Reform Number One

There is a great deal of angst among many voters who object to the administration’s tax cut for unemployment compromise with Republicans as well as voters who accept such action. Stick to your guns, shouts one side! Kick him while he’s down, bellows the other side!

Democrats find it aggravating that our legislative process is being held hostage by Republicans. Deploying a political maneuver that promised to hold up all legislation pending passage of an extension of the Bush era failed tax policy, the Republicans set up a “who will blink first” situation.

It matters little who blinked if the result is capitulation and not compromise or if the result is ineffectual compromise and not constructive consensus.

We have witnessed a legislative power shift in Washington over the last several decades that concentrated raw power into fewer and fewer hands. Congress is not representative of her citizenry as a consequence yet that seems of little concern. Power shifted from majorities building coalitions in both congressional bodies to a new ultimate seat of power, the House-Senate conference committee on any legislation. And it has shifted again to the new ultimate current power structure, denial of legislative service, by a filibustering minority in the least representative body.

The United States has a new method of negative legislating – a parliament dominated by lords of the minority.

Every issue now requires 60 votes in the Senate to even proceed for deliberation, the very reason we elect representatives. Instead every issue is now reported in terms of a crass procedure, cloture, rather that of proposal, substance, merit, reflection, debate, and action. In a party split of less than solid 60/40, all attention focuses on the personal whims of a few shifting votes that may or may not be in the center. We are drowning in tactics and not swimming in substance.

Today with the Republican signed pledge of 42 votes to hold up deliberation by the majority 58 as well as some of the 42 who might be inclined in temperament toward legislating, we have moved decidedly toward parliamentary block voting. A president elected by a solid majority and a house elected along more proportional representative lines in 2008 did not seem to matter to the Senate minority lords. Indeed, it can be contended that the damage done by block voting and the frustrating of a popular legislative majority and administration through dramatically weakening health care, successfully diluting financial reform, and stalling addressing environmental climate concerns is precisely one of the prime assisting agents that created, distorted, and capitalized on voters’ economically rooted fears to produce the conservative 2010 Republican electoral gains. It’s a case of creative destruction for further destroying creations.

In parliaments, governments can fall if ruling blocks fail on a key vote. In our system, the government will not fall on a key vote but a determined block minority can make it fail to serve its citizens time and time again until that minority can make it fall at a term’s end.

Changing the Senate rules at present may well not yet have the votes, there is an absence of a directly spoken mandate for reform, and there appears continued resignation to the current practice of obstruction. And again and again, the media focuses on scoring stances not probing circumstances. The filibuster is a toxic deficit in our democracy and is not a mere issue among others for it profoundly affects the others. Ending its potency, deployed by either party, ought to be reform number one.

Further reading:
Filibuster Abuse [PDF] by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
The Silenced Majority [The Atlantic] by Matthew Yglesias

No Love Letter

Yes, Maine's Senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, have signed the letter (the link shows the signatures) below to block all legislation unless the Bush tax cuts are extended to the wealthy. That includes legislation to extend unemployment benefits as we approach the holidays and coldest months of the year. If you're rich throw some gold tinsel on the tree; if not make a pot of spruce soup for supper and burn a few branches to keep warm.

Not only did Collins and Snowe sign on to this blocking plan; they actually exposed their claims to be moderates as entirely bogus.

What greater indicator can you have than observing a professed moderate who may wield power to allow bills to come up for debate and a vote within a closely divided Senate where their single yea or nay might have actual impact moving something forward versus playing a waiting game that may lead to their yea or nay on some issues being far less effective in the next Senate year with an even larger minority with extra buffer votes less reliant on getting Collins or Snowe to play cloture ball?

Complicated? Not if you’re really not a moderate.

