More CPC Corruption

Vic Toews broke Manitboa election laws. He hasn't resigned or been fired though, even though the CPC is always calling for others to resign. Toews is the federal CPC justice critic, and has admitted that he overspent in the 1999 Manitoba election.

Since the CPC holds everybody else responsible for the things they do, shouldn't they do something about having a justice critic who broke the law? The -- certainly think so.[/url]

Small potatoes, Rev, compared to the daily misspending & corruption from the Liberals. Old potatoes too (1999)? Also did not cost the taxpayer one red cent, and didn't work (he still lost). But I'd be willing to sit him out if the Liberals would uphold the same high standard. Might be an empty House of Commons though.

Best part of the story - it seems as though the judge hearing the case was appointed by Toews himself!!!

It's not really old, MMMike...I'm the one who always wants the court cases etc settled first, remember? It took this long to be settled.

It's not small potatoes either. The man broke election law and the provincial Conservative Party that he was a part of was also caught running a phoney left-leaning candidate in order to try split the native vote in a close riding. There are rumours of several other transgression both provincially and federally. There is a pattern of evasion of election law and dirty tricks forming up within the Manitoba PCs and the federal Conservatives.

Most importantly though, it's extremely hypocritical. The CPC routinely demands that people resign for even the slightest appearance of corruption. Toews is there front and centre tossing mud around screaming for others to resign before there is any solid evidence or finding of guilt. So why the hell isn't he resigning?

bump

Rev

You are confusing the issue with logic. You're supposed to run around and scream and shout...

I could do that, Juan, but it takes too much energy.

How 'bout a pop quiz for the Conservatives here.

When Stockwell Day was part of the Alberta government, he went after a lawyer for taking on the case of a pedophile. Day had to court for his action, and lost. He got a slap on the wrist. Who paid for Stockwell Day's lawyers?

Here's a bit of CPC corruption that's worth millions. After the committee looking into the record profits that Cargill and Tyson achieved during the BSE crisis found the meat packers in contempt of parliament for refusing to open their books, the CPC refused to levy fines against the meat packers.

Why did the CPC do that? Look at the contributions Cargill has made to them over the years. Look at the contributions Cargill and Tyson have made to the Alberta PC party.

I think Toews should be booted out of the party, he is a very bad candidate. The reason why Harper won't win is because he is afraid to appoint candidates -- something which is neccesary to win. My riding would elect a Conservative with a large majority, but because their candidate is poor, it will go Liberal again. Harper needs to step in in situations like this and appoint some candidates, like Martin did in the last election.

Actually, the reason Harper won't win is that his policies scare the **** out of people. By denying and ignoring the corruption in the CPC though, he weakens the role of the opposition party so that change isn't possible.

The reason Harper won't win is that his haircut scares the **** out of people is more like it. The average 'man on the street' doesn't know what the policies are of the Conservatives (or any other party for that matter). All he knows is what the left-leaning media tell him. :P

Where's the NO option?!?!

Its called a biased poll, something left-wingers jump in glee when they hear the results of.

As opposed to the push polls pioneered by the Republicans and favoured by the CPC? Look at the answers here. Do you think the poll was meant to be taken seriously? Are Conservatives so humourless and self-absorbed that they can't even tell when they are being ridiculed?

Well Rev, it's kind of hard to look at the answers. All I see are three options to vote on and none of them are NO.

Stop makin' fun of us or I'm telling!

No, the reason that Harper won't win is that one or more of his MPs will make a stupid statement about abortions. The other parties will then point out the hypocrisy of the Conservative non-position. More of his MPs will then say something stupid about the environment. The other parties will then go after the CPC for their regressive envronmental policies. Another Conservative, likely Ralph Klein, will then attack health care, and the other parties will then point out that the Conservatives want to privatise health care. Eventually the spectre of religion will come up and, since this is not the US, the CPC will get whipped like a cheap hound on that too.

Everything that the other parties go after the Conservatives on will be based on statements of very recognisable Conservatives, including Stephen Harper. The Conservatives will try to deny what's said about them, but because it will be backed by quotes by Conservatives, it will look like they have a hidden agenda. The Conservatives will then blame the press and Canadians, who will once again vote Liberal.

In other words, the problem is with CPC policy and the constant dishonest attempts to hide what that policy is.

There is no left-leaning press in Canada, MMMike. Our press is owned and controlled by very conservative special interests. They still have to report the news though, and the news is that the Conservatives have policies that Canadians don't like.

