Eye on Congress

The so-called Congressional black caucus is one of the biggest frauds in America, as practically all of its members, with maybe a handful of exceptions, are corporate shills that do the bidding of corporations, interventionists and internationalists.  These are the same congresspersons that are some of the biggest promoters of globalism that takes away jobs and opportunities from citizens, and dramatically drives up housing costs for ordinary citizens.  But they're not worried, because their extravagant congressional salaries and perks, along with the incumbency election racket, protects them from such economic jolts as fierce competition for jobs from non-citizens and thousand dollar-a-month rents.  If every last one of them were defeated in the November election, the Americans that this caucus identifies with would be hard put to notice the difference. [Originally posted on "Commoner" under the ti...

For a president who once said the U.S. shouldn't get in dumb wars, it's insane for Obama to engage in saber rattling over the international controversy involving a motion picture company, although he does seem to have walked it back some according to recent news reports.  Why did the motion picture company make the particular stupid movie that started the controversy in the first place, thereby provoking a nation with nuclear weapons?  Why is Obama defending a company whose executives insulted him because of his race behind closed doors, and probably insults a host of other people of African descent?   It's not even clear who started the cyber attacks on this company, and besides, this motion picture company, that's not even an American company, should  have to stew in their own problems and messes, which appear to have been created by their own arrogance.  The government shouldn't get involved in this matter at all o...

Reliability:  Main campaign site for Mark Greene's 2014 run for Congress Commoner:  Progress, Tradition, Ecology Eye on Congress:  Rep. Adam Smith's Congressional Voting Record and Other Political News Party of Commons' Twitter site:  Notes about American Politics from "Commons's" Perspective Not affiliated w/"Commons," but interesting:  Vote Them Out 2014  

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 ...

The extent to which the neocons are concerned about a close Congressional race in the 9th District of Washington next year is shown by Rep. Adam Smith's increasingly numerous appearances on Mainstream TV -- and probably radio -- in the last year or so, particularly on the Obamaite MSNBC network. Smith was just on MSNBC last weekend making his case for a perpetual global interventionist doctrine which he, Bush II and Obama have helped to enshrine during their years in D.C. Recently, all-but-presidential-candidate for 2016, Governor Chris Christie (New Jersey), threw his lot firmly in with the Obama-Bush neocons as he criticized also semi-presidential-candidate, Senator Rand Paul (Kentucky), who has a wiser isolationist outlook on global affairs than any of the aforementioned politicians. Yet, everybody knows that terrorism has to be counteracted, there's no debate about that, but it's counteracted most effectively in a narrowly focused way, not some nebulous, semi-indisc...

Well, it's official:  Rep. Adam Smith is not the least bit concerned about the wishes of the majority of his 9th District constituents (Federal Way, Bellevue, Mercer Island, Newcastle, Renton, Kent, Tukwila, SeaTac and N.E. Tacoma, among others), or the 2014 Congressional election and candidate and challenger Mark Greene , as Smith voted against the Amendment by Rep. Justin Amash (R/Michigan) to rein in part of the overreaching, totalitarian-like NSA surveillance programs.  Unfortunately, the amendment failed by a fairly close margin, 217 - 205, as Smith voted with the "Big Brother 217" in Congress [several Congresspersons did not vote on the Amendment for one reason or another, including Rep. Herrera-Beutler (R) from Washington State].  Hastings (R), Reichert (R), Larsen (D), Kilmer (D) and Heck (D) from the Washington delegation joined Smith in voting down the Amash Amendment.  As you can ...

As we promised in our previous post, Commoner researched Rep. Adam Smith's (WA - 9th District) votes on the various so-called Patriot Acts, and as we suspected, he is a reliable lackey for overbearing government intrusion and overreach, the sort of surveillance that author George Orwell warned about in his book about the future of fascism, "1984."  Some political commentators, that are more well versed about the technical aspects of the Obama govt.'s dragnet and spying on virtually all American citizens than we are, have said that the current apparatus that is in place now makes Orwell's imaginations look almost tame, believe it or not.  Orwell, after all, is the author who first came up with the term Big Brother through his "1984" best-seller.  Also, lest we forget, Smith is one of Obama's biggest supporters.  Smith did manage to vote right in '05, not coincidentally the year following the last time that Ma...

