Finally in routine....FL Primary....Follower feedback

Well it's that time of the week again. Today I'm going to be a little more organized with the flow of my blog post, so now you can ACTUALLY follow whatever I decided to rant about. So here we go...

1. Thursday marks exactly one month since I moved into my apartment in DC, and it took me till just now to finally get in to the swing of things and make a routine. Everyday since day 1 has been either a whirlwind adventure or an unorganized cluster (turns out this small town boy wasn't ready for big city living). This pertains to both my time at work and free time. And speaking of work...things are finally beginning to become exciting. We have been in and out of the start of the new session for the first couple of weeks which has made work for an intern rather slow, but as we move into the bulk of the 2nd session of the 112th congress things are about to get interesting. The number of briefings and case hearings for me to report on will sky rocket, tours will pick up, and Lord knows the number of angry constituents calling in or sending mail will become infinite. But I'm excited and can't wait to make you all read about it.

2. The Florida Primary is tonight, and for those of you that won't read this until a later time this section will be meaningless to you. When looking at a presidential election we recognize that if a candidate can win Florida, he can win the primary and become the party nomination for the general election. Mitt Romney in my opinion has already won Florida by a landslide. I base my opinion after studying all the candidates campaigns. Romney has the support of all 19 Republican Majority Districts in the state, this should be evidence enough, but for those who want to continue to question my opinion I will keep going. Newt Gingrich, could not even gain the support of congressional figures that he worked with as speaker of the house, shouldn't that tell you enough? No? Ok I'll keep going, the man is a cartoon candidate. He makes ridiculous remarks with little legitimacy in his arguments, and I'm not even going to go into the moon population idea of his...I like Ron Paul, and as wonderful of a congressional leader he is, he should have dropped out of the race months ago, better luck next time big guy. And Rick who....? Exactly not even worth the discussion. Please feel free to respond with your own thoughts or concerns.

3. Finally..the only part of this blog that I have looked forward to writing today. I have received some feedback and questions from those who have read this blog in the comment section, on facebook, and those who have texted me. Since I have yet to respond to those who have commented on the blog itself, this section is dedicated to you.

Alex Charwin: Hi I'm Alex, I'm in Anderson's political parties and interest groups class.It must have been really cool being in a room with so many influential people. Ur story about being so close to the secret service escort coach reminds m of the the first time I went to D.C. I accidentally ended up on the wrong side of a road block leading to the white house and had to get escorted back to where everyone else was standing.

To Alex: Thank you for the support and interest. This experience has been phenomenal, and yes being around so many of the free world's leaders seemed quite surreal.

Wes Davis: I think its awesome that you are getting the experience of Congress first hand (plus I'm jealous)! But one of the things I have not yet had a chance to experience is China Town, but it is surprising that its cleaner and more presentable than the one in NYC. However, being someone that will be in your position over the summer, I am really interested in what your daily schedule is and if you have any say in the tasks you're assigned? Thanks and keep up the good work!

-Wes
To Wes: I'm excited that you get the chance to take a position like I am now during the summer, you'll enjoy it! As far as daily tasks go, you will get the menial busy work tasks such as answering phones..sorting through and responding to mail...giving tours..etc. However, you will get the chance to get hands on work with legislation and sit in on briefings and committee hearings which is what the experience is all about.

Alan Silva: Haha! Preach it Gage!! 

It does sound like you're having a great time up there! I only went to D.C. once and I was only like 10 or 11. I would like to go back! The stories I'm hearing from the two blogs sound pretty darn cool!

So if the chinatown up there is nice and clean, where do you get your pirated DVD's and Faux-lexes?
To Alan: Just to clarify I work for the National Government, even if I did purchase pirated DVD's I would not post about it on the internet. HAHA. And also that it why God has blessed us with Netflix. Oh and a concern for you....I still don't understand why you brought up jugalos in our first class skype session..

Luke McNamee: Glad you are having a good time man. Stay busy and have fun

To Luke: Buddy you didn't give me much to respond to, but I couldn't leave you hanging, thanks for the support.

