“Regardless of the merits of this or that issue, on the whole they’d rather preemptively surrender.…Doesn’t matter what your issue is, they’ll fold.”
[Chart: Explosion of US taxpayer cash diverted from education, infrastructure and other needs to “climate action.” Chart shows confiscation of billions of US taxpayer dollars beginning in 1990 to finance the “climate science research industry.” Chart, page 4, pdf, is partial estimate, doesn’t include congressional appropriations: [p. 11] “The pursuit of an integrated national agenda to study climate change and implement policy initiatives took a critical step with passage of the Global Change Research Act of 1990. This act established institutional structures operating out of the White House.”] US Senate, Dec. 2015: 54 Republicans-46 Democrats; After 2018 elections, 53 Republicans, 47 Democrats
12/14/2015, “The GOP Don’t Never Dance With Them What Brung Them,” Mark Steyn, Steyn on America
“I’ve received many letters like this about my appearance last week [Dec. 2015] in the United States Senate:
“Dear Mr. Steyn:
I’ve been following the reports on your appearance to give Senate testimony, and the troubles you and other witnesses encountered there. I don’t want to pretend that I’m any kind of expert in such matters, but it was my impression going in that the hearings were Senator Cruz’s idea, and that you were his invitee. If so, how were the proceedings commandeered by Sen. Markey in the manner that your posts suggest?
Sincerely, Thomas Evans”…
It might be truer to say that the Democrats as a whole commandeered the proceedings. But even that would not be strictly correct. What happened is that Senate Republicans chose to permit the Dems to commandeer them.
How did that happen? Ted Cruz’s Science committee is a sub-committee of the Senate Commerce committee. The sub-committee has six Republican members, five Democrats. The senior party representatives on the overall Commerce committee – John Thune (Republican) and Bill Nelson (Democrat) – are ex officio members of the sub-committee and are also permitted to attend. So there should have been seven Republicans and six Democrats in the room that afternoon. Instead:
“All the Democratic subcommittee members were present and accounted for: Senator Tom Udall, (D-NM), the Ranking Member; Senator Ed Markey (D-MA); Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ); Senator Gary Peters (D-MI); Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI). Also in attendance, the Ranking Member of Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL).
In Washington, as Woody Allen once joked, ninety percent of success is showing up. All the Democrats showed up.
However, John Thune (R-SD), Chairman of the full committee, was a no-show. Thus, the most senior Senator present for the hearing, in an institution dedicated to Seniority (hence the name “Senate”), was a Democrat.
Only one other Republican was present on the dais, Senators Steve Daines (R-MT). All the other G.O.P. members, including Marco Rubio (R-FL), Jerry Moran (R-KS), and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) were absent. Message: I don’t care.”
Also absent was Cory Gardner, the Colorado Republican. Daines tossed a friendly pitch for his home-state audience, with amusing references to some pal of his re-charging his Tesla in Bozeman. And, when he was done schmoozing for Eyewitness News in Bozeman, he left the room. So, for the remaining 70 per cent of the hearing, what should have been six Democrats and seven Republicans was instead six Democrats and one Republican – the lonely chairman, Ted Cruz. That’s why the Dems got 85 per cent of the question time and lobbed puffballs at Rear Admiral Titley – until eventually Judith Curry and I chose to push back at the fatuous Markey.
[Image: Dec.
2015, US Senate hearing: Dr. Judith Curry, then Chair of the School of
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology]
Why did this happen? I’m a foreigner, and I certainly rarely feel more foreign than when I’m in the ghastly US Senate. But I’ve attended committees in the Canadian parliament and other parts of the Commonwealth and can’t recall any occasion when the majority party’s members have chosen to boycott the hearing. Why did no Republicans show up?
Rubio was off campaigning in California and ignoring all those senatorial duties his constituent Jeb! wants him to focus on. But Thune and the rest of those guys were all in the building, voting on various Senate flim-flam going on that day. So even though they were 90 seconds away they chose not to attend.
The not so subtle reason is that, like Bob Dole (currently threatening, if Cruz is the nominee, to “oversleep” on Election Day), their antipathy to Ted Cruz outweighs everything else. Dole feels that Cruz has been given the greatest honor any man can have – the keys to the Senate men’s room – and yet he won’t play by the rules of the club.
The slightly subtler reason is that these Republicans felt that the whole climate biz was a bit of a hot potato for them. Yet, putting aside my own presence, the three scientists in the room were among the most respectable figures in the field: John Christy is the great innovator who developed the world’s first satellite temperature record; Judith Curry, among the old boys’ club of climate science, is perhaps the most distinguished female climatologist on earth, although she would disdain such a categorization; and Will Happer is an eminent Princeton physics professor garlanded with almost all the major awards in his field. All of them have paid a price for speaking out against Big Climate.
So, in disdaining Cruz (and/or me), senators Thune, Rubio, Moran, Sullivan and Gardner were also disdaining some of the most distinguished climate realists on the planet. Those three scientists did not deserve that from a handful of political hacks. Indeed, by their absence, they were contributing to the overall message of climate conformism: If you disagree with the “97 per cent consensus”, at least have the good taste to crawl away and die somewhere far off out of sight.
