tagged w/ filibuster
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Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul announced Wednesday that he would filibuster any attempt by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to bring the Protect IP Act (PIPA) to a vote.
PIPA, the Senate version of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), is being sponsored by Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy and pushed by Reid as a “job creator.”
The bills would ostensibly crack down on online copyright infringement, but critics contend that the legislation would also challenge free speech and the ability of large websites to function.
Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, the sponsor of SOPA, announced Tuesday that the bill would continue to undergo markup in the House Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, in February.
http://runrandrun.com/legislation/rand-paul-promises-to-filibuster-censor-the-internet-legislation/Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul announced Wednesday that he would filibuster any... more
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My idea conjured after watching this..
http://current.com/shows/the-young-turks/videos/cenk-on-peter-schiffs-faulty-arguments-thats-how-they-rob-you
Here it is..I have an Idea for a Filibusterer, is it legal, during a filibuster, to bring out a giant white dry erase board and write down Your legit argument in bold text to make sure everyone can see, while the other talks, and talks, and talks, reads a cookbook, and talk nonsense. You wouldn't be technically interrupting, just subtly stating your side. and the lobbyist have the choice of reading your statement or listening to bullshit. Would the white dry erase idea work?-ThanksMy idea conjured after watching this..... more
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Fallows: "Since Scott Brown's victory over Martha Coakley and the end of the Democrats' 60-vote majority, Mitch McConnell has flat-out won, and the prospects of doing even routine public business have lost, by making the requirement for 60 votes for anything seem normal rather than exceptional."Fallows: "Since Scott Brown's victory over Martha Coakley and the end of the... more
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Cabal
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added this
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4 months ago
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"Even before Barack Obama took the oath office, Republicans leaders, conservative think-tanks and right-wing pundits were calling for total obstruction of the new president's agenda. Bill Kristol, who helped block Bill Clinton's health care reform attempt in 1993, called for history to repeat on the Obama stimulus - and everything else. Pointing with pride to the Clinton economic program which received exactly zero GOP votes in either House, Kristol in January 2009 advised:
"That it made, that it made it so much easier to then defeat his health care initiative. So, it's very important for Republicans who think they're going to have to fight later on health care, fight later on maybe on some of the bank bailout legislation, fight later on on all kinds of issues."
And so, as the chart above reveals, it came to pass.
Time after time, President Obama could count the votes he received from Congressional Republicans on the fingers (usually the middle one) of one hand"
Lost of information at link...."Even before Barack Obama took the oath office, Republicans leaders, conservative... more
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Senate Democrats block Boehner debt ceiling plan after House approval
By Alan Silverleib and Tom Cohen, CNN
July 29, 2011 8:31 p.m. EDT
PART ONE...
Washington (CNN) -- Speaker John Boehner's plan to raise the nation's the debt ceiling and slash government spending narrowly passed the House on Friday and then was blocked by Senate Democrats, setting up a weekend of negotiations to seek a deal that would avoid a potential federal default next week.
The Senate vote was 59-41 to table the measure, which effectively kills it unless Democrats decide to bring it up again.
Earlier, Boehner's proposal was approved by the House in a sharply polarized 218-210 vote that was delayed by a day while the speaker rounded up support from wary tea party conservatives. No Democrats supported the measure, and 22 of the 240 members of the Republican majority also opposed it.
Even though it was blocked in the Senate, the Boehner plan now is the Republican negotiating position for hammering out a deal with congressional Democrats and President Barack Obama to avert a possible government default next week.
Friday's House vote was a critical test of Boehner's control over his tea party-infused GOP caucus. The speaker was forced to quell a right-wing revolt over the measure after a number of members complained that it doesn't do enough to shrink the size of government and stem the tide of Washington's red ink.
Boehner, R-Ohio, managed to sway several of those members by including a provision requiring congressional passage of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution before the debt ceiling can be extended through the end of 2012.
In his floor speech before the vote, Boehner called the proposal imperfect but necessary, and he criticized Obama and congressional Democrats for rejecting all deficit reduction measures passed by the House so far.
"We've tried to do our level best ... but some people continue to say no," Boehner said, adding: "I stuck my neck out a mile to try to get an agreement with the president of the United States."
His voice rising to a shout, Boehner continued to cheers and applause from fellow Republicans: "It is time for this administration and the other party across the aisle -- put something on the table. Tell us where you are."
Democratic leaders vehemently object both to the balanced budget amendment and the requirement of a second debt ceiling vote before the next election. They argue that reaching bipartisan agreement on another debt ceiling hike during an election year could be nearly impossible, and that short-term extensions of the limit could further destabilize the economy.
Earlier in the day, Obama urged Senate Democrats and Republicans to take the lead in the congressional deliberations.
Boehner's plan "has no chance of becoming law," Obama said. "The time for putting party first is over. The time for compromise on behalf of the American people is now. ... It's important for everybody to step up and show the leadership that the American people expect."
