 | Questions for Speaker Pelosi
Netroots Nation 2008
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 Ask The Speaker!
Welcome to the Netroots Nation question submission page for the Saturday morning (July 19, 9:00am) keynote session "Ask The Speaker." The event empowers citizens to engage America's current House Speaker in substantive discussion about current issues, the legislative process, and how citizens can participate in their government. Instead of simply giving a speech at a podium, Speaker Pelosi will be taking your questions and interacting with convention attendees. The 9 a.m. keynote will be moderated by Gina Cooper, Netroots Nation's Executive Director, and Jeffrey Feldman, author and blogger. But it all begins right now, right here, when you submit your questions and vote on questions submitted by others.
Want to ask the Speaker a question?
Our time with the Speaker will be brief, so to make the most of it we have created a system for gathering as many questions as possible from across the netroots. Want to submit a question? Here's what you do:
- Take A Quick Look Around First: Before you submit your own question, read around to see that the site has been divided into categories to help organize the submissions and elicit as wide a range of ideas as possible. Also, take a quick peek at what's already been submitted.
- Click on "New Idea" To submit a question start by clicking the big orange button that says "New Idea." You will be asked for a valid email, and then taken to a basic comment submission form.
- Formulate a Concise Question: Keep in mind that a question is a single sentence with a question mark at the end of it--preferably a sentence that can be spoken in one breath. If your question has chapter headings ; ) consider (1) revising it to make it shorter and more concise and/or (2) dividing it into multiple submissions. What makes for a great question? Try for a question that invites the Speaker onto new terrain having to do with policy, campaigns, or democratic engagement. Questions that invite the Speaker to admit failure on a past issue are not off-limits, but they will likely be folded into other submissions to create more vibrant starting points for a back-and-forth.
- Hit "Submit" : Once your questions is written, submit it and your job is complete! Feel free to submit as many questions as you have in as many categories as you like.
- Vote Up! Vote Down!: The final step is one that every blogger knows well: recommending. Our system has a built in voting system not unlike Digg or Reddit. All you need to do is vote a comment up or down and everyone (including the moderators) will get to see which questions sit best with the most blog readers and conference attendees.
What Happens After I Submit My Question?
Prior to the conference, the moderators will print out all the questions and the vote tally, and then pull together a list of questions to pose to Speaker Pelosi during her keynote. Some questions will be posed exactly as they were submitted, some will be edited down, some will be combined with others. The final result will be a set of questions based entirely on open-source contributions from blog readers across the netroots--progressive democracy in action and delivered to the third most powerful member of our government.
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Given that the constitution calls for impeachment if high crimes or misdemeanors have been committed, and the current president has flouted constitutionally mandated checks and balances, why is impeachment off the table? How do you intend to not give him free reign if you remove one of the only constitutionally given ways of limiting a president's abuse of his authority?
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Since Rove, Myers and Bolton have all ignored subpoenas made by House committees, when do you plan to arrest these fugitives and force them to comply?
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Corporate donors are shifting their political giving dramatically to Democrats in Congress. Sen. Barack Obama's small donor "revolution" is a promising development, but 90% of the money given to congressional candidates still comes from larger donations. Will you make passage of a public financing law that provides incentives for small donations a priority in the next Congress?
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Every day in the U.S. 10,000 young people get an STD, 2,400 become pregnanct, and 55 contract HIV. The Bush administration has pushed abstinence-only sex education programs that prohibit information about condoms and birth control. Why are you on record supporting Chairman David Obey's continued funding for these programs when your own congressional evaluation showed they have "no impact on teen behavior" and a report by Congressman Waxman showed that 80% of abstinence-only curricula contian "false or misleading" information. What possible rationale could exist for the Democratic congressional leadership promoting ignorance in the era of AIDS?
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I'm curious how any Democrat, much less any member of Congress, considered their oath of office to uphold the Constitution before they voted to allow for telecom immunity in the service of warrantless, secret, illegal and unconstitutional searches of our phone calls.
As the Bill passed under your stewardship, clearly not many did. What a disservice to the citizens of your district and to the country overall.
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If impeachment doesn't happen while President Bush and Vice President Cheney are in office, would you support Investigation into criminal activity after they are out of office? How would such a prosecution work?
