The Only Way to End Gridlock

The GOP has abused the Supermajority rule by making everything a filibuster.  It's the Tea Partyfication of the Senate.  The tyranny of the minority.

Ezra Klein says...it's unconstitutional:

In 1806, the Senate, on the advice of Aaron Burr, tried to clean up its rule book, which was thought to be needlessly complicated and redundant. One change it made was to delete something called “the previous question” motion. That was the motion senators used to end debate on whatever they were talking about and move to the next topic. Burr recommended axing it because it was hardly ever used. Senators were gentlemen. They knew when to stop talking. 

That was the moment the Senate created the filibuster. But nobody knew it at the time. It would be three more decades before the first filibuster was mounted — which meant it was five decades after the ratification of the Constitution. “Far from being a matter of high principle, the filibuster appears to be nothing more than an unforeseen and unintended consequence of the elimination of the previous question motion from the rules of the Senate,” Bondurant writes. 

And even then, filibusters were a rare annoyance. Between 1840 and 1900, there were 16 filibusters. Between 2009 and 2010, there were more than 130. But that’s changed. Today, Majority Leader Harry Reid says that “60 votes are required for just about everything.”
At the core of Bondurant’s argument is a very simple claim: This isn’t what the Founders intended. The historical record is clear on that fact. The framers debated requiring a supermajority in Congress to pass anything. But they rejected that idea.

He goes on to talk about how the Framers were against a supermajority being used just to humiliate the President and block all his initiatives.  Sound familiar.

Somebody take this to the Supreme Court...ASAP.

Same Old Tricks

The GOP are shutting down the government because the Tea Party told them to. Supposed "leaders" like House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) have given them veto power over budget legislation.

That's a bunch of crotchety citizens fueled, knowingly or not, by the Koch Family fortune and Dick Armey's astroturfing. And what's most telling is the sticking point -- because the Dems are compromising like America wants those legislating in DC to do -- is not an economic issue at all, it's a values issue.

The GOP have attached a rider to the budget effectively limiting abortion rights by defunding Planned Parenthood, and all the good it does for women in reproductive services nationwide, and turning the money over to the states to use as they like -- i.e., tough luck in states that restrict right to choose for women over their own bodies.

This shows what's really going on with the Party. Same old same old constituency. And they are also defunding the green jobs revolution (so Germany and China can keep eating our lunch in that area) and eliminating Clean Air Act enforcement. Why not just build giant dinosaurs that eat whatever resources everywhere at the service of the very rich?

After all, the much touted "Path to Prosperity" (for the top 1%) by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) contains the same old giveaways to private insurance companies, essentially setting us back before the Affordable Care Act is fully rockin'.

And they are still stealing elections, with the same hacks who have done it for them before. Microsoft Access, anyone?

What new breed?

Just more brazenly extreme.

Blame Game: Game Over

In case anyone is even debating the ridiculous GOP talking point that the Dems, who are agreeing to tens of billions in spending cuts, are somehow going to be responsible for the U.S. government shutdown, should it come to pass, here's video evidence of our Teapublicans making their position clear:



Oh, sweet 1995 redux:

The Republicans blamed Clinton for the shutdown, and Clinton blamed the Republicans. Public opinion favored the president; Clinton's approval rating fell precipitously during the shutdown,^[3] but once it had ended they rose to their highest since his election. The Republicans' support was further diminished two days later when Gingrich made a widely-reported complaint about being snubbed by Clinton; Tom DeLay called it "the mistake of [Gingrich's] life".^[1]

C'mon, GOP. Help kickoff the President's reelection campaign!

BlizzCon

It's snowed hard back East and it's making a couple of careers, tarnishing a few others.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in NYC didn't seem prepared, and there's some accusations of budget cuts having left the city that way. Thank God for Twitter, relief for people stuck on tarmacs.

Meanwhile in New Jersey, not only did battlin' Gov. Chris Christie spend his blizzard in Florida with Mickey Mouse, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno took vacation in Mexico at the same time and didn't bother returning. Useless, I guess.