"This is not a situation where the two parties are miles apart," the president insisted. But "we are almost out of time."
Obama -- sleepless in recent nights due to the crisis, according to a senior administration official -- urged Americans to contact their members of Congress "to keep the pressure on Washington." Phone lines on Capitol Hill were jammed Friday as people from coast to coast tried to weigh in on the debate.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, has been pushing his own plan to raise the debt limit, though he will need to win over at least seven Senate Republicans to win the 60 votes necessary to overcome a certain filibuster.
Reid announced Friday morning that he intended to "take action" on a Senate bill by the end of the day. Later, he complained on the Senate floor that Republicans would effectively filibuster his proposal by requiring a 60-vote super-majority in the 100-member chamber to support the start of debate on it. It was unclear when Reid would attempt to hold that vote.
Reid also blasted Boehner's decision to include a mandatory balanced budget amendment provision in the GOP plan, calling the addition of "even more stuff in this right-wing leaning bill. ... It's really hard to comprehend."
CONTINUED...Senate Democrats block Boehner debt ceiling plan after House approval
By Alan... more
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"would require those who want to filibuster a nomination or a bill to appear on the floor and actually speak."
Don't think this will get very far but I absolutely love the idea.
Washington (CNN) -- Senate Democrats on Wednesday introduced legislation that would tighten rules on the use of the filibuster in the legislative chamber.
In a nod to the classic movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey, reintroduced his "Mr. Smith Bill," which would require those who want to filibuster a nomination or a bill to appear on the floor and actually speak."would require those who want to filibuster a nomination or a bill to appear on... more
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http://figrd.blogspot.com
Are you as angry about the broken Senate as we are? In the movies, in order to filibuster, Senators have to stand in the Senate and make their case to the American people. But in the modern Senate, a filibuster takes no such act of principle or courage. Senators can filibuster simply by placing a phone call to a clerk and heading off to dinner!
This January 5th, we have a chance to change the rules of the Senate, and make Senators engage in an all night talk-a-thon in order to block legislation or nominations. We can make the filibuster a real filibuster, and put an end to obstruction for the sake of obstruction. The key is to adopt new rules on the first day the Senate convenes next year, when only a simple majority of Senators is required for a rules change.
We’re fighting with some dedicated colleagues to make this happen, but to get across the finish line, we need members of the Daily Kos community to show their support. You can do so by signing the petition Daily Kos has created in support of making the filibuster real.
Senators need to hear from their constituents on this. As such, we will use your support of this effort to make the case to other Senators that we must reform the filibuster on January 5th.
Join us, and Daily Kos, in support of making the filibuster a real filibuster. We can put an end to obstruction for the sake of obstruction, but your support is key.
To all members of the Senate in the 112th Congress:
Make the filibuster real. Require Senators who filibuster to stay on the floor and explain to the American people why they think they are right and a majority of Senators are wrong.
Keep fighting,
sign petition at linkhttp://figrd.blogspot.com
Are you as angry about the broken Senate as we are? In the... more
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Senate Democrats met for their second caucus meeting about reforming chamber rules Friday, beginning to converge on three changes that supporters hope will increase transparency and prevent a small minority from blocking an up-or-down vote on measures.
"This is a two-step process," Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), one of the leaders of the effort, told The Huffington Post in an interview after the caucus meeting.
"The first step is that we need to recognize that under the Constitution, we can...adopt rules with 51 votes and also cut off debate on rules that we want to adopt with 51 votes. ... The second step is building the consensus with 51 senators on what they want to actually be in the rules. ... And that's the tough business we're in right now."
According to Udall, bipartisan support is beginning to build around three proposals:
1) No longer allowing senators to filibuster the motion to proceed and instead allow a set amount of time for debate
2) ending secret holds
3) stopping filibustering senators from hiding behind quorum calls and forcing them to speak up if they're blocking a bill.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/17/changes-senate-rules-filibuster-transparency_n_798523.htmlSenate Democrats met for their second caucus meeting about reforming chamber rules... more
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By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a self-described socialist who caucuses with the Democrats, became a folk hero to progressives when he took to the floor of the Senate for nearly nine hours on Friday to speak against the plan to extend tax cuts for the wealthy in exchange for extending unemployment benefits for millions of workers and extending tax breaks for the middle class.
On the Senate floor, Sanders accused his Republican colleagues of wanting to roll back the New Deal:
And that is, they want to move this country back into the 1920s, when essentially we had an economic and political system which was controlled by Big Money interests, where working people in the middle class had no programs to sustain them when things got bad, when they got old, when they got sick, when labor unions were very hard to come by because of anti-worker legislation.
Senate video servers were overwhelmed as over 12,000 people tried to watch online, John Nichols of The Nation reports.
