In The News
"It is not just slow and steady sea level rise associated with climate change, it is the severe and increasingly violent weather events becoming more and more present in our daily lives," said U.S. Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Baltimore Cointy, who joined the environmental organization, Annapolis Alderman Joe Budge and others for the dock-side event at Susan Campbell Park.
The map, which was compiled using Federal Emergency Management Agency and U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics, comes as the Maryland legislature and Congress consider the next moves to deal with predicted sea level rise and weather changes.
"This is a wake up call to people all across the country, and to lawmakers … that they have to take this seriously," Sarbanes said.
Democrats in both chambers are pressing Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to reform the campaign finance system in the name of transparency.
The Democrats, who had no luck moving their Disclose Act under previous Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), are hoping his newly tapped replacement will be more receptive to their argument that anonymous donors are undermining democracy.
"Since taking the gavel for the first time, you’ve made numerous statements about ushering in a new era of transparency and changing the process in the House to make it more 'deliberative and participatory,’ " the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Ryan Tuesday. "[U]nless we open up the process to the American people, these goals will remain rhetoric and nothing more."
The letter was signed by Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Edward Markey (Mass.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Tom Udall (N.M.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Mark Warner (Va.) and Democratic Reps. Steve Israel (N.Y.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and John Sarbanes (Md.).
Meanwhile, the calls for campaign finance reform at the federal level are growing louder. Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) has introduced a reform billthat would provide a 6-to-1 match for campaign contributions up to $150. Based on a similar matching system in New York City, Sarbanes’s bill, the Government by the People Act, has garnered the support of 155 Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and North Carolina Republican Rep. Walter Jones. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton has endorsed a similar plan, while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has made campaign finance reform central to his presidential run, calling for publicly funded elections and a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. And just last week, a bipartisan group of more than 100 former members of Congress and governors launched an initiative, the ReFormers Caucus, to push for stronger campaign finance and transparency rules.
Jones is bonding with another son of a former congressman, Rep. John Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat, in a crusade for legislation that seeks to blunt the power of big money in politics. Sarbanes visited San Francisco last month to discuss his idea, the Government by the People Act, H.R. 20...
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/dan-morain/article42995139.html#storylink=cpy
The 2009 law that reauthorized the AmeriCorps service program included an initiative drafted by Rep. John Sarbanes of Baltimore County called Veterans Corps. The program, which President Barack Obama touted during his 2008 campaign, is aimed at recruiting veterans into volunteering, especially for programs that serve other veterans and military families.
From small beginnings, Parks Sausages in Northwest Baltimore became the first African American owned company in the country to go public–the largest in Baltimore, and with a most memorable slogan.
And more Parks Sausages-like companies for Baltimore, too, please–the aim of a federal grant to open a center for entrepreneurs, named for Parks co-founder, the late Ray Haysbert.
“And there’s no better role model. So it’s fitting that it’s being named for him. No better role model… As a community leader, as someone who started a business small and then took it to great heights,” said U.S. Rep. John Sarbanes, (D) 3rd Congressional District.
Sarbanes is the author of H.R. 20, the “Government By the People Act,” which would give every citizen taxpayer a $25 “My Voice Tax Credit” for House campaign contributions, and then augment those small contributions – and give candidates a bigger incentive to seek them – with a six-to-one match from a taxpayer-funded “Freedom From Influence Fund.” The bill also would let candidates to earn additional public matching funds within 60 days of the election so that citizen-funded candidates can combat Super PACs and outside groups.
“Even before Citizens United, we had a problem with direct campaign contributions to candidates having a lot of influence,” Sarbanes said, so pursuing a constitutional amendment to overturn that 2010 Supreme Court decision – a longshot at best – wouldn’t solve the problem. Instead, he said, it’s time to “build a different system that gives everyday people power.”
Some might complain that the answer to the corrosive influence of money in politics shouldn’t be putting more even money into politics. But Sarbanes said “the problem is not so much the amount of money – the problem is the source of the money,” coming from a tiny percentage of the mega-rich and amplifying only their interests.
Someone is going to own the levers of government – “either it’s going to be the big money crowd… or it’s going to be the public,” he said. “And if the public wants to own the government, there’s going to be a cost associated that, but it’s a pretty modest investment.”
Representative John Sarbanes of Maryland has become one of the leading campaign finance–reform proponents on Capitol Hill, and recently introduced the Government by the People Act, which would bring a public small-donor matching system to all congressional races. Senator Dick Durbin has a similar bill, the Fair Elections Now Act, in the Senate.
“We’re very encouraged and try to showcase the efforts that are being made at the state and local level,” Sarbanes says. “It’s important to just say to the skeptics out there: ‘This isn’t a pipedream.’”
However, despite broad bipartisan support from the electorate for limiting the influence of money in politics and Sarbanes’s bill garnering a high number of Democratic co-sponsors, the Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to touch it.
“It’s difficult to imagine a bill now being brought to the floor that would set up a system that we’ve proposed,” Sarbanes admits. But, he says, the task is to build a network of grassroots advocates across the country so that when there is a moment where real reform has a political opening, there’s a solution ready to be pushed through.
“These opportunities can come up suddenly,” Sarbanes adds. “If you’re not ready then, it can pass them by.”