That Washington is broken is clear enough. What frightens, however, is that increasingly it seems beyond repair.
Dysfunction has become institutionalized, a morbid polarization has replaced mere opposition, and pure self-interest has subordinated and smothered the nation's overarching interests.
We once comforted ourselves that, while frustrating, these are typical of a republic's traditional ways. But no longer. Day by day, issue by issue, we are coming to understand that these are symptomatic of a fatally diseased authority.
"Congress doesn’t have to be broken," said a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. "The president called for creating jobs through increased exports and trade agreements, through nuclear energy and clean coal technology, through increased exploration of oil and gas.... All they have to do is take 'yes' for an answer and we can pass meaningful, job-creating legislation right now."
Translation: Let us dictate legislation, even though you won the election and we lost. Short of that, we'll bring and keep you and this nation down.
And they enjoy doing just that.
Last Friday, as only one minor instance, the unemployment figures finally dipped but so did the payroll numbers, compelling the Republican National Committee to gleefully announce in a press release: "STAGNATION!" If any one intangible perpetuated the Great Depression, it was the psychology of doom; but in this the GOP rejoices.
OK, that's a bit shoddy, some would say, while adding that such behavior merely dwells in the realm of the politically traditional. Democrats, as the minority, would be just as psychologically dreadful. True enough.
What's different today, though, is that Republicans are determined, in formidably tangible ways, to perpetuate the worst possible conditions.
And chiefly that means, of course, an unprecedented, unbounded use of the filibuster.
Once used to protect the rights of the minority, the filibuster is now -- in the reactionary hands of Republicans -- their antidemocratic instrument of choice to impede all progress.
Vice President Joe Biden served 36 years in the Senate, and last week he lamented its undeniable decline as a deliberative body for the good:
"I've never seen a time when [the filibuster has] become, sort of, standard operating procedure.... Any president in the future having to move through anything he or she wants, requiring a supermajority, it's not a good way to do business."
Take your pick: No country for old men or a brave new world. Either way, the filibuster's mechanical abuse is but a major part of a concluding act in a decidedly unrepresentative democracy hellbent on the very stagnation the GOP claims to decry.
Worse, we're hopelessly constrained. Conceded Biden: "I don't have the answer. You're about to ask me, but I don't have the answer."
Or take -- please -- Sen. Richard Shelby, whose recent procedural tantrum -- placing a "blanket hold" on presidential nominees because anti-federal Dick failed to rake in sufficient federal dollars for anti-federal Alabamans -- one Democratic Congressional staffer called a "perversion of senatorial courtesy." Perhaps, 36 years ago; now it's just another day at the office.
As are similar signs of senatorial bottlenecking and do-nothingness. The effective unemployment rate towers at about 17 percent, you say? Well, how about in response an infinitesimal jobs bill? Or the financial sector is out of control, dizzy with its own power and utterly insensitive to working Americans? Well, how about a little more, and then a little more, watering down of any legislative antidotes?
Over in the House, it's the same story on jobs, and meanwhile on the matter of restructured health care the speaker is down to giddiness about achieving not much more than overturning antitrust exemptions -- a comparatively minor yet perfectly reasonable measure which, naturally, will die in the Senate.
But that, too, is OK, for in Michael Jackson's physician we have another celebrity trial to keep us amused. If only it could be held in the Roman coliseum.
I wish people would quit
I wish people would quit knocking celebrity gossip in this way. There is room for tabloid journalism in this country. What we do not have room for is absence of other types of journalism, but apparently there is nothing to report that someone can’t stifle effectively.
A key observation, I think, is that circa 1980 we lost the ability to make meaningful amendments to the US Constititution. The collapse of the ERA is where I place the start point of our current dysfunctional period; that nothing but a silly pay raise amendment could be passed shows that our dysfunction goes back the full 30 years. We stopped even talking about updating our form of government after that, except as if it were a pipe dream. We now have a form of government not quite suited to modern conditions, and this is going to get worse until we start amending the Constitution again (hopefully beginning with ratification of the ERA).
I wish people.....
