BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
Frank Lautenberg died today. He was 86.
Most political pundits will immediately turn their attention to Chris Christie and whom he will appoint to the Senate to replace Senator Lautenberg.
There’s not a lot of sentimentality in Washington, so that’s not that unusual. You die in Washington, and the first thing people think about is who will take your place. Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
It had been 31 years since a bunch of American businessmen had organized a coup against the monarchy that had ruled Hawaii for generations when Daniel Inouye was born. His parents came from Japan, and along with Korean and Chinese workers, the Japanese had come to work on the Sugar plantations. That same year, Congress passed a law banning further immigration from Japan to Hawaii or anywhere else in the United States.
In 1924, on the mainland, Calvin Coolidge was President and Republicans had majorities in both the House and the Senate. It was the era when a President could get away with saying little and doing even less, and Congress basically let the good times roll.
BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com
LegisStorm has just announced the first successful electronic publication of all Congressional staff salaries for the past 10 years.
Go ahead. Click on the link above (Congressional staff salaries) and type in a few names of people you have known who worked on Capitol Hill since 2000. LegisStorm seems to think they have uncovered the Holy Grail lost since antiquity.
Big deal. Congressional staff salaries and office expenses have been public knowledge ever since the first Congress sat in 1789.
Did you know that 2/3’s of the 14th Congress were voted out of office in 1816? ‘Why?’ you might ask.
Because the 14th Congress voted themselves a hefty pay raise to the lofty sum of $1500 per year. Henry Clay, the Speaker of the House, got the gargantuan (for then) salary of $3000.
Mr. Clay almost was defeated himself in 1816 in which case, the nation may never have come to know just how brilliant he was as a legislator and the ‘Uncompromising Compromiser’ as the authors of the great book, ‘Henry Clay: The Essential American’, Daniel and Jeanne Heidler, chose to characterize him. Read it over these holidays and learn more about how our government matured into the form it is today under his leadership in the early days of the Republic.
Here’s the problem with the reporting of congressional salaries nowadays: There is never any context in any reporting about them to provide the public any idea of what our elected representatives, senators and staff do on a regular day in Congress. Continue reading