Stefanik gyrations hard to follow
Crandall Library to hold first public event since start of pandemic
The Front Page
Morning update
Monday, May 23, 2022
By Ken Tingley
It’s hard to fault North Country citizens with not keeping up with their local congresswoman. It can be exhausting, especially over the past week.
From her failure to address a mass shooting where the shooter’s ideology seemed to mirror some of her own social media advertisements, to her repeated rants that something had to be done about the baby formula shortage, to voting against a bill that addressed domestic terrorism, to then voting against a bill to provide funds to help solve the baby formula shortage.
Rep. Elise Stefanik’s gyrations and bizarre reasoning easily could make any voter’s head spin.
For most of the past two weeks, Rep. Stefanik has been using social media to hysterically rant about the shortage of baby formula on local supermarket shelves.
But when Congress finally acted to address the issue, Rep. Stefanik voted against the solution. Either the problem wasn’t as pronounced as she said it was or she really is more interested in scoring political points than helping local mothers.
Unfortunately, I fear the latter.
Democrats proposed a bill this week that temporarily waived exclusive contracts between states and baby formula manufacturers and allowed over 6 million people enrolled in WIC - Women, Infants and Children program - to purchase more brands of formula at a discount during emergencies.
The vote passed 414-9 with Stefanik voting for it.
But when a second bill was proposed to give the FDA $28 million in emergency funding to address the shortage by funding inspections of formula imports and preventing future shortages, suddenly the the crisis wasn’t as important to Stefanik as saving money.
The vote passed 231-192 with Stefanik among the 192 voting against. Despite Stefanik’s insistence of the pressing need of crisis to act immediately, Stefanik turned around and proposed her own legislation that allowed foreign imports without any new funding to the FDA instead of addressing the shortage immediately.
One of the Democrats opposing her in the upcoming election, Matt Castelli, said “she has shown that her true agenda was never to help end the crisis. Once again, Elise Stefanik rejects sensible solutions to serious problems, choosing performance theater and political noise over the needs of families.”
I suspect there are many of us that have grappled with Rep. Stefanik’s evolution from principled moderate to the “performance theater” we now see almost daily as she embraces conspiracy theories of all kinds.
Her vote against baby formula funding came on the heels of another vote against the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act that would allow the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the FBI to set up offices to focus on domestic terrorism.
The vote was in response to the 10 people murdered in her home state in Buffalo last week by a shooter who appeared to have been motivated by his belief in a “replacement theory” that Rep. Stefanik had ran ads about last year.
The offices would track and analyze domestic terrorist actively with the goal of better preparing the federal government to identify risks and take preventative actions. The legislation even had three Republican co-sponsors.
But 203 Republicans - including Rep. Stefanik - voted against the legislation. It still passed.
I’m not sure what is in store for the congresswoman this week, but I am sure it will equally as exhausting.
Crandall event
Reminder that Will Doolittle and myself will be having a conversation about life, newspapers and journalism at Crandall Public Library on Tuesday, May 24 at 5:30 p.m.
It will be the first public event at the library since the pandemic began and will be held in the community room downstairs.
Hope you can join us for this event.
Lake Luzerne event
Thanks again to the folks at the Lake Luzerne-Hadley Historical Society for hosting me at their birthday luncheon on Sunday.
It was great meeting new people and getting a chance to talk about my life in newspapers.
Tweets of the Day
As I have stated in my Letter To The Editor, Elise is becoming more and more unhinged!
She should be defeated, strongly defeated!!