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From the eMail Bag: Fixing the Filibuster, Part 3

Jan 26th, 2010
by Tom.
1 comment

The Progress Report wrote:

Democracy Subverted


From: The Progress Report [progress@americanprogressaction.org]
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2010 10:10 AM
To: tom
Subject: Democracy Subverted

Follow Up Flag: Follow up
Flag Status: Red
CONGRESS

Democracy Subverted

Right-wing Subverts our Government

While it is now taken for granted than any major piece of legislation needs 60 votes to pass the Senate, this has not always been the case. Use of the filibuster– the minority’s tactic to halt action on a bill through endless debate –has skyrocketed in the past two decades, creating a de facto need for 60 votes to get anything done. It only requires 51 votes to pass any bill, but it takes 60 votes to invoke cloture to end debate and pass the bill. There are now double the number of cloture votes as there were a decade ago, and triple the numbers of 20 years ago As evidenced by the ongoing health care reform debate, the filibuster cripples the Senate’s ability to make progress. The filibuster also gives an undue amount of power to individual senators and allows them to exploit the process for their narrow interests, dictating policy outcomes. For instance, Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) threat to filibuster health care reform forced the removal of the public option and the Medicare buy-in, despite their tremendous popularity. Moreover, as Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) noted, the filibuster removes electoral accountability by giving the losing party the ability to obstruct the winning party’s agenda. “It’s a system in which the minority benefits if the government fails, and the minority has the power to ensure failure,” Center for American Progress Action Fund fellow Matt Yglesias noted. Under President Obama, the Republican minority has repeatedly used and abused the practice of filibusters to obstruct the progressive agenda. The House was able to pass a health care reform bill with a robust public option, a clean energy and greenhouse gas pollution reduction bill to fight climate change, and acomprehensive financial regulatory reform bill with majority votes. However, because of the filibuster, each bill has languished in the Senate.

The Senate minority has the power to ensure the failure of our government. Never before in the history of the United States has a major political party set out to purposefully ensure the failure of the government. The right-wing nut jobs are forcing every bill in Congress to a 60 vote margin, and impossible bar to reach, and are using this tool to bring down the President.

This unprecedented use of the filibuster is obvious in its intent. The Republicans find themselves, as a result of the horrible abuses of power by President George Bush, in the smallest minority they have seen in several generations. They are striking back with everything they can throw at the Democrats from the filibuster, to heckling at town hall meetings, to employing their own cable television network (Fox) to propel their talking points and other proapganda. It is time that the Democratic majority fights back.

I have emailed my Senators urging them to convince the Democratic majority to employ the “Nuclear Option”, a parlimentary proceedure that is not a Senate rule, but has been used in the past to overcome filibusters. It is time to act. Here is my email to my two Senators.

The Senate Republicans are abusing the use of the filibuster. When they use the filibuster they are not honestly debating issues, instead they are obstinately refusing to listen to our side and voting “no” on any legislation no matter what concessions have been made to them. The result is that a small minority is holding Congress hostage until they get every single thing they want and that is not the way it is supposed to work.

It is time that Senate Democrats stood up to the right-wings insistence on a 60 vote supermajority and take direct aim at the abuse of the filibuster. To do this, I recommend the use of the so called “Nuclear Option”. If you can get a simple majority to vote on a point of order challenging the constitutionality of the filibuster, then the filibuster can be defeated. I strongly recommend this action. The Republican minority must realize that elections matter, and that they cannot suffer the Senate to abide by a minority that could conceivably be as small as one Senator. Please stop this abuse, convince the Democratic Senators to use the nuclear option.

Please do something, call or write your Senators.

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Limbaugh Disses Haiti, Accuses Obama of Using Info for Campaign

Jan 14th, 2010
by Tom.
1 comment

Re: Limbaugh: ‘We’ve Already Donated To Haiti, It’s Called US Income Tax’ (VIDEO), Huffington Post | Nicholas Graham First Posted: 01-14-10 08:14 AM | Updated: 01-14-10 09:04 AM

Well, it didn’t take long for conservative firebrand Rush Limbaugh to use the crisis in Haiti to attack President Obama politically. On his radio show yesterday Limbaugh said the earthquake in Haiti will play right into Obama’s hands by allowing him to play up his “compassionate” and “humanitarian” credentials, and that the President will use this crisis to “boost his credibility with the black community.”