As I’ve often said, the Republican Party is so good at folding they should be the White House valets. Doesn’t matter what your issue is, they’ll fold.
They fold on debt, on immigration, on regulation, on gay marriage, on Obamacare, on [Insert Your Issue Here]. Regardless of the merits of this or that issue, on the whole they’d rather preemptively surrender. And I got the definite sense from their no-show last week that for these guys global warming will be just the 173rd issue for which discretion is the better part of valor. Save your powder – for next year, next decade, whenever. If you’re a Kansan, Floridian, Coloradan, South Dakotan or Alaskan and you voted because you want sanity in environmental policy, well, tough: the GOP don’t dance with them what brung them, no way, no how.”…
However, John Thune (R-SD), Chairman of the full committee, was a no-show. Thus, the most senior Senator present for the hearing, in an institution dedicated to Seniority (hence the name “Senate”), was a Democrat.
Only one other Republican was present on the dais, Senators Steve Daines (R-MT). All the other G.O.P. members, including Marco Rubio (R-FL), Jerry Moran (R-KS), and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) were absent. Message: I don’t care.”
Also absent was Cory Gardner, the Colorado Republican. Daines tossed a friendly pitch for his home-state audience, with amusing references to some pal of his re-charging his Tesla in Bozeman. And, when he was done schmoozing for Eyewitness News in Bozeman, he left the room. So, for the remaining 70 per cent of the hearing, what should have been six Democrats and seven Republicans was instead six Democrats and one Republican – the lonely chairman, Ted Cruz. That’s why the Dems got 85 per cent of the question time and lobbed puffballs at Rear Admiral Titley – until eventually Judith Curry and I chose to push back at the fatuous Markey.
[Image: Dec.
2015, US Senate hearing: Dr. Judith Curry, then Chair of the School of
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology] Why did this happen? I’m a foreigner, and I certainly rarely feel more foreign than when I’m in the ghastly US Senate. But I’ve attended committees in the Canadian parliament and other parts of the Commonwealth and can’t recall any occasion when the majority party’s members have chosen to boycott the hearing. Why did no Republicans show up?
Rubio was off campaigning in California and ignoring all those senatorial duties his constituent Jeb! wants him to focus on. But Thune and the rest of those guys were all in the building, voting on various Senate flim-flam going on that day. So even though they were 90 seconds away they chose not to attend.
The not so subtle reason is that, like Bob Dole (currently threatening, if Cruz is the nominee, to “oversleep” on Election Day), their antipathy to Ted Cruz outweighs everything else. Dole feels that Cruz has been given the greatest honor any man can have – the keys to the Senate men’s room – and yet he won’t play by the rules of the club.
The slightly subtler reason is that these Republicans felt that the whole climate biz was a bit of a hot potato for them. Yet, putting aside my own presence, the three scientists in the room were among the most respectable figures in the field: John Christy is the great innovator who developed the world’s first satellite temperature record; Judith Curry, among the old boys’ club of climate science, is perhaps the most distinguished female climatologist on earth, although she would disdain such a categorization; and Will Happer is an eminent Princeton physics professor garlanded with almost all the major awards in his field. All of them have paid a price for speaking out against Big Climate.
So, in disdaining Cruz (and/or me), senators Thune, Rubio, Moran, Sullivan and Gardner were also disdaining some of the most distinguished climate realists on the planet. Those three scientists did not deserve that from a handful of political hacks. Indeed, by their absence, they were contributing to the overall message of climate conformism: If you disagree with the “97 per cent consensus”, at least have the good taste to crawl away and die somewhere far off out of sight.
As I’ve often said, the Republican Party is so good at folding they should be the White House valets. Doesn’t matter what your issue is, they’ll fold.
They fold on debt, on immigration, on regulation, on gay marriage, on Obamacare, on [Insert Your Issue Here]. Regardless of the merits of this or that issue, on the whole they’d rather preemptively surrender. And I got the definite sense from their no-show last week that for these guys global warming will be just the 173rd issue for which discretion is the better part of valor. Save your powder – for next year, next decade, whenever. If you’re a Kansan, Floridian, Coloradan, South Dakotan or Alaskan and you voted because you want sanity in environmental policy, well, tough: the GOP don’t dance with them what brung them, no way, no how.”…
…………………………….
........
........
12/11/2015, “Mr. Steyn goes to Washington,” LaurenceJarvikOnline
..
“So the signal from the G.O.P. was clear: Chairman Cruz was almost home alone, while the Democrats were united. Given the rules of the Senate, where question-and-answer time at a hearing is allocated among Senators, as opposed to witnesses, it meant that the Democrats would enjoy a 6-2 advantage during the proceedings. Cruz had obviously failed to garner the support of his subcommittee. While he could chair the hearing as a personal prerogative, he would not be able to control the questioning, nor would he be able to count on the intercession of Republican Senators to back up witnesses, should they be browbeaten or ignored.
