The questions address their support for the filibuster. The questions address their distaste for democracy. The questions address their putative preference for bipartisanship. The questions address their responsibly to their constituents. The questions address their suitability for their jobs.
Why do we even have such a thing as the filibuster? It’s because most senators don’t think your vote should count. Am I being too harsh? No. All Republican senators oppose elimination of the filibuster. A significant number of Democratic senators feel the same. With the current 50/50 split, it only takes one dissident Democrat to keep this abomination in force. Even though many Democratic senators see being a team player and some of the issues at stake as sufficiently important to warrant at least temporarily avoiding the filibuster, two think their opinion more worthy than that of the overwhelming majority of Americans.
An overwhelming majority? Yep. Despite the 50/50 composition of the Senate, the Democratic half of the Senate represents 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half. Sixty senators, representing the 30 least populous states, are there to represent 24.13% of the U.S. population. Putting it another way: a little over two-thirds of the senate represent states which together comprise about a third of the population.
Also, I cannot understand why any serious American (non-Republican) would want to be associated with something having such a foul odor. While it was first employed before the Civil War, it became the favorite blunt instrument of the Jim Crow era. For generations it was used almost exclusively to block implementation of the 15th Amendment which enfranchised the former slaves. It isn’t in the Constitution but these people would vote against every part of the Constitution except the 2nd and 10th Amendments given the opportunity.
Not for the right reasons or soon enough but both of these egos appear headed to lobbying jobs following their next elections.
With my constant attention to the news, I doubt a day goes by without hearing our nation referred to as a democracy. Bat feces. Though the House of Representatives is elected by a direct vote, that is subverted by gerrymandering and voter suppression. And the House is the only part of the government that even pretends to be based on democratic ideas.
The Senate gives each state the same number of votes. That gives a voter in Wyoming 68 times the power of a voter in California. A current senator that won the seat with 67% received only 136,210 votes, 0ne-sixth of one percent the the total votes cast for all Senate seats in the latest election. And, with the existence of the filibuster, he can override the other 99 and 15-sixteenths of the voters. Democracy? Bull Dookey.
The presidency is, likewise, selected by an undemocratic system. Otherwise, George H.W. Bush would have been the last Republican president. Just think, were the presidency decided by a democratic system, we could have avoided at least 2 wars, including the longest in our history, and without the welfare for the corporations and the top one percent, commonly referred to as “tax cuts,” our national debt would have been a fraction of what those two Republican presidents burdened us with. Of the last welfare distribution, 83% went to the top 1%. Anytime you see the word democracy used to describe our government, replace it with the correct term: plutocracy.
What’s left? Oh yeah, the Supreme Court. The Founders were all men of wealth. They made certain that the government they created would protect that wealth. Most of that wealth was in land and in slaves to work that land. Mississippi had more millionaires than New York, but Virginia was, of course, by far the wealthiest state. The majority of wealth was was held by slave owners.
From its inception to the present, the Supreme Court has heavily favored property rights over civil or human rights, with a singular exception. That exception was the Warren Court. It ended segregation, declared Medicare, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act and abortion, among other things, to be constitutional. Many have heard of John Jay. One of the Founders, he was the first governor of New York, joined Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in negotiating the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Let me quote him: “Those who own the country ought to govern it.” The only way to interpret that is that the primary responsibility of the this government is to protect the wealth of the plutocrats.
No politician in this country should ever refer to it as democracy, except in jest or irony.
Back to the filibuster. Why would Manchin and Sinema support this anti-democratic piece of garbage while calling themselves ‘Big D’ Democrats? The excuse is that they are dedicated to bipartisanship. Spoiler alert – there is no such thing. Did they miss every word and act of Mitch McConnell? He has declared that he isn’t there to legislate, rather to block everything that Biden wants. I hope he is as successful in that quest as he was in his promise to make Obama a one-term president.
The claim that the filibuster encourages bipartisanship is absurd. Using either facts or logic leads to the obvious conclusion that it is the perfect mechanism for accomplishing the exact opposite. Bipartisanship is fools gold and the goal of fools.
I think that these two senators need to ask themselves why people voted for them. Did the electorate cast their votes for someone to maintain some arcane, antidemocratic, racist rules or to enact laws to help and protect their constituents?
I am not familiar enough with Sinema to know her motives but, given her constituency, she may be miscalculating her path to reelection.
As for Manchin, it appears he is enjoying the position of challenging the one in the Oval Office for the title of most powerful Joe inside the Beltway. Opposing legislation that provides sorely needed benefits for the voters in his state makes no sense, unless he has a very low opinion of the awareness and/or intelligence of the voters of West Virginia. As neither appears to hold any principle beyond their correct or incorrect determinations of their own self-interest, just buy them off. They each have their price.
Just find out what it is and pay them off. It’s not like they are not already on the receiving end of Washington’s bribery culture. Joe takes bribes from both individuals and PACs from Wall Street, law and real estate firms, along with others, of course. The same group lead the way for Kyrsten but her take from them is larger and the list is far longer.
If these two senators of the Democratic Party maintain their present positions, Biden will be seen as ineffective and the Republicans will gain control of the Senate and possibly the House. These two can accomplish what McConnell could not. Who do you prefer as Biden’s successor in 2024: Ivanka or Don, Jr. or perhaps Margerie Taylor Greene?
“If you found this educational, edifying, interesting or otherwise worth your time, this geezer would appreciate a little supplement to those Social Security checks, They forgot to factor in the cost of publishing a blog. I would like to continue being able to afford my daily cup of coffee and pound of caviar.”
Thank you,