It's been all to the benefit of NJ State Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat acting as Governor by law in lieu of the two Republicans. He's handled himself well and it may give him more power against Christie in the new year.

But the best PR has been self-generated by Newark Mayor Cory Booker who used Twitter with great effectiveness to help target snow relief in his town. Per Sean Gregory at Time:

Booker's frantic Twitter feed reads like an action novel. "I have a snowpocalypse crush on @CoryBooker," wrote one of Booker's million-plus followers. "He's like a superhero with a shovel." The mayor was out clearing snow until 3 a.m. on Dec. 28 before heading back out three hours later after a few winks. "This is one of those times you're just pushing," Booker told TIME while riding around Newark early Tuesday evening, anxiously awaiting a Twitter response from a Newark resident who said her 82-year-old grandmother was shut in by snow. A few minutes earlier, Booker, who played football at Stanford, helped dig out a New Jersey transit bus. "It's an endurance test." This is not the first time Booker has responded to distressed citizens on Twitter. He shoveled the driveway of an elderly man last New Year's Eve after the man's daughter tweeted about his predicament. He also hit the streets during snowstorms last February.

Check out his Twitter stream here.

Yes, social media is the hero once again. Tweet-tweet!

Corrections

Robert Gibbs, sincerely apologetic, showed class:

Tom Vilsack, rightly ashamed, showed class:

Andrew Breitbart, self-righteous and dangerous, showed ass:

Shirley Sherrod is correct:

"To have people say that I was such a racist was unbelievable," she said of the fallout from the video and Fox coverage. "My whole life, if you look into what I have done, my father was murdered in 1965. If you look at all of us, we all hurt with that and we got involved into the movement and channeled our effort into good, instead of hating.

"I am getting hate calls and e-mails at this point. I got one call last night at my house at 12:30 a.m. that said 'you lost your job, good for you' and 'bitch' There are people out there who will believe that I am a racist person, even though the story is getting out there."

She said her husband, Charles, and her two children, who also live nearby in Athens, Ga., were surprised, but have been toughened by years of seeing her work in the civil rights movement: "They had to grow up in the movement so they have had to deal with stuff like this through the years. We did not always take the easy road. They have some thick skin as a result."

Welcome to post-racial America.

Shelby Game

So here's how The Party of No works...when it wants a Yes for it's own earmarks:

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary "blanket hold" on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.

...

According to the report, Shelby is holding Obama's nominees hostage until a pair of lucrative programs that would send billions in taxpayer dollars to his home state get back on track. The two programs Shelby wants to move forward or else:

- A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily: "Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals." Federal Times offers more details on the tanker deal, and also confirms its connection to the hold.

- An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily: "[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won't build" the center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is due to be based "at the Army's Redstone Arsenal."

I'm assuming this is partially the problem of being in the minority party, perhaps partly just pork. I accept that this is the way the sausages in Congress get made. But isn't there something criminal about slowing down the government like this?

Or this?

The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to confirm Martha N. Johnson as head of the General Services Administration, nearly 10 months after she was first nominated to head the federal agency.

Upon assuming office, Johnson "will become the first permanent Administrator of the General Services Administration in nearly two years."

Earlier in 2009, Johnson was unanimously approved by members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. But a single senator, Republican Kit Bond from Missouri, has used his symbolic 'privilege' to hold up consideration of Johnson's nomination since last summer. The delay was meant to pressure GSA administrators to approve a $175 million federal building project in Kansas City.

Hey, voters. When you're all pissed off about gridlock in Congress as you cast your vote this November, how about not blaming the Dems for everything?

More Genius

So the Republican members of Congress, or some of them, released their answer to the Obama budget today. It was billed as a budget but turns out to be much, much less than that. The verdict: brutal:



Not to mention:



It's a field day, starting with White House reaction:



Pro blogger reaction includes outright ridicule:

If you're having a bad day, I highly encourage you to spend some quality time with the Republican budget proposal. It's reads like what would happen if The Onion put together a budget. "Area Man Releases Proposal for 2010 Federal Spending Priorities..."