Do you even know who Toews is, James?

From the examples that you mentioned, it appears the problem is more with actual diversity of opinion within the party (not a bad thing) or lack of party discipline (again, not a bad thing). If we're talking elected politicians, keep in mind these people have been democratically elected by the people of the riding, and are accountable to the same. It is the left-wing media that spin every little comment out of proportion and out of context. All the while missing the more important stories about policy and governance.

Just as an example of what I mean, take last years federal election. Klein makes some noise about healthcare reform.... Liberals spin and spin, and all of a sudden his comments become the Conservatives "hidden agenda". In the meantime, there is no discussion about the fact that almost every country in the world has some degree of private healthcare delivery... no discussion about the fact that waiting lists are among the longest in the world... no discussion about the fact that the spiralling cost of heathcare is completely unsustainable.

Well that study by the Fraser Institute that came out to day is bs. They phoned specialists and asked how long the wait is for non urgent care and averages 18 weeks. whoopi. You may be inconveinced oh well.

But if you are urgent you get in pretty well right away and if real serious you are admitted to hospital and looked after.

If it was as bad as the Neocon Fraser Institute claims there would be a hell of a lot of dead bodies lying around.

The opposition parties were able to bring up things that Harper had said that showed him to be on Klein's side. There were also a bevy of quotes from other high-ranking Conservatives. The appearance of a hidden agenda is because there is a hidden agenda. It is easily exposed by Harper's continual flip-flopping and the lack of party discipline.

We have a party system in Canada, MMMike. Most Canadians base their votes on the party and the party leadership, not on their individual candidate. That's because an individual candidate cannot accomplish much in our current system.

The Conservatives, while they like to pretend they don't have party discipline, clearly do. In the past year we've heard about Harper wanting to vet every speech, how he tried to keep Stronach under his oily little thumb, how he tried to micro-manage the policy convention, and on and on.

The lack of party discipline isn't for a lack of trying, it's because Harper is an incompetent manager of people.

The same can be said for diversity of opinion within the party. Why do you think Stronach left? Surely you don't believe that she was bought or that she'd always been a Liberal plant? You've heard the stories of how she was treated. It's surprising she stuck around as long as she did. Same with Brisson...his opinions weren't welcome, so he left. The intolerance within the party is why Clark will have nothing to do with it.

The CPC is very much a party of fundamentalist views, intolerance, corporate cronyism, and toadyism towards the Bush regime. If your views differ from that, you are not welcome in the party.

Yeah, who really cares if thousands of people suffer in pain for months and months for a hip replacements. Just shut the **** up and suffer. Don't forget to pay your taxes like a good little shmuck.

Odd, my wife found out that she needed an operation last Thursday. It is not urgent, but she goes in on November 3. She found out about the operations because a procedure she went in for last week was not successful. That procedure had a wait time of a month, but much of that had to do with it being a trial study and requiring extra appointments to collect data for the study.

Where are these extreme wait times we keep hearing about?

Right here Rev. Read it carefully. Patients in Canada have actually actually died as a result of long waits to have heart surgery. It is unacceptable. Why can't they follow the US appoach and eliminate this needless waiting. There is no excuse for this considering the high taxes Canadians pay.

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Health Care Models Compared:
Canada vs. U.S.

Print-friendly Page By Elena Cherney
First Published in The Wall St Journal, Nov 12, 2003

Editors' Note: This thorough report provides a good overview of the relative merits and faults of the U.S. system vs. Canda's single-payer universal health care.
Nurse Donna Riley hurried through the drab halls of St. Michael's Hospital to deliver the bad news.

Eduard Krause, a 71-year-old retired mechanic, had been waiting more than six weeks for heart-bypass surgery. After fasting for 18 hours, he was lying on a gurney, ready to be rolled into the operating room. Now he would have to wait a bit longer: An emergency patient had been rushed into surgery, bumping him from the day's schedule.

"The lady who is having her operation is 34 years old," explained Ms. Riley. "They found a big tumor on her heart." Mr. Krause replied: "I can understand all that. But if I go home, I'm afraid I might not come back."

In Canada's public-health system, which promises free, equal-access care to all citizens, medical resources are explicitly rationed. For the country as a whole, that works -- Canada spends far less on health care, yet the health outcomes of its citizens are generally as good as those in the U.S.