“Instead of us having to compromise all the time, maybe it’s time of for some of the Republicans to start compromising,” Sanders told host Laura Flanders in an interview with GritTV. (Watch the video.)
Sanders said that over the past few days his office had received 2,000 calls congratulating him for his stance.
Despite Sanders’ eloquent appeal to level the economic playing field, the Senate seems poised to move on the Obama tax deal, notes Steve Benen at Washington Monthly the plan will fare in the House. The House Democratic caucus rejected the plan on Thursday in an unofficial vote.
Some Democratic House members have voiced their frustrations with the president. Still, Benen thinks it’s unlikely that House Democrats have any intention of scuttling the bill. Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats realize they will probably get an even less favorable bill if they wait until the Republicans take over control of the House.
Ed Brayton of the Michigan Messenger notes that while the two houses of Congress were negotiating, more than one million Americans had already lost their unemployment benefits at the end of November and hundreds of thousands more stand to lose their benefits in the coming weeks.
Roger Bybee of Working In These Times points out that the so-called “99-ers”, people who have been out of work for over 99 weeks, will not be helped by the proposed compromise on unemployment benefits extensions. Approximately 2 million people have already hit the 99-week wall on UI benefits. The so-called Grand Compromise won’t stop their benefits from running out.
The proposed deal, dubbed “benefits-for-billionaires” by GritTV host Laura Flanders, would also effectively end the Build America Bonds program, a program that allows cash-strapped states to borrow to maintain public services. As labor activist and commentator Bill Fletcher pointed out in an interview with Flanders, ending the bonds program is an attack on public sector retirement benefits. If credit dries up, the states will be unable to meet their obligations, such as retirement benefits promised to public sector workers. This is backdoor union-busting. If the state has no money, its contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.
Taibbi vs. the Vampire Squid
Chris Lehmann of The Nation has a positive review of journalist Matt Taibbi’s new book, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America. The book is Taibbi’s wide-ranging take on the meltdown of the American economy from the housing bubble to the credit crisis and beyond. The Vampire Squid is Goldman Sachs, to whom Taibbi allots an outsize share of the blame for derailing the U.S. economy.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a... more
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Recently News Updates You can call it a filibuster, a very long speech. I’m not here to set any great records. In one of the Senate’s rarer spectacles, Vermont’s Mr Bernie Sanders (I) delivered Friday delivered a day-long speech from the floor, railing against the tax-cut deal President Mr Obama struck with congressional Republicans.Recently News Updates You can call it a filibuster, a very long speech. I’m not... more
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Senate Democrats failed Thursday to win a procedural vote to open debate on a bill that would provide medical benefits and compensation for emergency workers who were first on the scene of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The motion for cloture, or to begin debate, needed 60 votes to pass due to a Republican filibuster, but fell short at 57-42 in favor.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg reacted to Thursday's result by calling it "a tragic example of partisan politics trumping patriotism."
"I urge Senate Republicans to reconsider their wrong-headed political strategy and allow the bill to come to the floor for a vote," Bloomberg said in a statement.
Full story here: http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/12/09/senate.9.11.responders/index.html?hpt=T1Senate Democrats failed Thursday to win a procedural vote to open debate on a bill... more
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Ed. Note: This blog is available for any organization or outlet to republish or excerpt. Please feel free to share it widely!
by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Undue corporate influence over U.S. elections has been a serious problem in American politics for decades, but this year’s Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission made things worse. Worst of all, we may never know the extent of the damage.
Citizens United freed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money backing specific political candidates, and without congressional action, those expenditures can be completely anonymous. Major corporations are already capitalizing on the new legal landscape by the millions, and the public doesn’t really know who is buying what influence or why.
That’s why The Media Consortium will be carefully watching the effects of this ruling in the run up to this year’s midterm elections. Every day through Nov. 4, we’ll bring you some of the best independent reporting on the effects of corporate spending in an attempt to measure just how widespread the effect of Citizens United will be on this—and the next—election. Keep your eye on “Campaign Cash” as we follow this issue in the coming weeks. If you want to tweet about it, use the hashtag #campaigncash.
The impact of Citizens United
As Harvard University Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig explains in an interview with The Nation’s Christopher Hayes, the Citizens United v. FEC decision represents one of many ways that corporations buy political favors.
Prior to the ruling, companies couldn’t spend money to directly advocate the election of a particular political candidate during election season. They could form Political Action Committees (PACs) to support or attack specific candidates, but those PACs had to be funded by individuals who worked for the company and couldn’t be funded from the corporation’s treasury directly. The executives of Goldman Sachs, for instance, could band together to form GoldmanPAC and spend their money on whatever candidates they wished—and many corporate employees exercised that right and spent freely on elections through their corporate PACs.
Now corporations can spend as much as they want and actual corporate funds—not just organized individuals—can also be deployed, making massive amounts of corporate cash eligible for political purchasing.