I wish people would quit knocking people who knock lame ass celebrity gossip. If they did maybe this ridiculous excuse for a diversion would dissapear. As to the rest of your post, the US has been in this condition before. All through the 1840s and 1850s. It took a civil war to get some constitutional ammendments passed, and as long as the mason dixon line has been ressurected by the right wingers with such success, there just wont be enough states to ratify any ammendment that dosnt meet approval of the new confederate states. It works just like the senate, it takes two thirds to ratify an ammendment to the constitution. Amazing how a small, but determined minority, can basically rule as dictator in a democracy. At least as long as those "in power", choose to let them.
institutionalized idiocy
My my. After repeated column after column tearing down liberals with the republican like mantra of "I can count" and "they dont have the votes", the carp, who institutionalized defending the lame ass senate filibuster rule, as long as it was being used to beat back progressive change, Is now going to cry about it. How could this be? I guess it must have something to do with the fact that even after passing republican health care bills in both houses, his favorite, feckless, corporate slaves in congress still refuse to act and get their turkey bill passed. Now that his hero Obama, has decided to at least try to act like a leader, and hit back (too little too late Im afraid), the carp has donned his armor and unsheathed his sword, ready to go to battle with the dastardly republicans, whom he has spent the last year enabling, just like his rhetorical battered wife. Perhaps he should write some more about ol whats her name. You know, that strange woman from , Alaska? is it?.
PROBLEM DEFINITION VS. SOLUTIONS
http://TheHarvView.blogspot.com
One of the first bloggers had this to say as his conclusion. I admire him for that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Make the SOB's stand up and put vulnerable human faces on the obstructionism, 24-7, while gleeful Dems back home launch recall campaigns, boycott the enterprises of campaign contributors, and relentlessly frame the situation on the TV news. Perhaps that would encourage the Republicans to participate in government rather than actively seeking to sabotage it.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In corporate meetings we spent most of the time talking about the problem and that was the no brainer fun part. We talked about who is responsible, the symptoms, cause, bad guys and blah, blah, blah, but the creative part, the thoughtful painstaking part almost never received it share of the time. That is talking solutions.
Joe Biden didn't have an answer, but an answer does lie somewhere even if it requires draconian steps not so much to fix the fillibuster abuse, but to get our government working together for the public good.
We need to eliminate contributions entirely, eliminate trips, gifts of any kind, any luncheons, dinners and all lobby information should be posted to an informational board with no other contact other than Q&A on a public board.
There should be no blackmail allowed such as a Senator refusing support unless his constituancy gets something for his support to a public issue.
Things can be done, and perhaps it would take a public vote.
A morbid Carpyization
Carpy whines, "That Washington is broken is clear enough. Dysfunction has become institutionalized, a morbid polarization has replaced mere opposition..."
Then he proceeds to blame the Republicans, and paint the Democrats as helpless battered wives. So Carpy actively contributes to the "morbid polarization", or in his case, "morbid Carpyization".
Hey Carpy! You forgot to pin some of the blame on the progressives!
Carpy has it all wrong, as usual. The problem is with the upper 1% plutocracy who own the multinational corporations who pay K Street lobbyists to legally bribe both Republicans AND Democrats into committing mutiny against the voters.
But the elite powers that be only get away with stealing democracy because WE THE PEOPLE allow it. Until WE THE PEOPLE forcefully, but peacefully (see the First Amendment), take back our government, end corporate personhood and end legalized bribery on K Street, the dysfunction will continue unabated.
Perversion of Senatorial courtesy...
Robert Crawford sez:
It's worth noting, of course, that the filibuster is the one Senatorial function that has actually been streamlined over the years. No more does the obstructing party actually have to keep someone standing in the Senate chambers, reading aloud from the DC phone book on national television, until the proposed legislation is dropped or altered--or until exhaustion and poll numbers force the obstructionists themselves to sit down and shut up. Now the minority boss simply informs the appropriate functionary of an INTENT to filibuster, and the public gets a vague and incomprehensible report that the legislation has died a-borning--was in fact an impossible dream from the get-go, and will have to go back to the chop-shop for alterations. No one to blame. Nothing to be done.
The fact that actual filibusters hardly ever occur, of course, sheds an unflattering light on the party in power. Just like the Republicans a few years ago--who talked endlessly about the "nuclear option," but never implemented it--the Democrats today could choose a popular, win-win piece of legislation and actually force the Republicans to go through the filibuster process, exposing themselves to direct and prolonged public scrutiny while the Dems jammed their press releases with dire images of America burning while the Republicans fiddled. Yes, it would grind legislative action to a halt--but how would that be different from what's going on now? That this doesn't happen suggests to me that the threat of filibuster has become an excuse for inaction, whichever party is in charge. It's interesting to note that despite having control of Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court for six years of the Bush era, the Republicans never actually did anything about such signature, red-meat political issues as abortion, religion in the schools, and so forth--probably because doing so would rob them of their signature, red-meat political issues at election time. Now, the Democrats, with a much larger majority in Congress, elected to do something about jobs and health care, are betraying their base in the same way.
