Eye on Congress

Rarely have I been more surprised about Rep. Adam Smith's mediocre record in Congress than when I learned that he was trying to cut the cost of living adjustment payments to the pensions of retired military veterans under the age of 62.  By the way, he's the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, believe it or not.  I had to verify a couple of stories before I could even believe all of this was true.  As a veteran myself, although not one who served long enough to get a pension, and therefore not affected by these shenanigans, I am dismayed and disappointed by Smith (D) and Rep. Paul Ryan's (R) attempts to balance budgets on the backs of veterans.  If I'm elected instead of Smith in the 9th CD this year, I will definitely support veterans' pensions in Congress as they have been established over the past several decades, including rightful cost of living increases...

Rep. Adam Smith Endorses a Card-Carrying Republican   People who don't ordinarily follow Newcastle, Washington politics aren't going to know this, pretty much, but Representative Adam Smith, Democrat from Washington state, actually endorsed a card-carrying Republican, John Drescher, for Newcastle City Council.  Drescher supported George W. Bush and John McCain, respectively, in two recent presidential elections (2004 & 2008).  Smith is the same rightist Democrat (the kind of Democrats also known as "Blue Dogs") who benefitted from the other curious election of 2004, though unwittingly. Smith's voting record is like a dream to America's far right wing, shown here as follows: Congressman Adam Smith has voted for the following (pretty much not in accordance with his district): the national defense authorization act proviso that ends Habeas Corpus (judicial review for persons who are jailed), even for Ame...

This is Not "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" by Any Stretch of the Imagination Despite a recent council campaign, I have plenty of energy to continue a different campaign for U.S. representative that will bring the people's constitutional rights to the forefront, among other matters.  The rightist Democrat, Adam Smith, will soon have to explain the stolen election of '04 (even as an unwitting beneficiary, he likely knows something), his votes for keeping the status quo of an overreaching, intrusive N.S.A. that is clamping down on the Bill of Rights instead of ensuring the checks and balances he has sworn an oath to do, his vote for doing away with habeas corpus (our right to judicial review if we are jailed) through the National Defense Authorization Act, his willingness to keep America in interventionist mode, his so-called free trade mantra that has kept America under the yoke of internationalist regimes and...

The 2004 stolen primary election, regarding the 9th District Congress race, that has never been discussed by the mainline media nor addressed by Rep. Adam Smith, is still waiting to come out into the broad open, and thus to stop Smith's steady progression of becoming yet another congressman-for-life in Washington, D.C.  The rightist Democrat was the beneficiary of the election that year as a result of him facing the wrong and misapplied challenger in the '04 general election.  I actually won the G.O.P. '04 primary, but the victory was snatched from me as a result of the incompetency of then Director Dean Logan and his King County Elections Dept., which never investigated their audit log problem properly or at all.  Public officials in various places all over Washington state are aware of the '04 primary malfeasance by the Elections Dept. (not properly attending to finding out what happened to missing au...

While campaigning across the 9th District, I, Mark Greene,  have been finding that the gap between the perception of our public officials and the reality of their actions is quite wide, such as there seems to be this persistent belief in the 9th that  Rep. Adam Smith is a liberal Democrat when, in fact, he is one of the most hawkish, globally interventionist-minded and conservative members of Congress, period.  Although, Congressional Democrats, generally, are more conservative than what most believe, and decisively to the  right of Eisenhower/Nixon-era Republicans, and pretty much like Reagan-era Republicans.  Most voters in the 9th don't realize that Smith voted to effectively dismantle the Glass-Steagall Act, the bank regulatory act from the 1930's that kept the banks from conducting reckless policies with the public's money.  As a result of Smith and the majority of his colleagues' votes (and Bill Clinton's signing of this de-regulato...

Congressman Adam Smith (D) stepped into the middle of the City of Newcastle council campaign, even though the candidate he endorsed, John Drescher, donated hundreds of dollars to the John McCain (R) presidential campaign, according to reliable reports.  Smith is obviously worried about Mark Greene's probable official entry into the 2014 U.S. Congress election, as Greene is the other candidate in the Newcastle council election.  Smith, probably realizes, along with former King County elections official, Dean Logan, and the current director, Sherril Huff, that the 2004 G.O.P. primary  for U.S. Representative (Washington, 9th District) was stolen from Mark Greene by an unknown miscreant or miscreants -- and that election officials were never able to get to the bottom of it, not that they tried very hard or at all (Huff, however, wasn't at King County in 2004) -- and thus the election has been shrouded in controversy ever since 2010 ...

While I am campaigning, several people tell me they are supporting Adam Smith for Congress no matter what.  However, when I ask them to name some accomplishment by Smith that helped to garner their support, I usually get frowns as if I was giving them some kind of hard test.  About the closest thing I've heard from someone to answer this question was that he's good on technology, but that was it, just a general vague sense that he is doing something right with technology -- perhaps giving the go-ahead for Uncle Sam to assist a country, with American nuclear energy technology, that has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as if that were "good."  Smith, as a de facto member of the Democratic Party's corporate "Blue Dog" wing in Congress, is part and parcel of the "This Town" (a new book by Mark Leibovich) crowd in Washington, D.C.  We recommend this book to anybody who wants ...