But the scariest part of Citizens United, as Lessig emphasizes, is the money that isn’t spent. That is, if a firm makes it known that they are willing spend millions of dollars to fight any politician who opposes them on a particular policy issue, representatives and senators might begin changing their voting behavior in Congress before the company actually has to put up the cash.
And ultimately, Citizens United didn’t just legalize unlimited corporate expenses on elections. It also allows those expenses to be anonymous. If companies launder their political cash through a front group, that third-party spender doesn’t have to disclose who its donors are.
This isn’t your local Chamber of Commerce
As Harry Hanbury details for GRITtv, this laundering scheme is essentially the business model for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce– a lobbying powerhouse in the nation’s capital. Don’t be fooled by its name—the U.S. Chamber has almost nothing to do with the local small business coalitions who help strengthen local economies.
As Hanbury notes, 40 percent of the U.S. Chamber’s 2008 funding came from just 26 corporations. The group represents many of the nation’s largest and most irresponsible corporations, from those responsible for the financial meltdown on Wall Street to BP, the company that spilled millions of barrels worth of oil in the Gulf this summer. The Chamber’s branding allows them to disguise their political as a coalition of local businesses while it does dirty work for corporate titans.
When BP was publicly promising to do everything in its power to fix the massive oil disaster it created in the Gulf of Mexico, it was also funneling money to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And what was the Chamber up to? It was lobbying furiously to protect BP from new rules that would force the company to pay for oil disaster clean-up. The Wall Street banks did the same thing as financial reform legislation moved through Congress, and companies never have to disclose these expenditures to the public.
So it’s no surprise that the Chamber responded to Citizens United by immediately announcing a 40 percent boost in its political spending operations. So much corporate money then flowed into the Chamber that the group chose to boost this budget again by 50 percent, allocating $75 million for its 2010 war chest. So far, the Chamber’s ads have favored Republican’s 93 percent of the time. No entity spends more on politics than the Chamber—not even the political parties themselves.
Corporations top the list of big election spenders
But while the future of corporate spending in campaigns looks bleak after Citizens United, corporations are still barred from contributing directly to political campaigns. A company might take out a television ad attacking Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), but it can’t make unlimited contributions directly to Grayson’s challenger, Republican Dan Webster.
Nevertheless, corporate employees and company PACs have already been spending lavishly on elections for decades. In a feature for Mother Jones, Dave Gilson compiles the 75 biggest political spenders, both companies and trade groups, from 1989 through 2010, and breaks them down by industry. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley are all among the top 20 most extravagant political spenders—but the American Bankers Association, a trade group that all four belong to, is also in the top 10. If you’re wondering how Wall Street was able to secure its massive taxpayer bailout in the face of widespread voter outrage, this is your answer.
To soften the Citizens United blow, Congress has been debating the Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act, which would require companies to disclose all of their political expenditures as well as requiring front-groups like the Chamber to list the identities and amounts of its donors. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Christopher Van Hollen (D-MD) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), cleared the House this summer but was stymied by a Republican filibuster in the Senate.
Undoing the damage dealt by Citizens United through something like the DISCLOSE Act will help, but it won’t make our democracy totally safe from corporate abuse. As Lessig notes, the day before the decision was handed down, U.S. election financing was already encouraging rampant corruption and in need of serious reform.
Lessig suggests banning political expenditures by corporations altogether, and placing a hard cap on the amount that individuals can contribute. By limiting individual donations to $100, the ability of corporate PACs to funnel cash into the political process would be thwarted.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the mid-term elections and campaign financing by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit The Media Consortium for more articles on these issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.Ed. Note: This blog is available for any organization or outlet to republish or... more
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The Senate needs to fix the filibuster, which is an antiquated provision in Senate procedure that requires a 60-vote supermajority to pass legislation, confirm nominees or even perform some of the most mundane parliamentary tasks.
In the 50s and 60s, the filibuster was used to keep racist, Jim Crow laws on the books. It was used to prevent the Senate from passing anti-lynching laws.
And yesterday, due to the filibuster, the Senate was unable to even take a vote on the legislative repeal of the discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy, which prevents gay, lesbian and bisexual soldiers from serving their country openly.
Tell the Senate: It's time to fix the filibuster. Click here to automatically add your name to the petition.
It wasn't just DADT that was denied a vote yesterday. The underlying bill, which was filibustered in part to prevent the repeal of DADT from getting a vote, was the National Defense Authorization Act that authorizes funding for our military.
This means that in the middle of two wars, the U.S. Senate was unable to even discuss a bill to fund the troops.
There is good reason to be skeptical about how much we spend on our military and to doubt the merits of our military actions. And we must not fall into the conventional stupidity of equating support for the men and women in our military with the amount of money one is willing to burn in the American war machine.