But the trade-offs are steep: Canadian hospitals are slower to adopt the latest technology, meaning patients have more limited access to cutting-edge medical equipment. There are fewer specialists for patients to see.

The riskiest trade-off of all is troublingly long waits. Once patients see a family doctor and get a referral for specialist care, it can take weeks or even months to get an appointment. In some parts of the country, patients waiting for admission to a hospital sometimes find themselves waiting for hours and even days on gurneys in the corridor, and receiving treatment there.

Waiting is the giant flaw in many national health-care plans. A study this year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found waiting times for elective surgery are a "significant health-policy concern" in about half of the group's 30 members, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden, Canada, Italy, Denmark and Spain. Waiting times weren't a problem in the U.S., the group said.

In Canada, the long waits stirred a public outcry and a government inquiry when a 63-year-old heart patient at St. Michael's died in 1989 after his surgery had been canceled 11 times. While the inquiry concluded the death wasn't caused by the delays, it highlighted the long waiting lists and called for better management of patients in the line.

To tackle this crucial problem, Canada is turning to Donna Riley and others like her. The 51-year-old nurse is one of Ontario's "cardiac-care coordinators." Her job: to make sure waiting doesn't kill patients.

Hospitals across Canada struggling with their own waiting-list woes are now trying to follow Ontario's model. The experience in Ontario, the largest of Canada's 10 provinces, spotlights one of the essential problems with health-care rationing and a possible solution.

In Canada, one way hospitals restrain costs is by trying to always run at capacity. It's more efficient to run a hospital that way, just as it's more efficient to fly an airplane with every seat full. But running at capacity means lines always form. Waits for certain nonemergency surgeries in Canada can be up to two years. In parts of the country, there are long lines for such things as magnetic resonance imaging or children's mental-health services.

Health-care spending accounts for 10% of Canada's gross domestic product, while in the U.S., it consumes about 14%. Canadian patients can choose their own doctors, and they never see a bill for their care. Canadian physicians, who are paid by the government, generally earn much less than their U.S. counterparts.

Despite Canada's lower health-care spending, patient outcomes in a number of areas, including cancer and heart disease, are similar. Overall, life expectancy in Canada is 79.4 years, compared with 76.8 years in the U.S., the OECD says.

Many factors affect longevity, of course. Nearly one-third of Americans are obese, for instance, compared with 15% of Canadians. And since millions of Americans are uninsured, many may not get access to the care they need.

Some U.S. experts who have studied the Canadian system say that waiting lists are a sign that the health-care system isn't wasting money on unnecessary procedures, equipment or personnel. "If you don't wait in a medical system, there's a problem," says Ted Marmor, a health-policy expert at Yale University. The question, Prof. Marmor says, "is whether people are waiting inappropriately."

In Ontario, the cardiac-care network works to strike this balance. The network consists of 17 hospitals, and 50 surgeons who share heart-patient cases. There are government guidelines to follow: At St. Michael's, six scheduled surgeries are allowed each day. Ms. Riley's challenge is to juggle the elective and the urgent cases so that all six operating-room slots are filled every day -- and no one is left waiting longer than the recommended length of time.

To do that, she fields calls about urgent cases from community hospitals that don't do heart surgery and need to transfer patients. Using test results received by e-mail or fax, she fast-tracks urgent cases to the attention of St. Michael's on-call surgeon, who decides who will be treated that day. On evenings and weekends, Ms. Riley's bridge games and outings to her nephew's sporting events are often interrupted by pages from patients waiting for surgery whose pain is suddenly worse.

"Donna's the traffic cop in the middle of a busy intersection," says Dr. William Sibbald, a Toronto expert in critical care and one of the authors of the government report that led to the creation of the cardiac-care network.

Before the network was created there wasn't much coordination between Ontario's hospitals and doctors. Surgeons managed their own list of patients, and waiting times varied greatly from hospital to hospital.

With Ms. Riley and her fellow coordinators working to distribute the patient load, the mortality rate for those on the network's waiting list has been reduced to about 0.39%, from as high as 0.74% in the mid-1990s.

Waiting times, which have been on a downward trend in recent years, increased slightly in the first part of 2003, partly because the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak earlier this year forced the cancellation of hundreds of lab tests and elective surgeries.

Eduard Krause, a 71-year-old, walks a mile before breakfast most mornings.

