{"id":80963,"date":"2017-05-20T05:11:33","date_gmt":"2017-05-20T09:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=80963"},"modified":"2017-05-19T23:14:10","modified_gmt":"2017-05-20T03:14:10","slug":"column-from-here-and-back-again-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=80963","title":{"rendered":"COLUMN: From Here and Back Again"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jim Coufal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Constituents & Representatives<\/em><\/div>\n

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Long ago someone lost to memory told me, \u201cdefine your terms, then we\u2019ll argue.\u201d Since this is about how poorly Claudia Tenney represents her constituents of the 22nd Congressional District, I\u2019ll do that.<\/div>\n
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Merriam Webster defines a constituent as \u201cone who authorizes another to act as agent\u201d, said agent (ne: representative) elected by persons \u00a0who authorizes agent to act in their interest. There is an old saying in politics, crime, and elsewhere \u201cfollow the money\u201c and that\u2019s where this piece goes next.<\/div>\n
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Federal reporting shows that in the first quarter of 2017 Ms. Tenney received $290,429 in donations. Of this, 65.3% came from Political Action Groups (PAC), while 34.7% came from non-Pacs. Included therein was $22,000 from banks, $25,500 from insurance companies, $12,500 from investment firms, and $12,000 from the housing industry. Only 13 upstate residents donated to Ms. Tenney. It\u2019s interesting that Ms. Trenney serves on the House Financial Services Committee, which is charged with regulating the banking, insurance, and housing industries, which are her biggest contributors. Follow the money.<\/div>\n
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Another way of looking at this issue is to go to her election vote numbers. She received 47% of the vote, not a majority, while her democratic opponent received 40.4% and a third party candidate garnered 12.6%. Yet, \u201cVote Smart,\u201d shows Ms. Tenney\u2019s House vote to date is !00% party line, republican\/ Trumpian. Is that representative of all her constituents? More important, is the republicans party representing the interests of the average person or the rich. No knee jerk reactions, please. Look it up.<\/div>\n
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I\u00a0know during the first two legislative recesses during her tenure she went out of country, and have been unable to find where she was during the most recent third. This while many of her constituents requested a real, in district Town Hall which, which from personal correspondence she put off with a variety of excuses, most often being \u201cWe\u2019re working on it,\u201d which has gone on for 3 months. When asked to provide the evidence for some of her assertions, none has been forthcoming for 3 months, just the good old \u201cWe\u2019re working on it.\u201d<\/div>\n
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So, whose interests is she representing; her constituents or Trump, or the rich? I find she practices government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich (or substitute \u201cTrump\u201d for the rich).<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Constituents & Representatives Long ago someone lost to memory told me, \u201cdefine your terms, then we\u2019ll argue.\u201d Since this is about how poorly Claudia Tenney represents her constituents of the 22nd Congressional District, I\u2019ll do that. Merriam Webster defines a constituent as \u201cone who authorizes another to act as agent\u201d, said agent (ne: representative) elected […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23677,23808,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion","category-top-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43meu-l3R","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/madisoncountycourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/coufal-CMYK.jpg?fit=226%2C228&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}