But there is no good reason to think that a minority of Senators intent on a partisan strategy of obstructionism should be able to prevent these issues from being decided (one way or another) by a majority vote of their peers when our military is engaged in two wars.
Yesterday was one of the clearest examples yet of the degree to which the Senate is broken, and how the filibuster is the cause of such dysfunction.
Click to automatically sign our petition to the Senate. It reads:
"I am writing today to demand that you support Senate rules reform and fix the filibuster at the beginning of the next Congress."
The good news is that, contrary to popular belief, the filibuster isn't some immutable part of the Senate. The filibuster isn't in the Constitution — in fact it's the product of a historical accident. Not only that, the rules governing the filibuster have been changed twice before.
For the first time in 30 years, there is growing momentum to change the filibuster rules in the Senate again. This can be done with a simple majority vote on the first day of the next Senate session.
With different rules in the Senate, we might be celebrating the end of DADT, not to mention dozens of progressive policies passed by the House and killed in the Senate.
So we cannot allow the opportunity to fix the Senate pass by without pushing for reform.
Tell the Senate: It's time to fix the filibuster. Click here to automatically add your name to our petition.
Thank you for working for a better world.
P.S. Some progressives oppose efforts to reform the filibuster because they anticipate times when the filibuster will be used by a progressive minority to stop the overreach of a conservative majority.
If you look at the totality of how the filibuster has been used, it has on rare occasion achieved tactical success for progressives. But on the whole it has proved a strategic disaster for those who fight for social change.
The filibuster systematically works against those who want the government to function, who want to see our legislators address problems and fix things, and who want the government to move us past old prejudices and hateful laws written in the bad blood of our forbears.
And given the craven, callous disregard of Senate Republicans for the multiple crises we face as a nation, given their utter willingness to place political ambition and partisan gain over the need to legislate, is there any doubt that they will have the slightest scruples in eliminating the filibuster when its to their advantage?
Rather than endure additional years of dysfunction in one of the most important institutions of our Republic, we should address the problem on our own terms.The Senate needs to fix the filibuster, which is an antiquated provision in Senate... more
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Momentum is building to reform Senate rules that allow silent filibusters and force a 60-vote requirement for virtually any action, interviews with Democratic candidates and sitting senators indicate.
Democratic candidates said that they hear regularly from voters about abuse of the parliamentary tactic, which is likely to come up as the first vote new senators face in 2011. The supermajority requirement in the Senate has become such an obstacle to reform that it infiltrates policy discussions at every step. Last week at the Netroots Nation political conference, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) gathered environmental writers to discuss energy legislation; the first few questions were related to energy, the rest of the conversation was dominated by the filibuster.
"The use of the filibuster and the way it's led to backroom deals has created the impression in the heartland that the Senate is dysfunctional," said Jack Conway, a Democratic candidate facing Republican Rand Paul in Kentucky.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/26/momentum-for-senate-filib_n_659821.htmlMomentum is building to reform Senate rules that allow silent filibusters and force a... more
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Unemployment myths, lies, and distortions
This morning, President Obama made remarks supporting the unemployment benefits extension. On Friday, July 16, about eighty unemployed people and their supporters turned out in downtown Pittsburgh to rally for that extension. I had hoped for at least twice that number, but those who did attend were strong and determined. The reaction from passers-by drove home the unfortunate point that the Republican politics of distraction is in full force.
Read more . . . . http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-14931-Pittsburgh-Public-Policy-Examiner~y2010m7d19-Unemployment-myths-lies-and-distortionsUnemployment myths, lies, and distortions
This morning, President Obama made remarks... more
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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
On July 4th, Americans are supposed to celebrate their independence. We may no longer have to worry about a greedy, distant monarch. But our country is still held in thrall to powerful interests that prize profit over individuals and their freedom—the energy industry comes to mind. As Jason Mark puts it at AlterNet:
“We’re in an abusive relationship and unable to leave our abuser. The plight of the people in Louisiana proves the point. Louisianans have been punched in the face by the hand that feeds them, and yet their biggest worry is that the oil and gas industry is going to walk out the door and leave them.”
Where’s the love?
It’s clear that BP, for instance, isn’t playing carefully with our country or its resources. At Mother Jones, David Corn relates the latest example of the company’s callousness. Its recovery plan had no stipulations about handling even a small storm like the one that stopped clean-up this week. It did, however, include plans to save sea life that hasn’t lived in the Gulf for millions of years. As Corn put it, the company was “prepared for walruses, not prepared for hurricanes.”
The biggest problem, of course, is that BP wasn’t prepared to handle a blow-out to begin with. The leak has gone on for so long that governmental officials are now taking unprecedented measures to protect the wildlife most vulnerable to its effects. Beth Buczynski reports at Care2 that official are going to dig up about 700 sea turtle nests on Alabama and Florida beaches that are at risk from the oil.