The SARS episode showed Canada's system lacks "surge capacity," according to a report by David Naylor, the dean of the University of Toronto's medical school. With hospitals already full, handling a large number of patients who required isolation overwhelmed the system. At least some of the early infections spread because patients shared emergency-room observation areas separated only by a curtain.

To ensure standardized waiting times for heart patients in Ontario, surgeons assign every patient a score of between one and seven, depending on the severity of their symptoms. The scoring system was devised by heart surgeons and cardiologists. Patients are then separated into four categories: emergency, urgent, semiurgent and elective.

For example, a patient who is rated a 2 should wait no more than 48 hours, according to network guidelines, while a person rated a 3.5 could wait as long as 14 days. A score of between 5 and 7 indicates an elective patient for whom a wait of as long as 120 days is considered safe. Hospitals' waiting times, and the percentage of patients treated within the recommended time frames, are posted on the network's Web site.

"Urgent people get treatment in a timely fashion," says Dr. Lee Errett, chief of cardiac surgery at St. Michael's. Today, most urgent and semiurgent heart patients are treated within two weeks. Non-urgent patients wait an average of 49 days for surgery.

Ms. Riley decided at age 12 that nursing was her calling, after she helped care for a uncle dying of cancer at her family's farm on Prince Edward Island. After working as a cardiac nurse, she rose to the position of head nurse on the surgical ward. By the late 1980s, the Ontario government tightened spending, forcing hospitals to cut beds. Heart patients found themselves waiting up to a year for surgery. "There was no mechanism in place" to triage patients or share them between surgeons or hospitals, says Ms. Riley. "This always bothered me."

These days, Ms. Riley is usually calling the hospital on her cellphone by the time she backs her Honda out of her driveway in the morning. Her first call is often to the intensive-care unit. She needs to know how many patients are well enough to be moved to regular hospital beds. "The ICU is the bottleneck," she says.

Intensive-care beds are the most expensive and scarce in the city. At St. Michael's, 13 ICU beds are reserved for cardiac-surgery patients. When St. Michael's gets hit with several cardiac emergencies, Ms. Riley, in her white gown and well-worn Birkenstock sandals, heads to other floors in search of the beds she needs. "Donna won't sleep well if we cancel a cardiac surgery," says St. Michael's cardiac program director Ella Ferris.

During the day, she reviews her three-ring binder of elective cases, penciling in notes about patients who call to complain about increased pain or scheduling concerns, such as a wedding, vacation or work commitment.

On the spring day Mr. Krause was scheduled to have his long-awaited bypass, Ms. Riley got a call about another patient -- a woman with a benign tumor on her heart that could cause a stroke. To fit her in, Ms. Riley needed to cancel another patient. The only one she could cancel was Mr. Krause, because he was rated the least urgent of the six scheduled surgeries for that day.

While Mr. Krause had been waiting six weeks for his date in the operating room, he had also waited several additional weeks before that for an angiogram and a stress test. "They are always booked," he said. Informed of the last-minute delay, Mr. Krause told Ms. Riley his chest pains had grown worse lately -- to the point where he had almost called an ambulance the night before. "The pain is constant," he said.

Mr. Krause was also worrying about his ailing wife and mother-in-law at home. His wife had broken her leg and was on crutches. His 91-year-old mother-in-law, who has Alzheimer's disease, lives with the couple. Mr. Krause had recruited his brother and sister-in-law to help out while he was in the hospital. A delay would force the whole family to make another set of arrangements.

In pushing for Mr. Krause's admission and surgery, Ms. Riley considered his family situation in addition to his pain. He got the operation the next day.

"She's kind of the patient advocate," says her boss Dr. Errett. "She's always the voice of the underdog." Yet he says the two don't always agree on who should be treated first. "I override her sometimes," he says.

Concern for patients sometimes leads Ms. Riley to an odd role reversal: She finds herself hounding patients who are hesitant to schedule surgery. One patient, who operated a swimming-pool business, refused to be scheduled for his bypass "because of pool season. He was taking a risk by waiting," says Ms. Riley. She called him every few days to check on him. He had his surgery after pool season and did fine.

The hospitals in the cardiac-care network keep a database of patient outcomes to help pinpoint those at highest risk from waiting. A recent analysis of the data showed a disproportionate number of deaths were occurring in patients with a condition called aortic stenosis. Because of the finding, patients with the condition are now seen more quickly. The system still leaves surgeons grappling with questions about how to ration finite resources. On one of the busiest days in recent months, an emergency patient was transferred to St. Michael's with a ruptured valve condition. The survival rate for the procedure, according to the network's data, is just 10% to 20%. Indeed, the man died a few days after his six-hour surgery.