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If George Bush and Dick Cheney have not committed impeachable offenses, then just what is an impeachable offense?
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The single most important task of Congress is to protect and defend the Constitution. A strong Constitution protects the Nation, and thus We The People and as such, is paramount for our national security. Congress is the voice, the will, the protector, and the conscious of We The People. Given the Congress' acquiescence to all measure of executive overreaching for the past 7-1/2 years, what will the Congress finally do to restore the balance of power by reigning in a near-unitary executive, by holding them to account for any crimes committed against the Constitution and against We The People, and by using punitive measures to prevent such crimes from ever happening again? Given the past 7-1/2 years, what assurances can you give us that crimes against the Constitution and the American people will not be swept under the rug to be repeated by a future administration, dangerously emboldened by history's precedent of getting away with it?
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If private insurance is given a place in universal health care, a lot of money will go to their profits, overhead, waste, etc. We already have the most expensive health care system in the world. If we cut out the health insurance companies, the savings can be used to take care of sick people. It works better. Medicare is a success with low overhead and is cheaper than Medicare
Advantage, the private insurance scam that was forced on us by the Republicans.
Please comment on why Single Payer gets no serious consideration in Congress.
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There has been a lot of discussion about universal health care in the Democratic primary, but little word from those in Congress regarding the future of such legislation. Do you think Congress will be able to pass universal health care with a Democratic President in the White House, and how long will it take to make that happen?
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It has become fairly apparent to all Americans that the budgets of defense and homeland security are gigantic boondoggles, designed to funnel money directly to the GOP and its supporters. The corruption larded throughout this Administration's history has not only eliminated our 2000-era surplus, but has impoverished our nation.
We are told we cannot invest in health care, education, retirement, energy research, infrastructure care - even federal firefighting! - because we are so broke.
If this were a business, the stockholders would demand a full investigation, complete with forensic accountants, to trace and recover these stolen funds, no matter where they were hidden. We cannot allow the criminals who have broken this nation to escape with their loot intact!
Can you detail how you plan to uncover the extent of these massive thefts, and use the full force of the US government to get the people's money back? Only recovering our ill-spent taxes can give us the funds we need for the future.
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Madam Speaker, as one of your constituents in San Francisco, I have supported you at the polls for many years, and was proud when you became Speaker of the House.
Could you please restore our hope in the rule of law, and give us a sense of how the Democratic Congress will act to hold criminals in the Bush administration accountable for their illegal acts? With the judicial and executive branches of government ignoring their duty to the constitution--or worse, furthering the lawless "unitary executive"--we the people are counting on Congress to defend the Republic.
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In order to restore a three-branches-of-government-style democracy/republic, BUSH/CHENEY MUST BE IMPEACHED! We are paying you to defend our Constitution, and you are failing miserably by ignoring this administration's many crimes. We've lost so much...how can you sit by while Rove and others IGNORE a Congressional subpoena? How could you pass that awful FISA law? Don't you see how this executive branch is grabbing unprecedented power? This is a TURNING POINT IN U.S. HISTORY. DO THE RIGHT THING!
BTW, is there a worse crime imaginable than deliberately lying to start a war in which hundreds of thousands of people die? Please tell me what crime is worse! It's mass murder. Where is your conscience?
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The Democratic Congress of 2006 was elected on a clear anti-Bush mandate. Unfortunately, you seem to have misread that mandate. You have apparently been making it a priority to pass any legislation, even if it's bad Bush-backed legislation, rather than making it a priority to *stop* the worst Republican schemes.
You bottled up impeachment hearings, and you failed to use inherent contempt on subpoena-violators, but more importantly you passed the warrantless wiretapping law, every Iraq spending request, and several other bills which the majority of Democrats opposed very strongly. We know that you had the power to stop at least some of those, using your agenda-setting powers. The Republicans used those powers to stop our bills.
Can we trust you, in future, to start using your powers as Speaker to at least prevent the worst of the worst legislation? Why should we trust you to do so? Why shouldn't we ask our Representatives to elect a different leadership?
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The Bush administration has committed numerous crimes - felonies, not misdemeanours, and has been responsible for the deaths of millions of people as well as the heinous cruelty of torture of many innocent people. Bush, himself, is literally supporting terrorism in Iran by supporting the MEK which has been bombing several locations inside Iran.
