Politics Today

On Thursday. an effort to impeach Maine's governor Paul LePage failed in the legislature. A group of law makers introduces a proposes that would commence an investigation to look at the eight charges against Mr. LePage. After, the committee would then recommend if impeachment was a necessary action to be considered. With a vote of 96-52 the investigation was indefinitely postponed.

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Politics Today

Next week Maryland legislators will be voting on a bill to restore voting rights to nearly 40,000 individuals that are on probation because of felonies. Currently people charged with felonies are not allowed to vote until they have finished their probation sentences. If this override attempt succeeds then these people will be able to vote as soon as they leave prison.

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Politics Today

In Indonesia, police have hunted down three suspected militants and hunted other individuals down across the country. This comes only a day after an attack by Islamic state suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the nation's capital. Seven people were killed in this attack. Five of them were the gunmen.

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Politics Today

Kansas governor has issued an executive order stating that the state is banning, not just Syrian refugees, but refugees from any other country. Mr. Brownback was one of the 30 governors who originally banned Syrian refugees after the Paris attacks. Now, Kansas and Georgia governors are the only people who have banned resettlement of refugees.

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Politics Today

A large golden statue of China's chairman Chao appeared in a rural town of China earlier this week. Just two days after its completion the statue was abolished by the orders of embarrassed local officials. The gold painted statue costed nearly half a million dollars and was funded by private businessmen and villagers.

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Pork

Earmark-Congressional directive that funds should be spent on a specific project.

Word origin-1590s, "to identify by an earmark," from earmark (n.). Meaning "to set aside money for a special purpose" is attested by 1868. Also the process of maring cattle. Earmarks got banned in 2011 after complaints about the bridge to nowhere, banned by the republican party. Congress would use this term to describe processes of allocating funds.

Logrolling- The practice of exchanging favors

Pork barrell spending is is a metaphor for the appropriation of government spending for localized projects secured solely or primarily to bring money to a representative's district. The usage originated in American English. In election campaigns, the term is used in derogatory fashion to attack opponents.

Examples:

One of the most famous alleged pork-barrel projects was the Big Dig in Boston, Massachusetts. The Big Dig was a project to relocate an existing 3.5-mile (5.6 km) section of the interstate highway system underground. It ended up costing$14.6 billion, or over $4 billion per mile. Tip O'Neill (D-Mass), after whom one of the Big Dig tunnels was named, pushed to have the Big Dig funded by the federal government while he was the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, the Gravina Island Bridge (also known as the "Bridge to Nowhere") in Alaska was cited as an example of pork barrel spending. The bridge, pushed for by Republican Senator Ted Stevens, was projected to cost $398 million and would connect the island's 50 residents and the Ketchikan International Airport to Revillagigedo Island and Ketchikan.

Logrolling- Vote trading by legislative members to obtain passage of action of interest to each legislative member. The first known use of the term was by Congressman Davy Crockett, who said on the floor in 1835, "my people don't like me to log-roll in their business, and vote away pre-emption rights to fellows in other states that never kindle a fire on their own land."

Source: http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Logrolling.aspx

Grand Finale: Log rolling can be used to support earmarks which can be referred to as pork barreling when it is seen as unnecessary government expenditures.

Exploring Congress; How it Works

Child Support Assistance Act of 2015

Amends the Fair Credit Reporting Act which provides critical background checks that aid employers in the recruitment process. This act would allow a broader range of people to have access to this database. One example of this would be if a parent was claiming to not be able to pay child support then a credit report could be pulled by an individual even though they are not their employer. This has been assigned to the house of financial services and to the senate banking, housing, and urban affairs. This act has a 29% chance of being enacted. The person that is presenting this act is Representative Bruce Poliquin form Maine’s second district. He is in the lowest 25% of all representatives for missing votes. He is in the lowest 50% among all representatives for bills introduced. He is in the lowest 20% of competitive house seats for bills co-sponsored. He is the fourth highest among competitive house seats for bills out of committee.

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