Tag: End the Filibuster

Joe Manchin Promises to Bring TEN Republicans to Our Side!

A review of Joe Manchin’s voting record reveals an old, white man who is against many of the things that Democrats stand for – Medicare for all, background checks for gun purchases, funding for SNAP/food stamps, sanctuary cities. He has voted for Brent Kavanaugh & Neil Gorsuch, Mike Pompeo, Scott Pruitt, Steve Mnuchin, Tom Price, Jeff Sessions & Rex Tiillerson.

Joe Manchin wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post declaring his unrelenting support for the filibuster. A holdover from Reconstruction and Jim Crow, the filibuster has been used by the Republicans not as a means of fostering debate but rather to obstruct almost all the legislation that the Obama administration hoped to enact to help the American people. The Senate, no longer ‘the world’s most deliberative body’, has instead become an example of how the minority can hold the majority hostage.

Debate requires people actually speaking about a subject. The filibuster as it now exists does not require anyone to do anything that remotely resembles debating. Instead, they threaten to filibuster and then demand that the majority find ten of them to end the no-debate debate. What a joke!

If Joe Manchin believes that the filibuster is beneficial to the Senate, and the population as a whole, then he needs to explain how it benefits the majority at all. Even when the Democrats don’t have a single vote majority in the senate, those senators who were elected to represent Democratically led states represent millions more citizens than those senators elected from states like North and South Dakota (there shouldn’t be two Dakotas), the Carolinas (ditto), the Virginias (same), Wyoming, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Iowa and all the other states with low population density.

It is now obvious that the Senate is no longer able to function as a governing body while the filibuster is available to give the minority an oversized ability to block and obstruct legislation that is favored by a majority of the population. It is no longer realistic to expect that Republicans in the Senate have any desire or intention to do that which benefits the populace because most of these things are in direct opposition to the desires of the donors who support the Republicans.

Audio tape from a phone call from an operative from Koch Industries has been leaked revealing how desperately they’re trying to find some way to make HR1, the bill introduced in the House to strengthen our election system and eliminate dark money from politics, unpalatable to the citizens, and they can’t find anything. The bill is intended to keep the wealthy from influencing the outcome of elections, allowing all of us to donate small dollar amounts that are then matched 6 to 1 by the government with funds obtained by fees assessed against the criminal and civil fines and penalties or settlements with banks and corporations who break the law. Koch Industries doesn’t understand why everyone agrees that keeping dark money out of politics and having campaigns financed by the people is a better way of doing things than what we have now.

If Joe Manchin really believes that the filibuster needs to stay as it is, then maybe it’s time for him to consider going into another line of work. Given his support for the Keystone XL pipeline and other fossil-fuel industry behemoths, maybe he can get a job working for them. At least then, no one would expect he would do what’s best for the rest of us.

Not everyone wants to live in a state with the lowest minimum wage. If Mr. Manchin thinks that $15 an hour is too high an hourly wage, he should explain to us how he expects those making the lowest wages to survive and feed themselves and their families. Joe doesn’t want student loans to have lowered interest rates. He’s voted to take away funding from nonprofits offering family planning, reproductive healthcare and abortions, to decrease funding for food stamps, and to defund Planned Parenthood.

Manchin voted against: allowing the Social Security Administration to implement restrictions of gun purchases for Social Security recipients who have been deemed incompetent to manage their finances; sanctuary cities; amending the system for background checks for gun purchases; increased funding of fresh fruits and vegetables for elementary students; and importing FDA-approved drugs from Canada.

It is time for the Senate to change. Senators are being paid $175,000 per year, and Joe Manchin’s net worth as of 2021 is somewhere between $3.4 – $11.8 million. He, and his Senate colleagues, are doing almost nothing to earn the money they’re being paid, given the gridlock that the right started under Newt Gingrich and perfected under Moscow Mitch. If the Senate as currently constructed cannot be changed to make it function for the people, then maybe it’s time to do something differently. What that would be is above my pay grade, but it’s clear to most of us that what we have now is broken.

Joe Manchin – if you want those of us on the outside to believe that those of you in the Senate give two shits about our lives and our children’s futures, then DO SOMETHING!!!!