“Once the eggs have hatched, the young turtles will be released in darkness on Florida’s Atlantic beaches into oil-free water,” she writes. “Translocation of nests on this scale has never been attempted before.”
Halliburton
No matter how badly these companies treat us, it seems we can’t get rid of them. Take Halliburton. The company has latched its talons into the country and will not let go. It is second only to BP in shouldering responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon spill. As Jason Mark reports for the Earth Island Journal, just before the oil spill, Halliburton took over Boots & Coots, a company that deals with oil-well blowouts; that company now has a contract with BP to help with the relief well.
“Halliburton is essentially making money from causing the accident and then helping to repair it,” Mark writes. “Halliburton’s many-fingered tentacles is just the latest illustration of how powerful the company is.”
Wimpy Washington
Washington isn’t strong enough to fight back against that sort of corporate power. Over the past year, energy interests have whittled down the climate change legislation to a tepid half-step. Right now it looks most likely that a bill that passes will regulate only the utilities sector.
“We believe we have compromised significantly, and we’re prepared to compromise further,” Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told Politico this week after a White House meeting on the bill.
“If you’re looking for the sorry state of American energy politics distilled into one line, there it is,” writes Jonathan Hiskes at Grist. “Kerry fights harder for clean energy than just about any national politician.”
Still, if anything passes the Senate, Washington will celebrate. As Aaron Wiener explains at the Washington Independent, “For all the disappointment among environmentalists over the repeated compromises Democrats have made on climate legislation to win over moderates, some argue that a utilities-only cap would achieve most of the goals of an economy-wide carbon pricing scheme. The question now is whether Democratic leaders in the Senate can muster 60 votes for even a weakened bill to overcome a Republican filibuster.”
Our friends abroad
On an international level, our governing bodies might be doing a better job, but not by much. Inter Press Service reports that the countries at the meeting promised to scale back taxpayer subsidies of fossil fuels. Even that promise is limited, however. “Countries agree to phase out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” but each country decides what those are,” IPS reports. “Some countries like Japan, Australia, Italy and others have already said they don’t have any.”
And at Earth Island Journal, Ron Johnson heard a different story.
Johnson spoke to Kim Carstensen, who leads the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Climate Initiative, who compared this meeting’s report to that of the last G20 summit and found that climate issues had dropped off the radar. “There were eight references to clean energy in the final report from Pittsburgh (the last G20 Summit) and they have been completely vacuum cleaned,” he said. “That is kind of scary.”
Fight back
In situations like this, it takes massive pressure from outside to move the political apparatus forward. At AlterNet, Heetan Kalan has some ideas about how to progress—reach beyond the environmental community; enlist “doctors, nurses, public health officials and patients speaking out about the connection between consumers of coal energy and their immediate health concerns.” Kalan writes:
“After all, climate change is not solely an environmental problem — it is a human/planetary problem. If we are going to rely on a small base of environmentalists to carry us through this crisis, we are in trouble. Our spokespeople on this issue have to come from a wide spectrum of citizens and leaders.”
Certainly, they have to come from somewhere, and as Steve Benen writes at The Washington Monthly, whoever is speaking on this issue now, they’re not speaking loud enough.
“Lawmakers aren’t facing much in the way of public pressure,” he writes. “The polls look encouraging, suggesting the public is inclined to back the Democratic proposals, but that support hasn’t translated into aggressive advocacy — phone calls to lawmakers’ offices, letter-writing campaigns, district meetings, sizable rallies, etc….If engaged constituents want more, Congress will have to feel considerably more heat than they are now.”
In other words, if America wants to be free of coal, oil, gas, and the energy industry, we’re going to have to fight for it.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
On July 4th, Americans are supposed to... more
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By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Image Courtesy of Lindsay BeyersteinLast night, the House of Representatives passed comprehensive health care reform after more than a year of fierce debate. The sweeping legislation will extend coverage to 32 million Americans, curb the worst abuses of the private insurance industry, and attempt to contain spiraling health care costs.
The main bill passed the House by a vote 219 to 212, after which the House approved a package of changes to the Senate bill by a vote of 220 to 211. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama will sign the main bill into law. Then, the Senate will incorporate the House-approved changes through filibuster-proof budget reconciliation, perhaps as early as this week.
Landmark legislation
Last night’s vote was a resounding victory for the Democrats. John Nichols of The Nation compares the passage of health care reform to other great milestones in American legislative history, including the Social Security, Medicare, and the Civil Rights Act.
Like all great progressive victories, this one was hard fought. Paul Waldman writes in the American Prospect:
This effort will be remembered as one of the most anguished legislative battles in history, alongside the Civil Rights Act, the Federal Reserve Act, the creation of Medicare, and a few others. The positive outcome is not enough to restore one’s faith in the American political system, because the process did so much to destroy that faith. American politics has never been particularly reasonable or reasoned, but this debate saw a plague of demagoguery, fear-mongering, and outright lies that puts anything most of us can remember to shame.