Josh Vaal: I'm just curious...what is it that is discussed between interns up there? At the Public Defender's office our conversations were so random at times but we ALWAYS talked about the interesting files and clients we had to interview. Do you discuss policies or do you talk crap about other politicians that may be against right wing policies? <- just a random question

To Josh: The discussions between myself and other interns will go anywhere on the topics of where we went that weekend and what we did, what we think of certain policies and what our congressmen should do about it (SOPA for example), we complain about parts of the job we hate as well as how busy or how dead our office is on a particular day, and compare each other's constituent phone calls to see who had to deal with the "crazier" constituent. And a general rule of thumb, if a constituent calls the office they should probably be locked up for reasons of insanity

Until next time....
Thank You and God Bless

Gage Nicholas

State of the Union and the Intern Reaction

Unless you live under a rock or your age is smaller than your shoe size, then you know that last night was President Obama's 3rd State of the Union Address. I will be brief about my opinions of it but please know that I fully intend to express my right to the first amendment.....First off, he spoke only on feelings of "change" to make his audience feel warm and fuzzy inside. There was no discussion of specific policies or what he himself planned to do in regards to making this "change." He's been feeding us false hopes since he has taken office and there are enough constituents calling every week that want him out of the White House now. On top of the SOTU address yesterday also marked 1,000 days without a budget in this country, now you know why we can't find a way to get out of this deficit. If you would like to find out more on the buzz going around in politics or how I feel about these topics in a deeper and more professional manner please feel free to contact me. This past weekend some friends and I went out to experience chinatown up here, if you've been to the one in NYC you would know that chinatown is dirty and full of novelty shops and stolen or fake merchandise for sale. This is not the case at all with chinatown DC. It was clean, well lit, and ran legitimate businesses. For those of you who plan to visit Washington DC be sure to go visit chinatown at night. In FSC related news fellow students Tina Cota-Robles and Cynthia Navarro have just arrived on monday and will doing internships through the Washington Center so this weekend I will be sure to give them a warm welcome and help them find their way around the city and to all the sites. Now moving on to my experiences this week, in hopes that you already haven't become so bored that you exited out of the webpage, I had a chance to take some legislation down to the House Chamber this week so that it could be given a bill number for a committee meeting today. Now comes the cool part of the story, it wasn't taking down the bill that excited me, it was walking down to the chamber with every congressional member in the US all in one place while the news coverage teams were setting up stations and preparing for the SOTU Address, so in the mind of a political science undergrad it was a crazy and exciting vibe. Later that evening my roommate and I went for a walk around the Capitol just for the heck of it and found ourselves taking a 30 minute detour around every police officer and military officer in the DC,MD,VA tri-area.....it ended up being well worth it though since we stood on a street corner waiting for the walk signal and got lucky by being just a few yards from President Obama's secret service escort coach, I would post a picture if I had been able to take my phone out at the time but that's life I guess. If you have any other questions, concerns, or anything else at all feel free to contact me. Enjoy the rest of your week everyone!!

Thank You and God Bless,

Gage Nicholas

January 20, 2012

This past week was definitely an "experience" to say the least. With constituents calling everyday about the SOPA and PIPA bills we had our hands full in the office. After many constituents from many other districts we see that online censorship bills are at a dead point for the congressmen and congresswomen. It was also a relief to hear that the people who have been working for Congressman Ross since the very beginning are also still "getting the hang of things" like myself. For those of you that plan on interning for a congressional office know that the legislative analysts are some of the brightest people you will meet on capitol hill, and since you would be working along side of them they are also the easiest to learn from. Today I had the opportunity to skype with one of Dr. Anderson's class again, and even though the sound didn't work too well it was a blessing in disguise because the class couldn't hammer me with multiple policy questions. This Tuesday coming up is the State of the Union Address and I'm not entirely sure what the chances of me being anywhere close to the event will be but I will be sure to have details from that in the next blog post. One thing that I have found rewarding during this internship is the chance to meet some constituents and guide them through a tour of the capitol, the appreciation they show for the tour makes my job so much more enjoyable than it already is. I apologize for jumping all over the place and cutting this post so short, but I hope everyone enjoys their weekend. Now if you'll excuse me I have my own weekend that I need to enjoy as well. Until next time....
Thank you and God bless,