...Bush, famously, described his first budget by saying, "It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it." Indeed it was, and did. This isn't. There are no numbers. Let me repeat that: The Republican budget proposal does not say how much money they would raise, or spend.

...to considered analysis:

However, another point of interest in the “plan” is that it stakes out some fairly radical positions on monetary policy near the end. They condemn the Fed’s current quantitative easing strategy and, somewhat confusingly, specifically urge the Fed to stop doing this on the grounds that listening to the Republicans is necessary to preserve the Fed’s independence. They “support a requirement that the Fed establish some numerical definition for price stability and maintain that policy.” And most strikingly of all for a party that mostly defines itself in opposition to the dread specter of Europe these days, they want the Fed to abandon its current generalized prosperity mandate in favor of a European Central Bank-style pure inflation target...

...If you want to make a serious inquiry into the roots of persistently high unemployment in many European states relative to the United States, one great place to start would be in the policy difference that the GOP wants to eliminate here. The European Central Bank has no mandate to concern itself with keeping unemployment low. Consequently, unemployment is generally not low.

I don't doubt that we need parties balancing each other in Federal government, but the GOP is going to have to wash out the whole current generation of leadership and replace them with serious legislators if they're ever going to serve that function. Because the reason for this debacle includes a desire to step on the President's first-ever Internet press conference taking serious questions from regular Americas, and a freight train of GOP internal conflict and individual egos:

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) raised objections to an abbreviated alternative budget "blueprint" released today -- but were told by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) they needed to back the plan, according to several Republican sources.

The argument, coming a week before the full House and Senate are scheduled to vote on the budget, underscores the minority party's woes in a mounting unified opposition to President Obama's $3.6 trillion FY2010 budget proposal.

Ryan, the ranking Republican on the budget committee, plans to introduce a detailed substitute amendment for the Democrats' spending plan next Wednesday -- and still intends to do so.

But he and Cantor were reportedly told by Boehner and Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) they needed to move more quickly to counter Democrats' charge they were becoming the "Party of No," according to House GOP staffers.

The 19-page document, prepared by Pence's office, was distributed two days after President Obama criticized Republicans for trashing his detail-crammed 142-page budget outline without producing a credible alternative.

“In his egocentric rush to get on camera, Mike Pence threw the rest of the Conference under the bus, specifically Paul Ryan, whose staff has been working night and day for weeks to develop a substantive budget plan," said a GOP aide heavily involved in budget strategy.

"I hope his camera time was gratifying enough to justify erasing the weeks of hard work by dozens of Republicans to put forth serious ideas," the person added.

The nation is at a critical crossroads; clowntime needs to be over. But the "detailed" GOP "budget" is being promised for next Wednesday.

You know, April Fool's Day.

Promises

So the new President isn't doing a ton of backpedaling on campaign promises as might be expected -- he's enacting them via his new Federal budget proposal:

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It'll be a battle royale in Congress, with Republicans seeking to make their Party relevant by crying, "No, no no!" just months after the last President left, the one who let them spend us into massive debt. There will be Democrats to battle as well, those trying to carve out more for their own constituents or make political points. But the most striking aspect of this budget is the sheer honesty of Obama reversing the Cheney/Bush policy of baldfaced budget lying, where the costs of their wars were kept off the books -- treasonous.

Speaking of their wars, their pet project, attacking the country that didn't attack us on 9/11, President Obama is about to announce a 19-month plan (3 more than he promised, not too shabby) for withdrawing combat troops from Iraq, while leaving in place an advisory force that Democrats are already yelping about. In an odd-bedfellows moment, he's garnering the support of Conservatives like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for this policy choice.

As the saying goes, if he's being attacked by both sides, he must be doing something right.

Man of his Word

A friend of mine who worked for George Bush in 2000, turned against him but abstained in 2004, and worked for Obama in 2008 always used to say that he couldn't vote for any politician if he didn't know where he stood. Case in point was Hillary Clinton, who's famous "triangulation" meant that he was never sure if she meant what she said or would flip it around based on political winds. Same with John Kerry -- not enough definition.