Tea partiers slinging slurs
Months of inflammatory rhetoric about communism and death panels whipped the right wing into a frenzy. Opposition reached a fever pitch this weekend as tea partiers and other anti-reformers gathered in the Capitol. On Sunday afternoon, some House Republican legislators further inflamed the angry protesters by shouting encouragement from the balcony of the Capitol building, as Suzy Khimm reports for Mother Jones.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) chastised his colleagues for riling up the protesters, saying “It’s like the Salem witch trials—the health care bill has become their witch. It’s a supernatural force, and we’ve got hysteria.”
In separate incidents several anti-reform protesters hurled racist slurs at Democratic legislators. Brian Beutler relates this shocking incident for TPMDC:
Civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and fellow Congressional Black Caucus member Andre Carson (D-IN) related a particularly jarring encounter with a large crowd of protesters screaming “kill the bill”… and punctuating their chants with the word “nigger.”
Standing next to Lewis, emerging from a Democratic caucus meeting with President Obama, Carson said people in the crowd yelled, “kill the bill and then the N-word” several times, while he and Lewis were exiting the Cannon House office building.
Adele Stan of AlterNet reported that one protester was arrested after spitting on African American legislator Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO).
The racial undercurrent to the anti-reform movement has been obvious from the beginning. The carefully coded language dropped away this weekend as protesters began to lose hope of killing the bill.
No public option…yet
To the chagrin of progressives, the final bill does not include a public health insurance option. However, going back to Mother Jones, Suzy Khimm reports that Rep. Lynne Woolsey (D-CA), co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus, promised to introduce a bill to create a strong public option as soon as Obama signs health care reform into law.
Stupak, stopped
As tea party protests raged outside, it seemed as if abortion might derail health reform. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) insisted that he had the votes to kill the bill. At the last minute, Stupak was placated with an executive order from the president reiterating that the health care reform would not fund elective abortions.
The executive order is a red herring. It won’t impose any further restrictions, it just restates the status quo. Mike Lillis posted a copy of the order at the Washington Independent. The president might as well have reiterated a ban on federal funds for vajazzling. Health care reform was never going to fund vajazzling or abortion, but if Stupak finds the repetition soothing, so be it.
The chair of the pro-choice caucus, Rep. Lois DeGette (D-CO) acquiesced to the Stupak compromise, describing the overall bill as a “strong foundation,” according to John Tomasic of the Colorado Independent. Pro-choice groups will be angry, but realistically, the executive order was the best possible outcome. For a while, it looked like Democrats were going to have to make substantive concessions to Stupak. In the end, he flipped his vote for a presidential proclamation of the status quo.
In a last ditch effort to derail reform, the Republicans tried to reinsert Stupak’s strict anti-abortion language into the reconciliation package. The Republicans were trying to poison the reconciliation bill in order to threaten its chances in the Senate, explains Mike Lillis of the Washington Independent. The gambit failed. When Stupak rose to speak against the motion, he was shouted down by Republican representatives. One unidentified member called Stupak a “baby killer.”
Bad with the good
Health care reform is not the progressive panacea that many had hoped for. The private insurance industry remains firmly in control, buttressed by government subsidies and no competition from the public sector. However, real changes are coming.
Within the next 6 months, children will be allowed to stay on their parents’ health plans until age 26. Lifetime benefit caps are history, and annual caps will be regulated. Insurers will no longer be allowed to dump customers who get sick, or offer coverage to children for everything but their preexisting conditions.
Going down in history
Whatever else Obama may accomplish, he will go down in history as the president who put the United States on the path to universal health care. Skeptics said it couldn’t be done. Adele Stan observes in AlterNet:
It took the first African-American president and the first woman Speaker of the House to do what generations of politicians had failed to do: create a federally regulated health-care reform program that extends health insurance coverage to the majority of Americans.
Health care reform is not an end in itself, it’s a process. Passing this legislation is the first step towards establishing health care as a right of all Americans. Like any attempt to expand the rights of the disenfranchised, the struggle will be met with fierce resistance.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Image Courtesy of Lindsay... more
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Sen. Scott Brown Trashes Obama’s ‘Bitter’ Push For Health Care Take Over
Huffington Post
03-13-10
WASHINGTON (AP)– Newly arrived Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts accused President Barack Obama and Democrats on Saturday of a “bitter, destructive and endless” drive to pass health overhaul legislation that Brown warned would be disastrous.
