already competing, it may be difficult to “sort out” all of the messages that each candidate is giving. A fun quiz to take to see what candidate suits you best can be found on http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=259460. It consists of eleven questions, each question also have a part that asks you how important the given issue is. At the beginning of the quiz, it asks for some background information such as age and your zip code “Basic Demographics”. The quiz only takes a few minutes to complete and the questions are fairly narrow and pertinent to the issues of today. I was a little surprised by the outcome.
The quiz gives you the list of candidates that suit you from best to worst. The candidates that it gave me that suited me from best to worst went from Republican to Democratic candidates. My number one match was John McCain. I agreed with him on every issue except marriage, where I favored an amendment that would define marriage between a man and a woman. Here is the list of candidates that followed in order from which ones suited me from best to worst: John McCain, Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson, Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, Tom Tancredo, Sam Brownback, Mit Romney, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Chris Dod, and Mike Gravel. As you can see, the list is comprehensive and although my listing of every candidate that fit me may seem superfluous, it is to demonstrate that this quiz can be very useful.
I am a Republican and knew that I was going to have a Republican candidate that fit me best. But, I did not expect it to be John McCain. I was thinking more along the lines of Mit Romney, or Fred Thompson as my number one. For certain candidates, I thought that I would agree with them on many issues, but I was very wrong. I disagreed with Mit Romney on Stem Cell research, abortion, social security and many others, but I thought we would have more in common. Not only did this quiz give me an idea of who suits me, but it also let me know that I need to do more research. I highly recommend if you want a better idea of who you should vote for (though you should not use this as your final decision maker) that you take this quiz, and if you are unsure about a question that you find information about the given topic.

Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005

The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 became official legislation on October 17, 2005. This Act was formed to make it more difficult for people to claim bankruptcy under Chapter 7 in which all debts are relinquished. Instead of making it so simple for people to file bankruptcy under Chapter 7, harsher requirements for claiming bankruptcy were issued such as: Increased attorney and liability costs, Mandatory credit counseling and debtor education, Increased attorney liability and costs and many other requirements. According to opensecrets.org the top lobbying spender of this bill was the Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce is “the world’s largest business federation, representing over 3 million business of every size, sector and region”. Why would the Chamber of Commerce have such an interest in lobbying for the Bankruptcy Act?
The Chamber of Commerce helps to promote trade in its city, prevents unnecessary competition, and collects statistics that are beneficial to its members. So why would it be interested in the Bankruptcy Act? R. Bruce Josten Executive Vice President, Government Affairs of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wrote a letter to the House Of Representatives that stated “bankruptcy reform will prevent wealthy debtors from using bankruptcy to wipe out the debts that they can afford to repay, and from passing those debts on to the millions of businesses and consumers who cannot afford to pay someone else’s bills.” How did this Bankruptcy Act help the Chamber of Commerce? One would assume that there is a reason that the Chamber of Commerce spent the most money on getting this act passed. As stated before, the Chamber helps to promote trade in its city. If someone files bankruptcy when they can actually afford to pay their bills, how can the Chamber promote, or even facilitate trade when others are left to pay for debts? Also, this would result in unnecessary competition because any extra money that businesses and consumers had would be spent on bills rather than furthering their business or personal wants and needs, thus their competition would have an unfair advantage.