Month: September 2021

Senator Sanders – Filibuster

Why are we not having congressional hearings on the filibuster?
 
This poorly defined senate procedure has been obstructing good public policy for decades. The public deserves an airing of what is actually happening here.
 
What’s happening is corporate policy is being passed by majority vote while public policy is defeated by minority vote. It’s an absolute outrage, because it’s clearly illegal yet accepted as normal procedure, even by our favorite liberal senator, Mr. Bernie Sanders.
 
This video of the senator, fielding a filibuster question, demonstrates the typical confusion people are having when trying to understand and describe the filibuster.
 
The question is, “can we reform the filibuster?” The answer is, “We don’t have the votes”.
 
The questioner assumes that extended speech and majority rule are somehow the same filibuster topic. That’s what everybody thinks, apparently, but it’s not true. Majority rule and the filibuster are linked only by deception and intentional misinterpretation. A rule change to require sixty votes to proceed should not be called a filibuster. That’s like calling running a red light, speeding. It’s not the same.
 
Both men agree they would get rid of it, without properly defining what “it” is. If it’s not defined exactly, it can’t be corrected. And that’s why we need congressional hearings on the filibuster.
 
Legislation is supposed to pass by majority vote. Any senate rule that violates that majority vote intention is unconstitutional.
 
A cloture vote to proceed is an oxymoron.
 
Listen to the senator closely. He says “We should get rid of the filibuster AND restore majority rule”. That’s because they’re two distinctly different topics. Extended speech does not prevent majority rule, requiring a supermajority to proceed, does. Everybody needs to understand that distinction if the public is to ever transcend this so-called sixty-vote threshold “filibuster” “rule”.
 
The senate filibuster is merely the word they are using to refer to the unwritten rule change that now requires sixty votes to proceed to a majority vote. They didn’t change any rules, they just interpret them differently now, for minority rule.
 
The minority can prevent majority rule. That’s not a democracy.
 
The “filibuster” is a violation by misinterpretation and the senator should be having hearings on it, to prove it. If the senate doesn’t correct the problem, the senator should take them to court.
 
So yes, Senator Sanders, you are very mistaken, as pontificated in the video. It’s not about getting senate votes, it’s about the senate breaking the law. The filibuster, which is actually a rule change, is a crime against the constitution and should be declared as such by everyone, including the high court, to help restore our democracy to majority rule.
 
 

The Texas Abortion Ban

So out of nowhere Texas passes an illegal law allegedly intended to prevent abortions. It’s another in a long line of intentional legal misinterpretations for private interests. Apparently the Texans have empowered the intrusive and intolerant rabble to hunt down the people in the abortion business, for litigation and vigilante profit.

If the state empowers the public to violate your civil rights, it’s okay, they say. It’s legal, is their logic. The state is not violating your constitutional rights, but you can violate the rights of somebody else now, for them, legally, and get a reward.
 
The Texas abortion ban effectively outlaws legally protected behavior. It’s an important marker in the timeline where the states begin to be more autonomous from federal oversight, ironically, while crafting legislation to violate the personal autonomy rights of the pregnant.
 
The Supreme Court remains mostly mute. So does congress. They were taken by surprise, supposedly, and will need time to deliberate any attempts at correcting this gross injustice. As if the Texas legislature didn’t seek pre-clearance with the court. This monolithic conspiracy is a system of relationships loyal to each other in disloyalty to the law.
 
Their commonality is self interest. Like a ball team with a common goal, everybody instinctively knows what to do.

 
That’s why it’s so inexcusable for TRMS to refer to the filibuster as a law, when it’s not. That’s an intentional fumble to confuse. Notice in the beginning of the video how she refers to the filibuster as a law instead of a senate rule. There is no way she is unaware of her “mistake”, meaning it wasn’t a mistake. It was an intentional mistake. She is spreading corporate propaganda to further confuse her audience, to protect and defend the filibuster against an honest analysis.
 
Alternatively, Lawrence O’Donnell is laying out some important historical facts. You’ll find his Bush-Trump Court segment in this video. It’s a brilliant piece where he presents some rare stats about the history of judicial apportionment, which demonstrates that traditions change, and we’re long overdue to change ours. 
 
We have a constrained court with judges organized in service to themselves instead of an honest interpretation of the law. The court must be corrected to save our democracy. Nobody deserves the benefit of the doubt, especially not the court. It’s that important.
 
Without ethical justice ideology is irrelevant.
 
We need judicial reform to de-politicize our courts for credible legal interpretation. We will never achieve the necessary judicial reforms unless we first update our democracy. We can’t update our democracy without majority rule. So the minority rule by senate filibuster must be ended, first, in order to expand the court, by majority vote.
 
We should expand the court by adding 50 justices to it, for starters, to be comprised of the senior justices from the fifty states. An adequately staffed Supreme Court with honest constitutional interpretations would quickly overrule illegal state legislation, discouraging bad actors from attempting to legislate against the constitution in the first place.
 
This big government anti-abortion overreach is part of a pattern, or plot if you will, to deprive the public of an honest democracy. Controlling the law is a necessity for authoritarian rule. That’s why justice should be more democratized.
 
We should democratize the Justice Dept. The public should be choosing every executive cabinet member, unless otherwise mandated in the constitution, democratically by majority vote.
 
We need to change our anti-democratic traditions, especially the courts. The courts need to be expanded and more transparent and more accountable to a public consensus of credible interpretation. The congress should begin impeachments for judicial dereliction right away and start crafting legislation for credible court reforms.
 
The Texas abortion ban law is similar to the filibuster in that they are both illegal and remain in need of correction by the Supreme Court. The democrats will remain confused and divided, as usual, while the republicans continue to corrupt the economy in their favor.
 
The Texas abortion ban has to be noted as another whammy in a long line of successful body slams to the public interest, by a cabal of right-wing fanatics. They are authoritarians pretending to be conservatives to help disguise and validate their anti-American agenda.
 
Rulings like money is speech and corporations are people, expose the anti-democratic nature of the corporate court. Justice serves the money.
 
Legal Tyranny
 
If a state is allowed to pass a law that is illegal and the court refuses to step up and do their job, honorably, we have lost our legal system to the monster. We now have a murky corporate monster party made out of money, with a politically subservient judiciary ready to comply.
 
The non-action response from the federal bench is a green light to states to not only violate their citizens voting rights, but to also legislate themselves a generous portion of corruption. The central government will encourage that sort of behavior, from now on, it appears. Whether they know it or not.
 
Corruption is its own reward.
 
The republicans have been successful for decades with their anti-democratic agenda, while the democrats have consistently failed to stop them. They must be confused, or corrupt, is the only logical conclusion.
 
It’s almost as if they have all conspired for decades against codifying abortion rights for the public into law. Even if they didn’t conspire to fail, the result is the same. The government can now claim the legal precedent to slide the slippery-slope towards total control over your body, against your will.
 
My position on abortion is that the patient and the doctor should have the only say in the matter. If a father comes forward with standing then there might be an exception requiring a judge. Otherwise, forget about it.
 
If the right to life movement cared about life, they would care about people, not just the unborn. The pro-life agenda is a hypocritical contradiction that should not be trusted for a second. Even if the passionate pro-life motive seems altruistic it violates the sanctity of human autonomy, the root requirement for personal freedom.
 
Civility requires personal security for everybody.