It was great meeting new people and seeing friends at Shane Hardin's fundraiser last night. Fact checker for Star Telegram says Paul Ryan and other GOP speakers lied their butts off this week. One of the big lies was when Paul Ryan said that Pres. Obama funneled 716 billion dollars out of Medicare to pay for Affordable Health Care Act. Outright lie! He also said the President did nothing with the recommendations of the super committee charged with tasked with coming up with spending cuts. Ryan was on the committee and kept the reforms from being passed by voting against it. Let's hope my fellow Dems can be more honest when they address the nation next week.

Rep Todd Akin of Missouri has made some controversial statements about rape. Where is Kay Granger? Shouldn't she be letting everyone know her feelings on Akin's remarks about "legitimate"rape? He also said women can't get pregnant from rape because their bodies have a biological mechanism that prevents it. This man is an neanderthal and needs to be called out by every member of the House of Representatives, including, and especially, Kay Granger.

Kay Granger Sells Fort Worth Down the River, the Trinity River That Is!

Old news? Maybe, but this is an election year and the people of Fort Worth need to be reminded that seven term Congresswoman Kay Granger, the Queen of Pork, spearheaded a project to turn the birth place of the city of Fort Worth into a polluted pond.

Fort Worth was born on the confluence of the West Fork and the Clear Fork of the Trinity River on June 6, 1849. Today the forces of the private sector and government have united to create the Trinity River Vision, a plan to develop 88 miles of the Trinity River and change its course, literally, by redirecting river water via a downtown channel.  The cost of the Central City part of the project is estimated at almost 600 million dollars, much of that billed to the Army Corps of Engineers as flood control. The justification given is the city’s growth since 1965, and a lack of new flood control measures since then.

Fort Worth voters have never voted for this major construction project, and as a matter of fact, have consistently voted against development along the Trinity River throughout the 20^th century.  So far voters have not been asked to pay for these projects. Apparently, the federal government has footed most of the bill, so indirectly, we are all paying for this great boon to the private sector. What interest a taxpayer in Tennessee has in the development of recreational areas along the Trinity eludes me, probably about as much interest as I have in paying for a bridge to nowhere in Alaska. Will we have 3 bridges to nowhere at a cost of 22 million dollars if the federal funds dry up? The private sector is supposed to pay half the costs. So far it is nowhere close to being an equally funded venture, the government paying most of the costs so far. Kay Granger is proud of her pork.

The issue of eminent domain once again rears its ugly head as this non- governmental agency conducts land grabs without adequately compensating the grabees. Headed by JD Granger, son of Pork Queen Kay, he dispenses funds as he sees fit, sometimes without competitive bidding such as the case where chef Tim Love was awarded a contract for a riverbank restaurant called the Woodshed Smokehouse.  According to the TRVA website, “…. massive outreach efforts are targeting North Texas vendors to ensure they have the best shot at winning contracts.” No massive outreach effort was made to open this contract to other restaurants owners or entrepreneurs.

The Trinity River Vision Authority was established as a private corporation by the Tarrant Regional Water District to manage the projects and distribute funds. By creating a private corporation to do this instead of using existing governmental organizations, JD Granger, as Kay’s son, could legally, if not ethically, be hired to manage this project.

The confluence of the West and Clear Forks of the Trinity River should have been declared historical landmark and developed appropriately, not as a recreational area where people can water ski on a polluted pond.

Representative Kay Granger has once again shown her disdain for the middle class. House Republicans evidently passed a tax code that does not contain provisions for mortgage or charitable deductions. When the Democrats tried to put them in, the motion was defeated by the Republicans, Kay Granger voting with the majority. Please help me unseat Granger on Nov 6 by contributing to my campaign. You can contribute by going towww.daverobinsonforcongress.org

Kay has done it again. She voted with the rest of the Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act for the 31st time. I wonder if she has noticed that the insurance companies are basically quiet about the new health care law, probably because they stand to make more money when all provisions go into effect. I mention this only because she is an insurance broker herself. Rep. Granger simply does not care about people like my self employed brother who has a pre existing condition and cannot get health care under current laws and policies. But that's ok with Kay; she has that great government health care that she is so much against for the rest of us.

I often wonder how the mind of an ideologue works, especially since I used to be one. What was I thinking? I look now at the state of health care in this country and I see what the Affordable Care Act is doing for Americans. Yes, it does involve a government-private partnership, what with the exchanges and the expansion of Medicaid, but it doesn't even come close to establishing a single payer system which could reasonably be called socialized medicine, which, by the way, works very well in most developed countries today. Nevertheless, we have a gov't-private system now being implemented which I think we need to give a chance to work. For those already with health insurance, nothing changes except that premiums should go down because of more shared risk as more people become insured. What's the down side? The mandate? There's no enforcement provision for those who don't purchase insurance. There's a fine, but no one to make a scofflaw pay. No down side. Right wing ideologues and Obama haters are making stuff up or mislabeling the ACA as socialism mainly to defeat President Obama in November. We must not let that happen. Please vote straight ticket Democrat in November. We need the Presidency and at least one branch of Congress to keep our improving health care system from being ruined by Republican ideologues who care more about their own rigid views than what is good for the people of this country. They have shown that vote after vote after vote in the US House of Representatives. Kay Granger may not be an ideologue, but she is voting in lock step with them. She is not the same person that she was when she was mayor of Fort Worth.

Good Grief, Charlie Brown.  Kay Granger has shown how she feels about the "establish justice" clause  of the Preamble to the US Constitution. She voted for the Congressional contempt citation for Attorney General Holder, but voted against calling witness from the Bush Administration's Justice Department, the folks who started the Fast And Furious Program in the first place, but neglected to inform the incoming O'bama Administration of its implementation. Way to go Kay. Wish I had the money to inform all of your constituents of your definition of Justice. I'd like to know just what documents the Republicans have requested that they haven't received. And what about the dead agent's family? What else do they need to know to get closure? Is what the Republicans are requesting relevant to the family's situation. Or is this just more political posturing by the Republicans in their bid to defeat President Obama?