Hypocrites and Moral Legislation as it Relates to the 2012 Election part 1

The upcoming 2012 election, especially the Presidential election will attempt to ask you, what is important to you.  The candidates will attempt to tell you that the most important things in the country are moral legislation.  At most Republican debates, they will talk about things such as abortion laws, gay marriage, and try to establish themselves as hard-working Americans who were never given anything and only succeeded because they outworked the other people. 

The moral legislation is what I want to focus on, here.  Each of the Republican presidential candidates (it may be the same with Democrat candidates but Barack Obama does not have to deal with the debates) talk about how part of the reason America is failing is because we are lacking a certain moral quality.  Ron Paul is the only one who tries to steer away from moral legislation, this is mainly due to paying some type of tribute to his Libertarian ideals.

This does not bode well for Newt Gingrich.  Gingrich was fined $300,000 and admitted that he had "engaged in conduct that did not reflect creditability on the House of Representatives."  He was the first member of the house to be sanctioned in such a way.  He has claimed that the ethics investigation was a partisan effort and did not reflect the ethics violations but reflected the politics of the Democratic party.  It should be noted that the House of Representatives passed the ethics bill 395 to 28 had 196 Republicans voting for it and 26 Republicans voting against it.  He did pay off the fine.  Gingrich's personal life has also been the subject of some scrutiny with his divorce(s).  However, Gingrich has put himself on the defensive about what others might see our moral shortcomings.  He has done this by essentially claiming that his outcome would have been different if the Democratic party would not have singled him out because they were attempting to get him in trouble in general.  Politifact investigated this and has found that he is not telling the truth.  I will only add to politifact's investigation that if the ethics committee was really interested in bringing Gingrich down, they may have eventually brought down the "death penalty" and forced him into resignation.  I would like to re-iterate one point that politifact brought up and that is that Gingrich accepted what could be considered a plea bargain deal, where he admitted one count of wrongdoing and paid the fine. 

Part two will be up at a later date.

2nd Nebraska Congressional District part 2

This will be a look at some of the votes Lee Terry has cast since the last time he was elected in November of 2010. 
We're not going through all of them in this one post. But we'll cover the vast majority of them over the next series of posts.

We'll go in alphabetical order of the different categories from the database we're using to get these votes.  We're not supposed to mention where we're getting them for some reason. But if you're curious just google congressional voting records.

Abortion Issues
1. House Amendment 95- Prohibits federal funds from being made available to Planned Parenthood, or to any of its state and local affiliates.
Lee Terry voted to prohibit federal funds.
This Amendment was adopted February 18, 2011.
In case you were curious, here's some information about Planned Parenthood.

2. Listed as HR 3 on our database- Prohibiting Taxpayer Funding of Abortion-prohibits the use of federal funds from being used for the providing of abortions, except in the following cases: rape, incest, or the life of the woman is at risk.
Lee Terry voted to prohibit federal funds.
This bill was passed on May 4, 2011.
In case you were curious, about 10 Democrats voted to prohibit federal funds.

3. HR 358- Amends Federal Health Care Law to Prohibit Abortion Coverage- prohibits federal funds from paying for any part of a health care plan that would include abortions. Prohibits any federal, state, or local entity from subjecting any health care entity to discrimination on the basis that they will not perform abortions, undergo training for the performance of abortions, or provide referrals for the performance of abortions.
Lee Terry voted to amend the Federal Health Care Law.
This bill was passed on October 13, 2011.
In case you were curious, since Terry's first election there has been only been about 20 times that voting on abortion issues have come up. That's a little over 1 per year.

Agriculture Issues
1. HR 3082- Continuing Appropriations- Amends the Appropriations Act of 2011 to extend the expiration date. Prohibits pay adjustments for all federal non-military employees from beginning of 2011 to end of 2012.  Extends deadline by which service members, veterans, and their benificiaries may apply for Retroactive Stop Loss Special Pay. Extends various programs relating to transportation and highways.
Lee Terry voted against continuing appropriations.
Passed through the house on December 21, 2010.
In case you were curious, this falls under Agricultural Issues for reasons we can't comprehend. Probably why we're not in Congress.

2. HR 2751 FDA Food Safety Modernization Act- Allows the secretary to stop companies from distributing food that would cause seriously adverse health consequences or death, if the companies refuse to do so. Requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to identify high-risk facilities and allocate resources to to inspect those facilities. Increases the inspection of these companies. Requires that the food be tested by independent food testing laboratories to test this food. If there is a recall, there must be a press release describing the food and the illness.  This is a quick summary. It was an important bill for food safety, if you're curious, I'm sure you can find a more detailed summary of this bill online.
Lee Terry voted to pass this act.
It was passed in the house on December 21, 2010.

3. HR 2112- Appropriations for Agriculture, Rural Development, and the Food and Drug Administration- prohibits funding to nutritional programs under the Richard B. Russell National Lunch Act and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 that do the following: requires crediting of tomato paste or puree based on volume, establishes a whole grain requirement without defining whole grain, initiates a sodium reduction target beyond the target specified in Nutrition Standards in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs. It prohibits the use of funding the projects seeking to use the power of eminent domain.  The Secretary of the Treasury may obligate more than $100 million for a single natural disaster event for emergency relief projects for the following damages caused in 2011: Hurricane Irene, The Missouri River basin flooding, and excludes events involving closed hydrological basins.
Lee Terry voted against the appropriations.
It was passed on November 3, 2011.
In case you were curious, I'm not sure what the first two parts of this bill really means. Although, we find it humorous that one has to define what whole grain is.  Is it possible that people were saying things were whole grain that really weren't?  I'm also using Wikipedia as my source for defining eminent domain (in your face, teachers and professors who say Wikipedia is not a reliable source*).  Here you go.

* Wikipedia is probably not the most reliable source. We, at Hypocrisy Now, understand this.  Also, we think it's humorous that Wikipedia is now a .org website, some of the time. It's possible that's it completely .org.

We'll continue with more of the issues later.