The procedure is frustrating, says Dr. Errett, because it claims many resources and so seldom succeeds. "I've met with our group and said, 'Maybe we shouldn't do them at all,' " he says. In the end, the doctors decided to continue doing the procedures.

Some patients, such as Mr. Krause, say that waiting isn't too bad a price to pay for their free medical treatment. Now recovered from his May surgery, he takes a mile-long walk before breakfast most mornings. "The care, I think, was pretty excellent," he says.

Comparing Health Care

Canada
Who Pays: The government provides coverage for all medically necessary treatments -- 70% of the nation's health-care expenditures. Private insurance is available for prescription drugs, dental, vision, psychotherapy, fertility treatments and private hospital rooms.

Hospitals: Government-funded.

Doctors: Bill the government according to rates set by the provinces.

Prescription drugs: Hospitals pay for drugs they dispense. For other drugs, Canadians pay out of pocket or through private insurance. Some provinces offer public drug-insurance plans. The government regulates prices of brand-name drugs, so prices are much lower than in the U.S.

Advantages: Everyone is guaranteed access to care. Patients can seek services of any specialist.

Disadvantages: Top specialists and many family doctors have long waiting lists.


United States
Who Pays: Individuals are generally responsible for costs, either out of pocket or through insurance. Many have employer-paid or subsidized programs. The very poor are covered by the government's Medicaid program, and seniors and the disabled are covered largely by the government's Medicare program.

Hospitals: Generally compensated by a mix of insurance and patient payments, charitable contributions, government funds and investment income. Some uninsured patients are billed by hospitals.

Doctors: Set their own fees. Many accept public and private patient insurance and receive amounts set by insurers.

Prescription drugs: Drugs dispensed by hospitals are usually included in the cost of treatment. For other drugs, insured patients generally make a co-payment, with insurers covering the rest. Uninsured patients can face extremely high drug costs.

Medicare pays for drugs only during hospital stays.

Advantages: Patients with good coverage get access to one of the world's best medical systems, often at a relatively low cost.

Disadvantages: For the growing number of uninsured, health care can prove enormously costly and difficult to obtain.

How many people have died in the US because they cannot afford care? How many more have been driven into bankruptcy? you can deny it, James. You can, without permission to infringe on their copyright, publish studies commissioned by those who make huge profits from the suffering of American people.

What you cannot do is refute the fact that you have the most expensive health care on the planet, so expensive that many Americans cannot afford it. You have a shorter life expectancy and a higher infant mortality rate. You keep saying you are pro-life, but the fact is that you are pro-greed and don't mind dead babies as long as you don't have to pay for them.

Rev, I know for a fact that they have county hospitals for those who cannot afford health care. We don't let our poor go without health care.

From the link above ...

United States
Who Pays: Individuals are generally responsible for costs, either out of pocket or through insurance. Many have employer-paid or subsidized programs. The very poor are covered by the government's Medicaid program, and seniors and the disabled are covered largely by the government's Medicare program.

Also, we have the most expensive health care on the planet? I don't know about that Rev. In comparing my tax savings between here and Canada and the amount that it costs me to insure my family every year, it in no way equals my tax savings. It is way way less.

So considering Canadians are paying more taxes for their healthcare, what is the excuse for having long waits and health patients dieing while on a waiting list. It is unacceptable. Folks should either demand their tax money back or they should fix the health system.

Nascar you are a liar.

By Jonathan Weisman
the washington post

Updated: 12:00 a.m. ET Oct. 17, 2005
House Republican leaders have moved from balking at big cuts in Medicaid and other programs to embracing them, driven by pent-up anger from fiscal conservatives concerned about runaway spending and the leadership's own weakening hold on power.

Beginning this week, the House GOP lawmakers will take steps to cut as much as $50 billion from the fiscal 2006 budget for health care for the poor, food stamps and farm supports, as well as considering across-the-board cuts in other programs. Only last month, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and other GOP leaders quashed demands within their party for budget cuts to pay for the soaring cost of hurricane relief.

DeLay told a packed room of reporters on Sept. 13 that 11 years of Republican rule had already pared down the federal budget "pretty good." If lawmakers had suggestions for cuts, DeLay said he would listen, but he was not offering anything up.