This is a link to a Foreign Policy site article by Will Inboden, which we don't agree with per se, but it does show some of the foreign policy hypocrisy of Adam Smith and his mentor, President Barack Obama, so it's worth reading even though the Bush/Cheney govt. doesn't deserve even a hint of praise that Inboden seems to give them.  Metaphorically, "a pox on 'em all," meaning the just mentioned politicians.  Mark Greene is on record (Alaska Daily News, Sept., 2002 editions) for opposing the Iraq War Resolution.  Smith voted for the resolution.  Obama implied that he would have voted against it had he been in Congress in '02 -- if you believe that, we have some real estate in Florida to sell you.

We are temporarily changing the name of this blog to "Eye on Congress"  for the duration of the 2014 Congressional campaign in the 9th District of Washington, but the preceding title, "South King County Commons"   will remain as a sub-title.  We're making this change to focus on the neoconservative, global interventionist congressman, Smith, his votes in Congress, and comments in the media, many of which are out-of-sync with the district. We welcome any information about Smith's record in Congress from readers in the comments section, and we would appreciate that you note any facts about his record/votes with at least one source. Of course, the Party of Commons, which is supporting challenger Mark Greene (Commons/G.O.P.) in the 9th District, will be doing research and will write extensively about the record of Smith and his ongoing illiberal charade that has not fooled us.  Please, see the following links to po...

What does Rep. Adam Smith (WA - 9th District)  know about this spying-on-America Leviathan run by our own government?   It has been reported that the leaders of major committees in Congress have special access to the anti-4th Amendment intelligence dragnet that has been long suspected by some observers of the government, including this blog, but now is out in the open thanks to whistleblower,  Ed Snowden.   Smith is the ranking Democratic Party member on the Armed Services Committee, so he likely had/has better than average access to these government secrets that alledgedly are only for security purposes, but any perceptive person knows is also used to keep track of, among others, law-abiding political outliers or dissidents, e.g., "Occupy Wall Street" or the peaceniks in Minneapolis that the F.B.I. raided a couple of years ago.  Since "Prism" is so electronically sophisticated, it would be interesting to know if...

Mark Greene had previously said he would not run for King County Council, Position No. 9, if he could not raise $6,395.00 by May 13th, but now has dropped that number to just $3,395.00.   Greene's probable opponents in District 9 are incumbent Reagan Dunn and Shari Song.   Greene will make a decision on May 12th, 2013 on whether to run or not. Update:  this blog has changed its name from Southern Northwest Commons to South King County Commons. [updated on 4/30/2013]

The Seattle Medium, which purports to be the paper of Seattle's "African-American" (a term never used by the Party of Commons; see this link on "Ancestry and Politics") community, has never once invited me to a boardroom for an interview, or even called me on the telephone, during my eight years in politics in Washington, and yet they pronounce endorsements of candidates for various races without so much as a one sentence explanation for their choices.  When I ran for King County Council in 2009, they chose Republican Reagan Dunn instead of me and another candidate, but in this year's endorsements for state attorney general they said, in so many words, that Dunn showed no interest in the community that they mostly address (ditto for Dunn's main rival according to the Medium).  Now, in another of their endorsements this year, they are endorsing Brad Owen for Lt. Governor (they can't even spell his name correctly) without an iota of a reas...

Anybody who reads the Party of Commons' blogs knows that we're not big fans of the Barack Obama administration, so now that we have that qualifier out of the way, the propaganda about the so-called "Fast and Furious" case that the Republicans and FOX News are trying to make a scandal out of is little more than ridiculous.  They're saying that Attorney General Eric Holder was trying to use the "Fast and Furious" operation as some kind of grand scheme to implement gun control, presumably of the sort that was in place during the Clinton administration, as if this nation didn't need some common sense checks-and-balances on certain types of guns and the current gun policy.  Of course, we don't think that the Republicans really believe any of this, so we believe this is real propaganda.  Moreover, there are two problems with trying to create an election year scandal out of this case:  Number 1:  going by their record, the Obama ...

Since we last wrote, the one major colossus party, i.e., Democrats & Republicans, played musical chairs again for control of the national House of Representatives, with the Republican side now in predominance and officially taking control in early January, 2011. Interestingly, the American people chose the side that would most severely harm the interests of the masses, the Republicans, with a good number of their members more than willing to dismantle the long established New Deal & Great Society programs, namely, social security, unemployment insurance compensation, medicare, educational aid for college students, food support and what's left of federal support for impoverished dependent children (effectively demolished during Clinton's time except for grants to be administered by the states, thus poor children were left to the mercy of the various states), among others. Amazingly, in this New Gilded Age, where the top 1% in assets and income control a quarter of th...