He is working hard to justify a war against Iran and may well begin such unexpectedly without any authorization from Congress. If he does, there will be war in the entire Middle East, and then globally. This war will almost certainly become a nuclear war with ensuing radioactivity of the whole planet and the end of all life on earth.
It is your sworn Congressional duty to Impeach for these horrendous crimes and gross violations of the Constitution.
Congress has a duty of oversight of the executive branch. Such oversight has been woefully conspicuous by its absence, in spite of repeated promises of holding the Bush administration accountable.
There is no time to lose if we want to survive!
If we do not act now, it will be too late. War against Iran will likely begin just before the November election or shortly after, certainly before Barrack Obama takes the oath of office as president.
Now there is no time to dream about bipartisanship!
Will you fulfill your duty?
Ian Campbell Cree, MB(Hons.), MS, FRCS(Eng. & C.), FACS, LRCP.
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When are you going to hold Bush and Cheney accountable for breaking the law, for ignoring requests for documents, for using executive priviledge when it doesn't apply, for its incompetent handling of every domestic or foreign policy?
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Why haven't you investigated this? Bush's entire excuse for spying on Americans was that he was trying to protect us from the terrorists who attacked us. But the spying started well before that and you don't seem to care about that fact!
What possible reason would the neo-cons (with the assistance of the telecoms) have had for spying on Americans in violation of the law prior to 9-11?
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When the Republicans led Congress, they were quite successful, using procedural and political tactics, in blocking the Democratic Party's agenda.
Why is it that the Republican Party, now the minority, seem to maintain this power? Allowing the minority party a seat at the table may seem like the civil and polite way to govern, but it has resulted in the public perception of a deadlocked, do-nothing Congress, or worse, one in which the majority party capitulates to the minority party even when polling shows that the majority party has the backing of the majority of the population. What have you done to alter this perception?
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I can't seem to find the clause anywhere that gives her the power to decide this. Rep. Kucinich has done everything "by the book" and impeachment should be moving forward. Why is Pelosi trying to impead what should be her consititutional duty.
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When will Karl Rove be arrested for failure to show up?
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Speaker Pelosi,
More Americans are dying daily due to either a complete lack of Health Insurance or having coverage of procedures and drugs denied by their "for profit" insurance companies than are dying in the war in Iraq.
Why then has the Democratic congress not moved forward with a Single Payer Universal Health Care plan for all Americans?
Also, Will you commit to leading this fight in the next congress and if not please explain why the deaths of thousand of Americans don't matter?
Finally, should you not be able to push Single Payer Health Care through will you at least require in any compromise bill that any insurer who denies coverage of a physician requested action or prescribed medication is committing a felony resulting in a minimum of 10 years jail time to the CEO/President of the company?
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I see no provision in our constitution allowing for private armies. We have five branches of military and they must follow certain laws, even in combat. It costs many times more to have private companies perform tasks that are the realm of our military.
What are you doing to stop the use of private armies? What are you doing to insure they follow our laws and the laws of the country they operate in? What are you doing to hold them accountable, both in the billions of dollars we have paid them, and accountable for laws they have broken (murder comes to mind, torture too)?
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Madam Speaker,
Re Rove's likely refusal to appear before the House tomorrow, it's been reported that your communications director Brendan Daly sent (Huffington Post) the following statement:
Those reports are completely untrue -- the Speaker has not urged the Judiciary Committee not to seek contempt charges against Karl Rove. The committee can seek a contempt citation if it decides to do so. (Fyi, Henry Waxman's Oversight Committee is looking at a contempt citation against the attorney general over documents. The Speaker has no objections to that -- it's the committee's decision.)
A source with the House Judiciary Committee also denied Pelosi was opposing contempt charges.
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In view of your office's lukewarm statement, my question to you is do you SUPPORT contempt charges? Please elaborate. Extra points for your opinion of Rove's role in the prosecution of Dem. Gov. Siegelman-Alabama.
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Will you give up you congressional health care benfits and purchase health insurance in the private market, as over 40 million americans are expected to do?
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Why won't you let the impeachment of these two go forward? There are 10's of thousands of Americans that want them impeached. Look at the lying the spying the acconomy, the war, all of the stuff they have done to the American people. You most let the impeachment go forward. Why won't you?
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