As if that weren’t enough, Limbaugh also pivoted off a caller who complained about Obama directing the public to the White House website to find charitable organizations operating in Haiti to promote a conspiracy theory that finding these charities via the White House website puts your money at risk of not reaching Haitians.

Limbaugh also seems to feel we’ve done enough already for Haiti: “We’ve already donated to Haiti. It’s called the U.S. income tax.”

Rush Limbaugh is showing the entire nation the stuff he’s made of. He is once again defining himself. This time he is calling for citizens of the US to stop donating to the ravaged country of Haiti. Limbaugh claims that your donations through the official White House website will somehow wind up in the hands of the President to be used for some imaginary nefarious deeds. He says that Obama will use this charity to “burnish his credibility in both light-skinned and black-skinned African-American communities”.

Audio:

http://videos.mediaite.com/embed/player/?content=2D6YL91RJ1ZQJH0X&widget_type_cid=svp 

http://videos.mediaite.com/embed/player/?content=5XW3R409T8R7Y6C4&widget_type_cid=svp

Aren’t African-American communities the same as plain ole American communities? In my town, black people live next door to white people. We are just neighbors, just a community.

I think that Limbaugh has gone too far this time. I think the accusations that Obama will use the money collected at WhiteHouse.gov in other ways than advertised should be investigated as slander.

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Tea Baggers Plan Another Opportunity to Define Themselves, Their Party (Updated)

Jan 5th, 2010
by Tom.
2 comments

New! UPDATE below. Scroll down.

Re: Tea Party planning national strike – ContraCostaTimes.com, James Rufus Koren, Staff Writer, Posted: 01/02/2010 10:03:28 PM PST, Updated: 01/02/2010 10:17:17 PM PST 

As President Barack Obama’s first year in office draws to a close, Tea Party groups are planning to mark the occasion with a 

TAXEVIL

Don't taxes also pay for Defense?

national strike – something local leaders say could demonstrate the conservative groups’ burgeoning strength. 

The strike, planned for Jan. 20, the first anniversary of Obama’s inauguration, is being promoted online through Facebook and Web sites run by various national Tea Party groups. 

I love it. I wish they would hit the streets every day. The more they wave those hate filled signs in front of the cameras, the more the nation sees just what kind of folks make up the Republican party. 

What’s even better is that these tea party protests are funded by huge PR firms and some of the nation’s wealthiest corporatists. They, too, wish to be associated with the hate and bigotry that these protesters proudly spew in such a public forum. 

What’s even better than that is the picture that the public will get when GOP leaders, who are not far from being fringe whack-jobs themselves, jump at the chance to get out in front of this parade of clowns and fools. 

But, I can understand their intentions. The tea baggers want to create some sort of tidal wave of sentiment against President Obama by using the same tactics that worked so well for the hippies back in the late 1960’s. What they fail to realize is that while they despise having a Democrat in office, especially a black Democrat, their basic underlying premise or cause does not share any of the same sense of moral rightness as did the anti-war protests of the sixties. They have no high ground and are unconvincing. I do understand what they are trying to accomplish, but they are going about it in a manner that reflects only the worst possible image of themselves and their cause. 

What should they do to polish up their image and create a more main-stream, user-friendly atmosphere that would attract the moderates? For a start, kill the racial undertones and dog whistles. Leave the guns at home. Stop portraying President Obama as a Nazi bent on killing your grandma. All that stuff scares people away. 

If they are against high taxes then they should protest a specific tax while offering a better solution, rather than protesting taxes in general. That tactic is just plain stupid. Everyone knows that we cannot totally eliminate our local community revenue. We would be without the protection of police and fire and the majority would never go for that. 

