Thomas Massie

The photo above is of Thomas Massie not from his junior prom, but honest to goodness, that’s him as a sitting Congressman over the age of 40. He has represented Kentucky’s 4^th District since 2012 (at least the Tea Party there), and I would be shocked if I found out that he can purchase anything in a liquor store without having to be carded by the clerks. He has a resume that you’d think would make him exempt from any arguments of him being “stupid”, since he graduated from MIT with a Bachalor’s and Master’s Degree and he and his wife started their own company, SensAble Technologies, which had 24 different patents, and was worth millions of dollars by the turn of the millennium. In 2010 he got into politics as the Judge Executive of Lewis County, Kentucky, fighting wasteful government spending, in that way where someone runs as a Republican, but practices more as a libertarian. That of course soon drew the attention of the foremost examples of that phenomenon, and Massie became a disciple of Ron Paul and Rand Paul the latter of whom he campaigned for during the Tea Party wave election of that year.

And, as one might expect… when you follow in the footsteps of the Paul Dynasty… you’re going to step into some crazy **** that they’re preaching. And as Massie has shown in his first term in Congress, he even picks it up and tries to sell it to others.

• There are levels of hypocrisy that are hard to achieve, but Rep. Massie manages to get there. Massie is against prioritizing research into green technologies. This is strange because he likes to brag that he built his own home, and that it’s powered with solar panels. So apparently, he sees the benefit in green technologies for himself, but he’ll be damned if government funding goes into it.
• Thomas Massie’s first written bill in Congress came on January 4^th, 2013, when he wrote a bill to allow firearms in school zones, which would repeal a 1990 law by President H.W. Bush had made a crime. The NRA supported that law as recently as 1999. Keep in mind, this was THREE WEEKS after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, CT.
• Rep. Massie was one of a litany of Republicans who for whatever reason on February 28^th, 2013, voted against the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act.
• A few days later on January 13^th, 2013, Thomas Massie voted against Hurricane Sandy relief funding.
• The “Stolen Valor Bill” was written by Nevada Republican Joe Heck, and was written to prevent those who had not earned military medals from wearing them, or somehow profiting from them. This was a very easy bill for both sides of the aisle to get behind, and it passed in May of 2013 by a vote of 390-3. For reasons that are not fully understood, Massie chose to be one of the 3 who voted against the Stolen Valor Bill.
• On June 7^th, 2013, Thomas Massie gave an interview where (at 5:47) he talked about the manufactured “IRS Scandal”, claiming that “clearly laws were broken”, “it went all the way to Washington”, and going on to claim that it should be expected because corruption will always occur with government oversight, so the whole concept of having the IRS at all is a bad idea, going on to advocate for a “flat tax” (there’s some Paul-ism, right there).
• With the 2013 Government Shutdown looming on Sept. 17^th of that year, Massie spoke in favor of it, saying, “All that really matters is what my district wants. And my district is overwhelmingly in favor of my position.”
• September 26^th, 2013: A bill came to the floor torenew the U.S. participation in the OAS, or the Organization of American States. The bill simply states that “it is U.S. policy to promote democracy, the rule of law, and human rights in the Western Hemisphere; and support the practices and principles expressed in the Charter of the Organization of American States, the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and other fundamental instruments of democracy [and] expresses the sense of Congress that the Organization of American States (OAS) should be the primary multi-lateral diplomatic entity for regional dispute resolution and promotion of democratic governance.”
  
  It sounds pretty straightforward, right? Well, it usually is. It passed 383-24, with one of the two dozen obstructionists (luminaries like Gohmert, Lamborn, and Huelskamp) who don’t want American democratic values and human rights being promoted being… you guessed it, Thomas Massie.
• By Sept. 30^th, 2013, when it appeared the government shutdown would happen, Massie downplayed its negative effects as “not a big deal”. Which was something the 8 million furloughed government workers would have disagreed with, I’m pretty sure.
  
  Anyway, Massie voted to both shut down the government, and then also voted against re-opening it. And he also voted against the fiscal cliff compromise, at that, referring to it as a “really big turd sandwich without the bread”.
• Thomas Massie has been on the House Oversight Committee the past few years, and has tried manufacturing outrage on the Benghazi attacks. In January 2014, when a report came out saying that there was no way military help could have arrived in time, Massie disputed the report, contradicting it to claim that not only was there time to intervene, but that a “stand down” order was given to the military (which is an outright lie). He has gone quiet since as more and more reports come out saying there was no malfeasance, of course.
• In March 2014, Rep. Massie was the lone vote in the House against naming Israel as a strategic partner of the United States, in a 410-1 vote.
• In July 2014, Rep. Massie moved to undo most of Washington, D.C.’s gun control laws, with the argument he gave against gun control being a classic NRA staple:
  
  “Criminals by definition don’t care about laws. They will get guns any way they can. Strict gun control laws do nothing but prevent good people from being able to protect themselves and their families in the event of a robbery, home invasion, or other crime.
  
  Ah yes. The “Criminals break the law anyway, so WHY BOTHER HAVING ONE?” argument, always a laugher. Which only makes you wonder why he thinks that laws against gay marriage, or preventing abortion would be followed. But he also follows that ridiculous argument up with a bit of, “It just stops law-abiding people from getting guns!”
  
  Which would indicate he doesn’t understand how background checks work.
• While his support for the 2013 Government Shutdown ended up souring most of the country with his party, the fact that the GOP didn’t pay much of a price for it in the 2014 Midterm elections was enough for him to decide we should have another one in 2015 over President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, which he talked about doing on Nov. 20^th, 2014.

 
The most curious detail about Massie for me currently that still bears watching would be regarding the press conference from July 2014 regarding “The Truth About 9/11”.
 
It seems that Massie, as a Congressman, was allowed to read the 28 pages of information that were redacted in the last report given regarding the Sept. 11^th attacks. And after reading it, he claims it was “shocking”, and would “rearrange our understanding of what happened”. He asked that all members of Congress also read the 28 pages, and co-sponsor legislation to have them released. And if they don’t, they need to have a press conference of their own to explain why.

Given how he has proved himself to be a boy crying wolf on Benghazi and the “IRS Scandal”, I’m not exactly sure this is more than a bit of grandstanding and an attempt to fire up the conspiracy loons. If in fact, those 28 pages don’t have anything damning, and do just protect our national security… it’s sort of disgusting that Massie would do this and jerk around the families of 9/11 victims. I hope that’s not the case.



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