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Sadly life in the NRZ (No Representation Zone) is seldom without disappointment.  Yesterday our friends in the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted to cut $3 billion from a Pentagon base realignment program that was slated to bring hundreds of new jobs to Cleveland.  This will likely have a negative impact on both the current and future employment situation at the DFAS facility in Cleveland and could reverse all of the effort undertaken two years ago to ensure that the DFAS offices (and it’s collection of good jobs) would remain in the city.  Additionally, the bill cuts funding to NASA which is a significant source of financial support for the Glenn Research Center.

Thankfully conman Dennis Kucinich voted against the measure (occasionally he does something right), but low and behold guess who did vote with her Democratic counterparts to support the funding cut?  My Congresswoman - Stephanie Tubbs Jones.

Something strikes me as peculiar about this vote.  This measure specifically involved the Base Realignment and Closure Commission - which was recently such a huge

issue locally. If it hadn’t been for the hard work of Congressman Steven LaTourette (who doesn’t even represent Cleveland, but our neighboring district to the east in Lake County) - not Tubbs-Jones or the conman - we would have lost these jobs.  The argument many local supporters of Tubbs-Jones and the conman made at the time was that it was LaTourette’s membership in the majority that allowed him to save those jobs.  Well… how is it that the people elected to represent Cleveland (and the jobs at DFAS, as well as at the Glenn facility) are NOW in the majority and couldn’t convince their colleagues to keep these funds intact? 

OK before you start telling me that the conman voted against this measure, remember his counterpart (Ms. Tubbs-Jones) appears to have supported it - that means the delegation from Cleveland was not unified on our behalf, why not?  Additionally, now that these two are part of the majority why aren’t they lobbying their fellow Democrats to help their Cleveland-based districts?  Could it be that their own party doesn’t take them seriously, or that they don’t have any real clout in their party?

This again just goes to show that we are not being represented in Washington by Ms. Tubbs-Jones and the conman.  If they keep this up (not saving people’s jobs in Cleveland) maybe we should think about not letting them keep theirs.