Gage Nicholas

Occupy Congress, SOPA, SC Primary, and more DC Adventures

For those of you who have either willingly followed this blog or have been mandated to because of Dr. Anderson's class you know that I have not said much about the current events taking place in national politics thus far. Well that is what is different about this blog post. Today began the occupy congress movement on capitol hill. Needless to say it made for an interesting work day around the office building with protesters inside and outside of the building. As an intern my higher ups in the office informed me to not speak to these people no matter what, and what was meant to be nonviolent protests resulted in 6 people so far being arrested for overstepping their protest boundaries. Now to speak on the SOPA act that has been in the works through congress, I am not allowed to say much about it just yet, but after reading through some of the legislation I am not entirely sure that I can completely agree with it either but the public's reaction to it is uncalled for. Much of what people have been reading has been misinterpreted due to some of the wording in the legislation. As congress goes into session this evening the conflict will be resolved and the censorship act should play no serious role as a piece of legislation. With the South Carolina primary coming up rapidly I have a few thoughts on the candidates and the outcome. First off I feel that it will be a repeat of the Iowa Caucus. Since Rick Santorum has raised the majority of his funds in SC and has raised more than any other candidate in the state, especially from the evangelist groups he will definitely be a strong contender. Newt Gingrich also has a long list of supporters to back him up, but if we have learned anything in this election so far it is that Mitt Romney is the true favorite of the GOP and in my opinion he will be the candidate elected to try to push President Obama out of the white house and make him a one term president. Now onto the topic of what I have been up to aside from work in our Nations Capitol. Over the weekend one of my roommates and I decided to see what there was to do out on the town, and the conclusion we made was that unless you're 21 or older the options are extremely limited. However, we prevailed and found a piano bar that is quite the hot spot around the capitol hill area. On sunday we went back to the Eastern Market and explored a little more of that. For those of you who like to wear designer brands and high end clothing there is a vendor there known as "Buy My Tie" which gets clothes from major CEOs either donated to them or sold to them at incredibly low prices, so I took up the opportunity and purchased a brand new, with the tag still on, Brooks Brothers shirt for only $20, and they even offered us a weekend job after talking with the vendor for a while. On Martin Luther King day since we had the day off we took a tour by ourselves around the capitol because our staff IDs allow to access the tunnels and the capitol building by ourselves. After we toured the capitol we made our way over to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum which is a must see if you are ever in the area. That's about all I have to blab about for now but please feel free to comment on the post to express your questions and opinions about any of the current events in politics that I have mentioned in the beginning of the post, or if you have any questions about DC in general.

Until my next post...Thank you and God bless,

Gage Nicholas

January 14, 2012

I just finished my first full week of work and I can tell that this internship is going to make me grow as a person in so many ways as well as teaching me so much about congress. Over the past week I had the chance to hang out with fellow FSC political science major Charlotte Garraway and some of her friends from the Washington Center program. We had the opportunity to dine at a restaurant that was featured on the hit Travel Channel show "Man vs Food." The name of the place is "Ben's Chili Bowl" and it is more of a small chili dog diner, but I can see why they featured it because it was phenomenal. This week I also went through capitol tour training and gave my first tour on friday to a constituent from the district. Over the past week I have met some more interns around the hill and began to realize that these are the people that will be running this country along side of me one day. Today one of my roommates, Charles Hussey from Mississippi State who is interning in Congressman Nunnley's office from the 1st district in Mississippi, and I went to explore some more parts of the city that we haven't been to yet. We walked about a mile out of the way to the Eastern Market which is sort of like a farmers and fresh food market that is open every weekend as well as going another mile out of the way from that to Union Station which is a mall and a train station all in one. On Friday right after the tour I gave I had the chance to Skype in with the Parties and Interests political science class taught by Dr. Anderson and was able to give them some insight on what is going on up here and what I've been up to. They asked some questions that were near impossible for me to answer since it was my first full week of the internship and we are out of session so I have not been able to learn much of Congressman Ross's specific policies, but thankfully the people in the office were able to jump in and assist me in answering their questions about Congress and Dennis Ross. As you may have noticed in these blogs I tend to jump around from thought to thought and have no real flow to it so please just bear with me. I will also be posting on the blog every couple days so be sure to check it a couple times a week to see what's going on, Until then, though, I hope you all enjoy it and have a wonderful weekend.
Thank you and God bless,

Gage Nicholas

First Week

Hey everyone!

So I have officially been up in DC for a week and have already learned so much already. The weather fluctuates from warm to freezing cold a little too much for my liking but all in all the city is beautiful. Recently I had the chance to spend some time and see the sights with fellow FSC student Charlotte Garraway while she is here doing a two week program with the Washington Center. So far work as been really slow, making it much easier to learn quickly, since Congress is not currently in session. What I have been doing for work thus far consists of answering phone calls and handling mail from constituents. Basically what this means is those citizens from the district have a complaint about the current administration or have a concern that they want to express to Congressman Ross. On top of these responsibilities I am obligated to give tours of the Capitol and basically do any little job that is asked of me, however, eventually I will get a chance to work with some legislation. As of right now the main issue going around the Capitol that people are concerned about is President Obama has been trying to work around Congress while they are not in session and he is attempting to act upon his own policies, which is unconstitutional, and once the congress comes back in session these policies will be overruled. That's about all I have to rant about for now, if anyone has anyone questions or concerns about what it is that I am doing, the city of Washington DC, or interests in Congress at all please do not hesitate to contact me on here or via email at either Nicholasgage@yahoo.com or gage.nicholas@mail.house.gov

Thank you and God Bless!

Gage Nicholas