The layout of the witness table revealed serious shortcomings in [Cruz’s] subcommittee staff work as well. Alongside Steyn were Dr. John Christy, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville; Dr. Judith Curry, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology; Dr. William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Bracket Professor of Physics, Princeton University; and Dr. David Titley (Rear Admiral, USN (ret.)), Professor of Practice, Department of Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University, Director, Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk.
While Steyn and Professors Christy, Curry and Happer were Majority witnesses, called by the G.O.P. to raise questions about purported climate change data, Dr. Titley was a Minority witness, called by the Democrats. Given the attendance at the hearing, that meant for every two questions asked by two Republicans of four witnesses, six could be asked by Democrats of one witness.
The principle of most Senate hearings is that Democrats call on Minority witnesses. and Republicans call on Majority witnesses. So, some back-of-the-envelope arithmetic shows that before one word had been spoken, Dr. Tilley would have had 30 minutes during each round of questioning (6 Democratic Senators x 5 minutes) versus each of the others, who could be recognized for only 2.5 minutes each, if all were called upon equally (2 G.O.P. Senators x 5 minutes = 10 minutes / 4 witnesses = 2.5 minutes).
While subcommittee [Cruz] staff might not be able to command Senators to attend when the Chairman is unable to persuade them, staff could have arranged separate panels of Majority and Minority witnesses, so that Democrats would not have been able to dominate the questioning of Republican experts. In order to give a hearing to the complainants, Majority witnesses could have been scheduled first, then Minority witnesses on a second panel. It would have been fairer to the experts themselves–two of whom left the hearing room early after being alternately ignored and insulted by the Democrats: Dr. Christy, perhaps the world’s leading authority on satellite remote sensing of global temperatures related to climate change; and Dr. Curry, author of Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans.
In the end, unfortunately, the hearing resembled farcical scenes with Senator Dilworthy in Mark Twain’s satirical novel of Washington, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.
As someone who has testified before Congress in a similarly controversial debate, I would say based upon my experience that it is likely that poor staff work by the [obviously uninterested] Majority permitted subcommittee witnesses to be abused by the Minority and the hearings to become a circus.
For example, subcommittee staffers did not even manage to arrange for C-Span coverage of a hearing with a celebrity witness chaired by a Presidential candidate on one of the hottest topics in politics: [so-called] Global Climate Change. Likewise, there was no coverage in major media such as network news, The New York Times, or Washington Post.
Indeed, during the hearing it was Mark Steyn, rather than either Republican Senator, who came to the rescue of a damsel in distress, when Senator Markey insulted Professor Curry’s integrity as a scientist, then wouldn’t allow her to respond. Steyn demanded that the Senator allow her a right of reply, which resulted in an unusual colloquy, also captured in a YouTube video:
Only later, when Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) denied Steyn a right of reply, did Chairman Cruz recognize the witness himself:
Bottom line: While he deserves credit for raising important issues and inviting climate dissidents to present their concerns before the Senate, Chairman Cruz and his staff failed to properly manage the hearings to insure that expert witnesses were respected and their message communicated clearly to the public.
If Senator Cruz seriously wants to be elected President of the United States, he‘ll need to show he can do a better job of managing his own subcommittee.”
…………………………………..
Added: George W. Bush doesn’t get the credit he deserves for destroying the Republican Party and thus the two-party system:
......
…………………………………….
Added: Rush Limbaugh: Republican Establishment despises Republican voters: “All they gotta do is throw away their base. That’s Christmas morning for ’em.”…GOP would be happy to be the minority “even if it takes 15 years in the wilderness to rebuild a new base of people who don’t embarrass them.”
10/16/2013, “GOP Seeks to Rid Itself of the Tea Party,” Rush Limbaugh
“There will be a fast move in Republican circles to push “comprehensive immigration reform,” to go all-in now. I can’t tell you what the Republicans think they’re gonna achieve, except this: I really do believe that some of this is oriented toward driving the conservatives out of the party. I really think some of this is oriented toward the Republicans actually seeking to get rid of their conservative base.
Even if it takes 15 years in the wilderness to rebuild a new base of people who don’t embarrass them, of people who are of the right temperament. Maybe that’s what they’re willing to do. Maybe they’ve got commitments from their donors to keep ’em afloat if they just get rid of some of these wacko right-wing extremists. “We’ll just go all-in here. We’ll try to put together a new base of really responsible moderate, temperate, independent-type American voters.
“We’ll go out, we’ll expand our demographics, we’ll get a lot of Hispanics doing this, by throwing away the Tea Party, and we’ll get a lot of women voters coming back. We’ll throw away our base, and we’ll get the transgender and the lesbian, gay, bisexual groups....Pretty soon we’re gonna own the country.”
That is the way they’re thinking, and all they gotta do to bring all that off? All they gotta do is throw away their base. That’s Christmas morning for ’em.”
……………………………………
Comment: In 2016 neither political party reflected the views of the 63 million who voted for Trump. In 2020, we're back to normal: no party, no candidate, and no voice in "our democracy."
.............
............
No comments:
Post a Comment