Sen. Scott Brown Trashes Obama’s ‘Bitter, Destructive and Endless’ Push For Health Care Take Over(VIDEO)...http://ctpatriot1970.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/sen-scott-brown-trashes-obamas-bitter-destructive-and-endless-push-for-health-care-take-overvideo/
“An entire year has gone to waste,” Brown said in the weekly GOP radio and Internet address. “Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, and many more jobs are in danger. Even now, the president still hasn’t gotten the message.Sen. Scott Brown Trashes Obama’s ‘Bitter’ Push For Health Care Take... more
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http://www.themediaconsortium.org/2010/03/05/weekly-mulch-new-bills-and-old-money/
By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user tellytom, under Creative Commons license.Climate legislation is returning to the Senate’s docket, and leaders on Capitol Hill are hoping that this version, a compromise bill spearheaded by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), can pass without getting caught in the morass of money and politics that has delayed action so far.
A long, long time ago…
Remember, there was a time when Congress was going to pass climate legislation before the international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. President Barack Obama was going to show up with a bill in hand and lead the world towards a better climate future. After the House passed its climate bill in June 2009, the Senate began discussing climate change, and a first stab by Sen. Kerry and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) went nowhere. Now, Kerry has turned to less liberal colleagues to draft an alternative that would appeal to moderates and even Republicans.
Now the Massachusetts senator is promising that climate change isn’t dead. A new bill is coming—more information may be in the offing as early as today, as Kate Sheppard reports at Mother Jones.
Third time’s the charm
Sen. Kerry is trying a new tactic to pass climate legislation. He’s waiting to release his plan until he knows the bill has the 60 supporters it needs to circumvent a filibuster. The details have not been hammered out yet, and even the Senators who’ve been in talks with Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman don’t seem to have a clear sense of what will be in the version that will emerge.
In the House, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, released an ambitious draft of the legislation, let lobbyists and members of Congress fight over it, and passed a much-changed edition months later. Sen. Kerry tried a similar plan on his side of Capitol Hill (that was the Kerry-Boxer bill), but it did not work.
With this piece of legislature, Sens. Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman are working out the compromises before they release the legislation. Both reporting and speculation about their bill say that it will abandon the cap-and-trade system passed in the House. Cap-and-trade restricts carbon emissions across the economy; a variation on that policy that the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill may favor will limit the system to a few sectors.
Will it work?
Kerry’s expected bill may be a much weaker plan than any proposed so far, yet it is still not certain that the Senate will support it. The lead authors of the bill have been meeting with conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans, as Sheppard reports, but those targets have not promised support yet. Coming out of a meeting, Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) told reporters: “There were some interesting things that were discussed in there and like everything else in the United States Senate, the devil is in the details.”
From a distance, banner-day climate legislation still seems possible. Environmental groups like the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Foundation, and the National Resources Defense Council believe that they will see a bill this year that caps carbon. These green groups would be able to live with the incentives handed to industry groups so far, according to Campus Progress’ Tristan Fowler.
“There are compromises [that can go] too far. Fortunately, I don’t think we’re getting near that territory at the moment,” Josh Dorner, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, told Fowler.
Sickly green
Before getting too excited about stamping a green seal of approval on Congress’ legislation, consider Johann Hari’s testimony in The Nation about the relationships between environmental groups and the industries that they oppose.
Hari has reported on climate change issues for years, and at first, he “imagined that American green groups were on these people’s side in the corridors of Capitol Hill, trying to stop the Weather of Mass Destruction. But it is now clear that many were on a different path—one that began in the 1980s, with a financial donation.”
Hari argues that as environmental groups began to reach out to polluters, handing them awards for green behavior and accepting support from their deep pockets, they learned to compromise too readily and accept political excuses for delaying action on climate change. While in other realms these compromises might fly, when the stakes are as high as they are on environmental issues, that behavior turns the stomach.
“You can’t stand at the edge of a rising sea and say, ‘Sorry, the swing states don’t want you to happen today. Come back in fifty years,’” Hari writes.
The green future
When Kerry, Lieberman and Graham do release the compromised bill, watch for a tsunami of money and influence that could pack the bill with prizes for specific industries—or derail it altogether. Just this week, the natural gas industry’s lobbyists told The Hill, a D.C.-based newspaper, that they were ready to fight with the coal industry over incentives in the Senate bill. At AlterNet, Harvey Wasserman writes that the nuclear industry spent $645 million in the past decade to get back into the energy game, according to a new report from American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop. (Hint: that $645 million is working in their favor.)
In the Senate, the influence of oil companies will play an important role, according to David Roberts at Grist.
“While coal has a lot of power in the House, oil has enormous power in the Senate, particularly over the conservadems and Republicans needed to put the bill over the top,” Roberts explains.
No matter what legislation passes and what incentives it contains, environmentalists need to continue putting pressure on their representatives in Congress and on national environmental groups to push back against polluting industries and work to fix the world’s climate.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.http://www.themediaconsortium.org/2010/03/05/weekly-mulch-new-bills-and-old-money/... more
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