Make the SOB's stand up and put vulnerable human faces on the obstructionism, 24-7, while gleeful Dems back home launch recall campaigns, boycott the enterprises of campaign contributors, and relentlessly frame the situation on the TV news. Perhaps that would encourage the Republicans to participate in government rather than actively seeking to sabotage it.
somebody's got a gun to their head
this idea of "make them actually filibuster" keeps being suggested again and again, yet there seems to be no move among Senate leadership to actually make this happen. It is as if the leadership has a gun to their heads, or somebody has threatened their families, and so they dare not do anything that actually might be effective.
The 30 Year Experiment Nears Fruition
Carp, there is a natural reason you see darkness on the horizon. I feel it myself. The country has become completely Balkanized, with the dividing line not being geographical or religious, but reality itself.
A significant segment of the country--no one can be entirely sure just how big it is--are card-carrying members of what can only be characterized as a massive, multi-layered cult, pent on fanciful delusion and lacking even the most basic facts.
And it was all by design.
Beginning with the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and advent of Cable TV, hyperbolic forces have been unleashed (see neocons). And the crazy gene that perhaps exists in us all but is particularly fervent in the conservative brain, has been activated.
The 30 year experiment nears its fruition.
Liberals are WORSE than terrorists. Not only must we torture but we SHOULD torture. Our constitutional ideals are being fractured and ripped to shreds, and through the simple but effective act of psychological projection, the Cult is convinced beyond all doubt it is the liberals doing the ripping.
No matter.
They cannot be reckoned with. They cannot be reasoned with. They simply hate us. The honest fact is that they want the world to burn if democrats are in charge. It's the thinking of a child. And they number in the millions.
What to do? Don't ask me. The Overton Curve gets moved farther to the right almost every day. What was crazy right-wing 3 months ago now becomes the middle. Reagan is now a liberal. Even Bush and Cheney fail the new test of conservative purity.
If Bush had remained president for 6 more months and we had gone into a real depression, perhaps these people would be chastined and their movement discredited. But that, of course, did not happen. Obama saved the economy, but at great expense. His failure to understand those who see him as the anti-christ has proved to be a profound failing. And still he negotiates with those who represent them.
I am a secular humanist, taught to love my fellow man and to follow the Golden Rule. So the realization that there exists a large, reality-dismissing, torture-loving cult with its members all around me, many if not most of whom might see me as an enemy if they knew my true political leanings, well, that is a bit disconcerting. Do I continue to love them? Or, perhaps, am I doomed to do war with them? (Amazing to have to even contemplate)
It is indeed "doom and gloomy" as Sarah Palin might say. It would be good if the democrats would engage in the Word War with great fervor, because this battle will determine how the independents break. Heaven help us when the Repugs take back the White House. They are now to the Right of even Bush & Cheney's brand of crazy.
And I have a question for Mr. Obama: Now that you have continued and cemented the concept of having a secret govt panel target for assassination AMERICAN CITIZENS overseas with Muslim-sounding names, just how long will it take for a Republican White House to target an American anti-war protester here at home with the name of Jones or Washington under the guise of fighting "terrorism"? A hypothetical?
So far.
One thing for sure, if it ever does happen, the Repugs will project their crime onto the clueless dems and make it stick with the Cult and Indies alike. And the Overton Curve continues its inexerable move rightward...
our system was built on an assumption of shared principle
Something's Burning Baby
"Something's burning Baby
Are you aware?
Something's burning Baby
There's smoke in your hair."
It is so obvious
That something has changed.
What's happening Baby
To make you act so strange?"
Bob Dylan
Something is burning, but I can't decide if it is the last embers of democracy in America or the kindling of a real socialist democracy. In the wake of World War II, Western Europe and Japan adopted socialdemocracies. Latin America tried, but an ascendant USA squelched that there. By the mid 1970s, unfettered capitalism began its assault on socialist democracy in America.
The madness of King George W diverted their attention from Latin America. Now international capitalism is focused on the big prize - our republic and our economic engine. Either they are winning or we are nearing a revolution which will bring the USA in line with the rest of "The West".
I just don't know.
It seems as though the rules of the senate and the South are the last safe harbors for them in our republic. I don't have a clue as to the outcome, but something must be burning because there is smoke everywhere.