Hence his staunch support for Barack Obama, and here's yet another case study from just a couple days of actual governance that our new President meant what he said:



And yet another:

Seems almost lost in the hub bub of all that is happening these past few days, but yesterday President Obama issued an order that eliminates one of George Bush and Alberto Gonzalez's first vile collaborations.

A nasty little executive order Bush issued to make secrecy the rule of his administration.

Executive Order 13233 limited access to the records of former United States Presidents. It was drafted by then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and issued by President George W. Bush on November 1, 2001.

At the time it was issued in November of 2001, the Society of American Archivists and the American Library Association felt that the order

"violates both the spirit and letter of existing U.S. law on access to presidential papers..." and "potentially threatens to undermine one of the very foundations of our nation."

...Well yesterday when President Obama issued his Executive order to

...establish policies and procedures governing the assertion of executive privilege by incumbent and former Presidents in connection with the release of Presidential records by the National Archives...

Reading though that order I was struck by his assertion that outside of certain

"Presidential records (that) might impair national security (including the conduct of foreign relations), law enforcement, or the deliberative processes of the executive branch.

There is now established a specific way for these records to be released. There is also a bill H.R.35to codify "procedures for the consideration of claims of constitutionally based privilege against disclosure of Presidential records." But until this happens this is a good start and makes me feel all the more confident in our new President and his intention to act as a real agent of change.

I was just so heartened to get to the end of reading the Executive Order and reading the words...

Sec. 6. Revocation. Executive Order 13233 of November 1, 2001, is revoked.

When the history of Obama's transition and first 100 days is written, it will be as textbook.

This is how it is done.

Your Government

Here's who's going to be working for you at the highest levels of the United States of America's Federal government starting at 12:00noon EST on Tuesday.

Here's their boss.

The Ex-Presidents

It wasn't a Freudian slip per se, it was more like an entire Freudian press avail when El Presidente Bush welcomed President-Elect Obama to the Oval Office today:

"I want to thank the president-elect for joining the ex-presidents for lunch," Bush said, even though he's not quite a member of that club yet.

Sadly, he is not. El Presidente may be wrapping it up, but he still has the levers of government. However, the leadership of the people is all Obama, ever since legitimized on Election Day and he's been building on it since.

Promising new Obama change: Chief Performance Officer:

President-elect Barack Obama, who faces trillion-dollar government deficits stretching into coming years, named on Wednesday a former Treasury official as the first U.S. "chief performance officer" to oversee budget and spending reform.

Nancy Killefer, a director at McKinsey & Company and a former assistant Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, will work with economic officials to increase efficiencies and eliminate waste in government spending.

"We can no longer afford to sustain the old ways when we know there are new and more efficient ways of getting the job done," Obama told a news conference just hours after new official projections put the fiscal 2009 U.S. budget deficit at a record $1.186 trillion.

Amen.

Per Hope Reborn on DailyKos:

I'm floored by the move today that President Elect Obama made in creating an office Chief Performance Officer... I haven't seen much if anything mentioned anywhere about this, but consider for a moment what this means. Hopefully, gone are the day's of "bloated, wasteful" government because there is now an agent of direct oversight with Presidential level access & authority to ensure that programs are meeting metrics set by the President and that cabinet secretaries and key personnel are meeting goals laid out.

If we'd only had this when we went to war with Iraq.

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Civics Lesson

There's a great quiz that I managed to score higher than average on (but still not an "A"), the Civics Literacy Report. Take it here.

I liked how Joe Biden started talking about civics a few years ago, particularly one Bill Maher appearance where he decried the lack of civics teaching in high schools anymore, something quite common before the 1970's. Understanding civics leads, I believe, to a broader commitment to service and greater understanding of how The Common Good functions via our system of democracy. What we have right now is an opportunity in reverse, where the political activism of this month's election (yes, it's still that fresh!) can lead to greater citizen learning about and involvement in government.

One shining example: the first Barack Obama Elementary School:



Initiated by the students, who could very well turn out to be future political leaders on a grander scale themselves.

I particularly like the young, African-American version of Vice President-Elect Biden.