What the organizers want this time is a nation wide boycott on…well, on everything. Stop buying everything. For a day. 

“What’s proposed is a nationwide strike by all Tea Party members, no matter where they are,” said Lloyd Rekstad, an organizer of the Yucaipa Tea Party. “The idea is to strike where we are, in our communities, at our employment, to make an impact that will be diverse and spread out.” 

That would mean, Rekstad said, not going to work, not buying groceries, not going to restaurants or movie theaters. 

“You just stay home,” he said, “so that the person participating would become, for that one day, a nonentity – that they would give no support to the economy.” 

Another thing they could do to bring in more supporters would be to come up with a better plan than a nation wide boycott. Boycotts don’t work. 

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UPDATE, Jan, 7 2010 

The Huffington Post has run another story on the Tea-bagger strike planned for January 20th. Tea Party Strike Led By GOP Campaign Strategist, Mortgage Lender, Alex Brant-Zawadzki Posted: December 21, 2009 01:11 AM, Produced by HuffPost’s Eyes & Ears Citizen Journalism Unit 

The Tea Party movement is gearing up its membership for a major nationwide action in several weeks, an initiative that they claim will demonstrate the seriousness of their cause. Their tactic: Doing nothing. 

On Jan. 20, 2010, Tea Partiers hope to bring America to a screeching halt. According to the inaugural blog post by the National Strike’s Operations Director Allen Hardage, succinctly titled “National Strike-We The People Strike Back against an out of control government”: 

“We The People will strike at the life blood of that parasitic congress by denying them the tax revenue for one day. We will not work. We will not shop, or buy anything that is taxed. We will not renew any licenses, tags, file any government filings and we will not remain silent. On This day we will fire a shot across the bow of Congress that we rule them not the other way around. 

Excuse me, but what about the other 99% of America who will continue to buy gas, go to work, pay their babysitters, etc? These fools can’t see that a nation wide boycott is the most ignorant methods available to get their message out. It may not be the boycott they are after, but hte news coverage of it. In that case they will have a great oppertunity to show off their hate and bigotry. 

The danger of this, of course,  is that they will wind up going to the well too often. Their antics were shocking back in August, repetative in October, and now are becoming boring. 

The author goes on to explain how the National Strike’s Operations Director Allen Hardage is connected to the big money. The planned Tea Party for January 2oth is just another GOP strategy disguised as “grassroots”: 

Hardage is a Republican strategist who is currently running a campaign “for his long time friend Stephen Northington,” according to Hardage’s LinkedIn profile. Northington is running for Georgia Insurance Commissioner and is described as “the only licensed Insurance Professional in the race for the Republican nomination.” Hardage’s directorship of the National Strike was announced on the strike’s Ning group by the Strike 120 group’s creator, Ken Cook. 

Cook is a senior mortgage lender at mortgage broker AmericaHomeKey and worked from 2001-2009 at Novation Mortgage, where he specialized in “start-up real estate investors, commercial funding, super jumbo (luxury homes), and people just like you,” he writes on his LinkedIn profile. In 2002, Novation, then called NovaStar Home Mortgage — and two other lenders — was hit with a $46 million judgment on charges of making false mortgage rate postings on the website Bankrate.com. Cook was NovaStar’s Director of Operations at the time. Alongside his Tea Party duties, Cook also currently acts as National Vice Chairman for the Patriot Caucus, a conference scheduled in April to immediately follow the 2010 Tax Day Tea Party protests in Washington D.C. 

Eric Odom, co-organizer of the Patriot Caucus, is executive director of American Liberty Alliance, which is a host of the 2010 Tax Day Tea Party along with FreedomWorks, a purportedly grassroots organization run by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey. FreedomWorks spent the summer working alongside American Liberty Alliance in opposing everything from the economic stimulus to health care reform. Cook is on American Liberty Alliance’s Georgia Leadership Team. 

I wish to thank Alex Brant-Zawadzki for his hard work digging up this information.

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