Bring ten Republicans over to vote with the Democrats for things that there is overwhelming support for all over the country. Get them to vote for Biden’s infrastructure bill, instead of quibbling about the definition of infrastructure (which, per the OED, is the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities needed for the operation of a society or enterprise). Republicans have for decades underfunded or ignored crumbling infrastructure all over the country in order to give their donors tax cuts.

Republicans are morally and philosophically incapable of putting the good of the country ahead of their own craven partisan needs – Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, to name but a few – and clearly do not give a damn about the country as a whole. What they do care about is their own petty grievances and their perceived victimhood. They refuse to acknowledge that their white supremacist worldview is wrong, and will continue to make out those of us who are pushing for change as the ‘other’ in order to fire up the worst of their base. They are culpable for the insurrection on January 6, 2021, and all need to be held accountable for their behavior.

Are these the people that Joe Manchin believes should have the power to force lengthy debates? Those who are content spreading the Big Lie and using it to support sweeping voter suppression laws all over the country? The same ones who spout Russian disinformation in Senate committee hearings? Those who voted to overturn our election?

This is what Joe Manchin says he wants – allow the minority to prevent the majority from passing legislation poll after poll has shown is overwhelmingly supported by the majority of the people. That is just not acceptable. Someone needs to tell Joe Manchin that what HE wants doesn’t matter. It’s what WE THE PEOPLE WANT that needs to be honored. And WE THE PEOPLE want our government to work for all of us, not just for the privileged or the well-connected.

We all know there are exactly zero Senate Republicans with the guts to do what’s best for the country. Joe Manchin has got an uphill climb drawing ten of them out from the dark side. I wish him luck, but I won’t hold my breath.

This is Who the Republicans Are

My Republican friends have to explain to me why they aren’t outraged by the hundreds of voter suppression laws being passed by Republican legislatures in 43 states across the country. They must convince me that their silence about this isn’t a sign of their own complicity in this “Jim Crow in new clothes”, to quote Senator Raphael Warnock (D, Ga).

Over the short history of this country, it has been understood that political parties attract voters by virtue of their platforms, which were usually designed to show how much the party plans to do to help their voters when they are elected to office. When a political party loses an election, those in charge of said party have historically reviewed their platform and met with their voters to ascertain what changes could be made to attract more people to vote for them in the next election. Until now.

In 2021, Republicans have concluded that they cannot maintain their minority hold on government if all those eligible to vote are permitted to do so. They instead believe that making it as hard as possible for those they believe will be voting against them to cast a ballot is their only means of remaining in power, and have wasted no time in putting every roadblock they can in front of their own citizens, particularly those with Black and Brown skin.

Those in the Senate who purport to be liberals have to stand up for what is right, and that means immediately doing whatever is necessary to bring SR1 to the floor for a vote. Because Republicans have chosen voter suppression to platform modification, they will do what has worked for them since 2008 – invoke the word ‘filibuster’ followed by a demand for a 60-vote majority to pass any legislation. There is really no other way to go – the filibuster must be not simply changed,, but eliminated. Claims that the filibuster permits the minority to obstruct legislation they do not like and therefore “be careful what you wish for” is proof that the filibuster is designed as a means of obstruction.

A functioning democracy is always at risk of having a reversal of the party in power; that’s pretty much the point, right? In the United States, the minority has been given way too much power to stand in the way of majority rule, which is supposed to be the way our democracy works. While it is reasonable to allow those in the minority to express their opinion about legislation they disagree with, it is ridiculous to allow the party that lost all three branches of government in the last election to decide which legislation is going to pass and which is going to die because they don’t like it.

In fact, Republicans have used this ability to prevent Democratic administrations from enacting anything that the Democrats were elected into to office to initiate. Why is the losing party able to hold the winning team hostage by denying them the mandate they won in an election simply by stamping their feet and plugging their ears while repeating “La, la, la, la, la, I can’t hear you….”? The Senate, formerly considered ‘the world’s most deliberative body’ has been transformed into a two-headed monster; the one on the left has the only functioning brain, while the one on the right is a whiny little bitch.