But faced with a revolt among many conservatives sharply critical of him for resisting spending cuts, DeLay three weeks later told a closed meeting of the House Republican Conference, "I failed you," according to a number of House members and GOP aides. Then, in a nod to the most hard-core conservatives, DeLay volunteered, "You guys filled a void in the leadership."

Fiscal conservatives gain upper hand
The abrupt shift reflects a changed political dynamic in the House in which a faction of fiscal conservatives -- known as the Republican Study Committee, or RSC -- has gained the upper hand because of DeLay's criminal indictment in Texas, widespread criticism of the Republicans' handling of Hurricane Katrina, and uncertainty over the future of the leadership, according to lawmakers and aides.

Now, cutting the budget -- which only months ago seemed far from possible -- is at the center of the agenda in the House. "No one wants to have an argument with friends, but that argument facilitated the debate that led to the package [of cuts] that [House Speaker J. Dennis] Hastert has now put out there," said Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), chairman of the RSC and a leading proponent of cuts to offset new government spending.

But Republicans could be taking a big risk by cutting Medicaid programs while their standing in the polls has plummeted and Democrats gear up for a fight. "We have seen a sea change in the budget policies of House Republicans," said Thomas S. Kahn, the Democratic staff director of the House Budget Committee. "Clearly, the RSC's influence over their budget policies is in the ascendancy."

The RSC launched a public crusade for spending cuts last month, with its leaders using news conferences, television appearances and media interviews to all but accuse the GOP leadership of profligacy. House leaders at first tried to crush the RSC, or at least push its efforts back behind closed doors.

DeLay indictment shifts balance
But a Texas grand jury's Sept. 28 indictment of DeLay changed the balance of power, forcing the leadership to shore up its conservative base and raising the prospect of a new leadership election that would further undermine GOP unity entering an uncertain election season.

DeLay may continue to exercise power informally, as he did Oct. 7 in working the floor to help narrowly pass an energy bill. But DeLay and his leadership allies are mindful that the rank and file could demand new elections to permanently fill the majority leader's post, temporarily being filled by Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), if members grow impatient with GOP policies.

"Our real leverage has come from the fear that DeLay will not have a post to come back to," said Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz), another RSC leader. "They are deathly afraid of a leadership election in January."

A revolt has been stirring within the House GOP ranks for months. Fiscal conservatives had accepted an expanded federal role in education enshrined in President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, had lost a fight to block the Medicare prescription drug benefit -- the largest entitlement expansion since Lyndon Johnson was president -- and had even embraced the mammoth transportation law that passed this summer with a record-shattering number of pork-barrel projects.

Backlash by fiscal gadflies
Since Bush came to office, federal spending had grown by a third, from $1.86 trillion to $2.47 trillion, while record budget surpluses turned to record deficits. Conservative activists, led by talk show hosts and opinion columnists, had begun pressing Republicans hard on what they saw as Big Government Conservatism.

"Congress had found itself very much on the defensive," said Ronald D. Utt, a federal budget expert at the Heritage Foundation. Then came Katrina in late August.

Lawmakers rushed back to Washington, eager to demonstrate their sympathy for the victims of the storm after Bush was widely criticized for his tardy response.

A planned conservative agenda of tax cutting, a permanent end to the estate tax, and the first cuts in Medicaid and other entitlement programs in nearly a decade appeared lost. Some Republicans were even suggesting it might be time to raise taxes, joining a chorus of Democrats pressing to roll back some of Bush's tax cuts.

"There was an element of the last straw in this," Pence said.
By Sept. 7, Congress had already enacted a $10.5 billion hurricane-relief measure, with a $52 billion bill pending. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) went to the House Rules Committee with an amendment to pay for the next installment with a one-time, 3 percent cut to all federal programs subject to Congress's annual spending bills, outside of defense, homeland security and veterans affairs.

The move was crushed. Instead, House leaders put the Katrina funding up for a vote under the rules reserved for non-controversial bills -- such as the renaming of a courthouse -- with no amendments allowed.

Conservatives were furious, Flake said, but not nearly as furious as they would become Sept. 13. The RSC was created in the early 1970s by conservative gadfly Paul Weyrich and other outside activists to watch over the House GOP leadership, but its power has waxed and waned, largely according to the dictates of the leadership it was supposed to be watching over.

Not only that, Pea, but he clearly doesn't have a clue who Vic Toews is or what this discussion is about. As a result he keeps trying to re-frame the discussion.

So you figured out how to use Google?