Jack & Jill Politics

While much of the crisis is centralized in an area covering two congressional districts, a search of the congressional record reveals that the representatives in those districts are dealing with the crisis very differently. Rep. Michele Bachmann has voted against all but one measure aimed at foreclosure relief, while Rep. Keith Ellison in the neighboring district has supported or introduced more than a dozen bills to address the issue.

Trouble in the Sixth

Just to the north of the Twin Cities, the 6th district, represented by Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, had the most foreclosures of any of Minnesota’s eight congressional districts, with an estimated 5,227 in 2008. Her district also had the highest rate of foreclosures as a percentage of households, at 1.80 percent, nearly that of the city of Minneapolis at 1.85 percent.

The situation was similar in 2007, when, according to a Housing Link study, Bachmann’s district had a higher foreclosure rate than the rest of Minnesota and the rest of the country.

But Bachmann’s record in Congress is not one of a representative whose district faces such a crisis. Bachmann hasn’t authored or sponsored any legislation to assist homeowners facing foreclosure, but she has co-sponsored 14 bills to restrict abortions and five to promote Christianity in government.

This woman is crazy. She almost lost her job during the last election but hasn’t moderated her incendiary, fact-free rhetoric one bit. I don’t have the inclination to chronicle her descent into apocalyptic madness, but http://dumpbachmann.blogspot.com/ has all you need and then some.

While she’s firing up the right-wing reactionaries with treasonous calls for people to be “armed and dangerous”; while she’s labeling the service organization AmeriCorp a “youth re-education camp”; her constituents are suffering from the housing crisis more than any other district in the state, and she’s doing the least to help them.

What needs to happen is that Bachmann’s constituents need to “rise up” and “re-educate” her ass by kicking her out of office. I mean damn. How out of touch can you be? See I’m being charitable. I’m not pointing out that browner people across the world have been shipped off to secret prisons and tortured for inciting far less than Bachmann. That would be irresponsible, now wouldn’t it?