The citizens of this country spoke loud and clear last November. We voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to lead us out of the mess that Trump and decades of Republican obstructionism brought us to. The Republicans need to get over the fact that they lost and deal with the mandate the American People gave to the Biden Administration. If they cannot do that, they should be drummed out of existence as a political force for decades to come, if not forever.

Joe Manchin (D, WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D, AZ) need to put on their grown-up pants and stop acting as though the Republicans have a shit left to give about anything other than their donors and their stock portfolios. If Senators Manchin and Sinema give a damn about the American people, they’ll stop pretending that the filibuster is anything other than a holdover from Reconstruction used to stymie any attempt at civil rights. Why do they and most on the right find it unacceptable to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour? Have any of them tried today to live on $290 per week (at the current federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr for a 40 hour work week)? That income may allow a high school student to put some funds aside towards college, but there is no independently living adult who can survive on under $1,200 per month in total income. Of course, those who are only making $7.25 per hour have the opportunity to apply for government subsidies for food, rent, heat (in the Northeast) and cash assistance, but why are the taxpayers forced to lift these folks out of poverty instead of requiring their employer to pay them a living wage?

The social safety net programs have been in the sights of Republicans for as long as I can remember, and it’s particularly galling since many of the working poor who need these programs to survive would be lifted out of poverty if they were simply paid a wage that met their cost of living. Why do so many in the Senate refuse to acknowledge that the below-poverty-level federal minimum wage is directly responsible for every dollar of social safety net funds needed to bring those families to a livable income?

No one working a full forty hour week should need government assistance to survive. Allowing businesses to pay so little to their employees benefits the business owners at the expense of their workers. Requiring all businesses to pay their employees a real, living wage lifts everyone up, freeing up trillions of tax dollars to fund infrastructure, climate remediation, green energy, healthcare and so much more. We all do better when we all do better.

Of course, many smaller businesses working with a smaller profit margin may be required to raise prices, and those who are the least profitable may end up closing, but we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Not all businesses are destined for success, and holding down workers’ pay for the exclusive benefit of the business owners perpetuates disparities that have effectively transferred massive wealth from the many to the few. The fact is, none of the people currently taking up seats in the Senate have any relevant experience within their own lives that compares with trying to survive on too little income week after week, month after month, year after year, without any reasonable expectation of a change until you die or retire, often on too little Social Security income. Apparently, Republican Senators (along with the two Democrats noted above) no longer have any capacity to empathize with those less fortunate than themselves. They lack any real ability to fathom what it’s like to live in a world that doesn’t include a huge inheritance or the good fortune of having your way paved by your predecessors without any input or talent on your part. These character flaws make them the wrong people to represent the vast majority of their own electorate. Their ivory towers have blinded them to what it’s like for the rest of us down her on the ground.

In order to lift the folks at the bottom of the income ladder up, those at the other end of the scale have to pay their fair share in taxes. Trillions of dollars in tax revenue are lost to loopholes, tax shelters and both legal and illegal tax avoidance by the top 0.1%. It is no longer tenable that the majority of IRS tax audits focuses on those claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Why not focus all that energy on those filers most likely to bring in the most in taxes, fees and penalties? Surely auditing one fraudulently filed 1040 by someone with billions in income would be more financially beneficial to the IRS than auditing thousands of low-income filers who did their own taxes and made an honest mistake?

Republicans have used their obstructionism in the Senate as proof that the Democrats can’t do anything when they’re in charge, convincing the slimmest of ‘majorities’ with the help of the tilted electoral college and Senate to put them back in charge. Once there, they prove again that they lack the intellectual and moral authority to actually govern, preferring instead to use rhetoric to keep their base engaged while doing nothing to benefit the citizens of the country. Power for the sake of power, as a means of maintaining power without regard for the will of the people, or majority rule. Republicans have gone all in on the Big Lie, and they’re using it to do everything possible to prevent anyone they deem undeserving from casting a ballot, especially people of color. They have to obstruct because they know that the people will keep Democrats in charge because Democrats get things done.

This is who the Republicans are. Racist to the core. Interested only in themselves. Those who chose to remain within their ranks need to acknowledge that this is their underlying reason for being there; taxes, abortion and guns notwithstanding.