How apt!

Chill

I'm starting to chafe at the concern trolling I'm hearing from friends who don't like Hillary (I didn't during the Primaries) for Secretary of State (I do). It reminds me of the panic on the left when Obama aced the first debate with John McCain -- some libs thought Obama had blown it by agreeing with his opponent a little much.

It turns out Obama won 365 Electoral Votes. That makes him right about his career more often than any of us.

So whatever this gifted, deceptively powerful leader we're lucky to have poised to lead the country, something he's been doing unofficially since, like, Iowa, i.e. building from the beginning of this year, whatever he wants to do in putting together his staff and his Cabinet, I now assume he's made the right choice -- for his Administration. If something doesn't work, fine, Obama's proven he can shift from flawed tactics back to good, but the reason he can have these strong personalities as his lieutenants is because...he can handle them.

For one thing, for a collection of Harvard and Yale grads who all think they're pretty darned smart, they'll all know who's the smartest person in the room.

After all, you don't get to be the first African-American President, in the year 2009, without being as smart as President-Elect Barack Obama.

Peace

It's a beautiful thing.

It goes with unity:



Back before this whole primary thing started, I felt that one of Clinton's major weaknesses as a candidate would be her lack of great oratorical skills. I'd always heard she was great one-on-one or in a room talking to a smaller group, and when the campaign began in Iowa and with her more in the spotlight in New Hampshire I felt that my instincts were borne out. She just didn't have what it took to galvanize those who weren't already true believers in her.

Comparing her speech today to those back then are like oaks to acorns. She's so sharp today, so much more down to earth and "herself" that when she delivers her great line about George Bush and John McCain being two sides of the same coin and "it doesn't amount to a whole lot of change," she doesn't oversell it, she lets it play and wins.

Even better is the very real and human moment when she describes the "spirited dialogue" of the campaign and, reacting to the rising moans from the audience adds, "that was the nicest way I could think of phrasing it." She's upped her speaking game thanks to the battle just as Obama was forced to up his own candidate skills.

There will be some Clinton deadenders and that's that, but whether they receive disproportionate media attention or not, it doesn't matter. This unity event in Unity was a stake through the heart of John McCain's Presidential dreams. They just seem so comfortable together, whether or not Obama picks her for the ticket, they're the peers now.

In a weird way Obama gives her more public respect than her own husband. There's no one else out there for Hillary to talk to in the same way she can relate to Obama. I hope he picks a brilliant VP choice other than her, then I hope she gets her name on the health care bill, then I hope he gives her the best job he can.

Time for Bill to come aboard. The train is leaving the station. Republicans can't even run as Republicans this year, and Obama's detractors are only left with racist smears -- idiotic GOP anti-government zealot Grover Norquist calling Obama "John Kerry with a tan" (seriously!) and Karl Rove calling Obama arrogant -- as in "uppity."

Here's to a strong Democratic Party and a strong Democratic Presidential candidate. May they win big in November, and then may they deliver on their promises -- which, having to clean up the wreckage left by George Bush as he did way back with Harken Energy with on a national, federal scale, may be the hardest part of this whole damn process.

Threshold

This is a threshold issue for me, and I've already written my most susceptible Senator, Diane Feinstein, that she not support any bill without real teeth:

A Democratic bill to be proposed on Tuesday in the House would maintain for several years the type of broad, blanket authority for N.S.A. eavesdropping that the administration secured in August for six months.

In an acknowledgment of concerns over civil liberties, the bill would require a more active role by the special foreign intelligence court that oversees the interception of foreign-based communications by the security agency.

A competing proposal in the Senate, still being drafted, may be even closer in line with the administration plan, with the possibility of including retroactive immunity for telecommunications utilities that participated in the once-secret program to eavesdrop without court warrants.

I'm trying very hard to support Democrats and not fracture my Party at this time of great GOP evil. I also recognize that it is up to me to make my federal representatives know where I stand, hopefully helping a larger effort to convince her with my one little webform email.

Here's where you can find your reps contact info.

Tell them, politely if need be, that no teeth = they lose your vote.