Your Republican House at Work November 19, 2024 But first . . . Two small bright spots: > Klamath River: Salmon return to lay eggs in historic habitat after dam removal. > It’s a nice story: Our twelfth Treedom Farm has now been planted (alongside 58 others). My thanks to those of you who helped! To help fund the next dozen, click here. Two big dark spots: > Stench: The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America. > Tom K.: “Another must-read about the Court: Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections.” And now . . . One big travesty: James Comer hails from Kentucky, one of the country’s biggest “taker” states, meaning it receives much more from the federal Treasury than it pays in in taxes. Most red states do — the states that decry federal spending. He’s chaired the House Oversight Committee since 2023. Per Wikipedia: [As chair], Comer has declined or stopped investigations into former President Donald Trump, while starting an investigation on President Joe Biden and his family. . . . After Joe Biden ended his 2024 presidential re-election campaign, Comer began an investigation into the new Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and also began an investigation into the new Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Governor Tim Walz. A couple of months ago he chaired a hearing entitled “A Legacy of Incompetence: Consequences of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Policy Failures.” . . . issuing this “hearing wrap-up” entitled “Biden-Harris Administration’s Disastrous Record Hurting Americans.” In part: Chairman James Comer: “Three and a half years ago, when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office, they promised to ‘Build Back Better.’ The fawning media told us that ‘the adults are back in the room.’ But three and a half years later, the economy is suffering, the border is broken, and crises continue to erupt worldwide. Everything Joe Biden and Kamala Harris has touched has failed.” Your tax dollars are going to pay his salary, so it’s worth asking just what quality of work he is producing. The economy: after three and a half years the unemployment rate is down from 6.3% to 4.1%. The S&P 500 is up 60%. Wages are outpacing inflation. The Economist calls our economy “the envy of the world.” Crushing as the COVID supply-chain-ignited inflation has been for so many, it has been largely tamed without the recession everyone predicted. The border is only broken now because Trump killed the bi-partisan bill that would have fixed it. It’s. That. Simple. Worldwide crises do erupt, but ChatGPT tells me that slightly fewer U.S. service members died in Biden’s first two years than in Trump’s last two. Our country’s Atlantic and Pacific alliances are far stronger now than they were when Biden took office. Everything they’ve touched has failed? Really? How about the CHIPs Act? Or the record number of Americans covered by health insurance? Or the bipartisan bill Trump was never able to achieve (and that Comer voted against) that has launched 66,000 infrastructure projects — including at least 325 in Kentucky? Comer worked so hard to find something to impeach Biden for — and failed. It was easy to find things to impeach Trump for — twice. And the second time, a wide bi-partisan majority of Senators (though not the needed two-thirds) voted to convict. Does anyone doubt that, had the vote been by secret ballot, the vote would have been overwhelming? Do something?