Samantha Pierce

Apparently communicating with the people you were elected to represent is a "non-essential" government function. The following are the messages I got when went to email my senators. So not impressed. As of midnight on Tuesday, October 1, 2013, the federal government is no longer funded to operate. Due to this government shutdown, we are sorry to inform you that Senator Schumer's office will no longer be able to perform non-essential functions. Below, is a list of information on how the government shutdown will affect the services that Senator Schumer's office normally provides.   Will I be able to call or fax Senator Schumer's office? During the government shutdown, Senator Schumer's offices, both in Washington D.C. and across New York State will be unable to receive phone calls or faxes.   What will happen with the letter I sent to Senator Schumer? Mail delivery in the United States Senate has stopped. If you have sent Senator Schumer a letter prior ...

The Senate dealt a blow to ACORN Monday evening, voting to deny the Department of Housing and Urban Development from granting funds to the community organization. Sen. Mike Johanns’s (R-Neb.) amendment to the appropriations bill providing funding to the department passed in a bipartisan, 83-7 vote. It’s the latest in a series of recent setbacks for ACORN, which has come under increasing fire from conservative activists and lawmakers. Over the last several weeks, the organization has seen employees in Florida arrested for allegedly taking part in voter registration fraud and has watched as the Census Bureau decide to sever its ties with the group. And in an embarrassing turn of events, Acorn employees were caught on hidden camera divulging advice to actors portraying a prostitute and her pimp on how to file tax forms. Note that ACORN employees have been caught on tape doing this FOUR times now. The makers of these apes claim to have even more. But about those seven who voted against the...

All swine all flu all the time. I think most of the media coverage so far has been of the "if it bleeds it leads" variety but I did find a few things worth noting. For a bit of perspective on the potential pandemic consider, Well up until WWII and the development of antibiotics and mass vaccinations, our forbearers suffered through plague after plague of such scale that they make even AIDS look trivial by comparison. After discussing the yellow fever outbreak that devastated Memphis, Tennessee in the 1870s the blogger notes, So yeah, Swine flu can be fairly nasty, and yeah it can spread fast thanks to modern transportation, but our forbearers wouldn’t even have noticed it as an annoyance. We should all be grateful we live in an age when such a minor communicable disease causes us concern. A bit more perspective, Swine flu: nothing new As of this writing, 80 people in Mexico have succumbed to swine flu. By comparison, the CDC estimates that 36,000 people in the United States...

That's my senator y'all! In the words of Luke Skywalker, I care. Just one question though. Am I one of the "chattering classes" or am I one of the American people? Technorati Tags: schumer , stimulus , chattering classes , new york Generated By Technorati Tag Generator

Gas prices are going up and politicians are casting blame like people throw rice at weddings. Some silly folk are looking to the government to do something about the rising gas prices. The ugly truth is that, short of rationing or giving gasoline away for free, there's nothing the government can do to lower high gas prices now . Taxing the profits of oil companies (I presume that would be part of "get tough on big oil", note to self ask my good senator Charles Schumer how he intends to do that) will do nothing for us. As anyone who has spent about 5 minutes in a highschool economics class should be able to tell you, companies don't pay taxes. Their customers do. How do you suppose oil companies would recoup their losses if they were suddenly slapped with new taxes? Drilling in ANWR won't help either. It will be years before one drop of oil is squeezed out of the tundra. The same problem holds for building more refineries. By the time they're done (and by the t...