Dear Leader Reid,

The nation's unemployment level, stuck near 10 percent, is unacceptable to Americans. Senate Republicans have been urging Congress to make private-sector job creation a priority all year. President Obama in his first speech after the November election said "we owe" it to the American people to "focus on those issues that affect their jobs." He went on to say that Americans "want jobs to come back faster." Our constituents have repeatedly asked us to focus on creating an environment for private-sector job growth; it is time that our constituents' priorities become the Senate's priorities.

For that reason, we write to inform you that we will not agree to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to any legislative item until the Senate has acted to fund the government and we have prevented the tax increase that is currently awaiting all American taxpayers. With little time left in this Congressional session, legislative scheduling should be focused on these critical priorities. While there are other items that might ultimately be worthy of the Senate's attention, we cannot agree to prioritize any matters above the critical issues of funding the government and preventing a job-killing tax hike.

Given our struggling economy, preventing the tax increase and providing economic certainty should be our top priority. Without Congressional action by December 31, all American taxpayers will be hit by an increase in their individual income-tax rates and investment income through the capital gains and dividend rates. If Congress were to adopt the President's tax proposal to prevent the tax increase for only some Americans, small businesses would be targeted with a job-killing tax increase at the worst possible time. Specifically, more than 750,000 small businesses will see a tax increase, which will affect 50 percent of small-business income and nearly 25 percent of the entire workforce. The death tax rate will also climb from zero percent to 55 percent, which makes it the top concern for America's small businesses. Republicans and Democrats agree that small businesses create most new jobs, so we ought to be able to agree that raising taxes on small businesses is the wrong remedy in this economy. Finally, Congress still needs to act on the "tax extenders" and the alternative minimum tax "patch," all of which expired on December 31, 2009.

We look forward to continuing to work with you in a constructive manner to keep the government operating and provide the nation's small businesses with economic certainty that the job-killing tax hike will be prevented.

Hear No Labor

Governor-elect LePage is setting the tone-deafness for his future administration as reported in the December 1st Kennebec Journal:

Gov.-elect Paul LePage is asking businesses and industry groups to help him reduce the regulations they believe hinder economic development.

He launched this effort Tuesday at an unprecedented meeting at the Augusta Civic Center. LePage asked about 100 gathered business people for their ideas -- and political support -- when he presents a package of regulatory reform bills to the Legislature.

"What can we do to assist you to provide better jobs in Maine?" LePage asked the crowd.

Absent from those invited to the forum were environmental groups, public health advocates and consumer advocates. LePage said those groups will have an opportunity to weigh in on his proposals as part of the legislative process.

Governor-elect LePage is starting out by choosing selective listening, to those who mirror his views and already support him, as his standard operating procedure. This narrow outlook along with clumsy actions by GOP members of the legislature to eliminate the labor committee as reported in the following Sun Journal piece signal how one-sided this administration and its legislative allies intend to be:

Established in 1887, the Joint Standing Committee on Labor is responsible for overseeing changes in wage and workplace safety laws, union negotiations and the Maine State Retirement System.

Republican leaders acknowledged Tuesday that they were seeking to shift that oversight to other committees, or to potentially dissolve the Labor Committee and create another panel on which such duties would be combined with business development tasks.

The presumptive House Speaker, Rep. Robert Nutting, R-Oakland, said the plan was to put business development and labor matters before one panel, and to potentially save money, although those savings were not disclosed Tuesday.

The greatest "savings" potentially would be the first time the minimum wage comes in front of a committee dedicated to business development.

LePage Business 101

Expansion of the working poor appears to be the heart of the LePage business plan.

The actual quality of jobs, living wages, high pay, and substantive benefits are not now and were never on his agenda. It always has been all about bootstraps fantasies, ceding (our) state power to (their) market power, and setting us up to say, "I'm just so gosh darn thankful I have a job".

But there won't be much to be thankful for as families require perhaps up to three jobs per household to survive, place more cheap calories on their tables out of desperate necessity, lay awake at night (if that isn't today's shift) worrying about their health, and play out their role of economic serfdom by buying junk from far away at Marden's so that company and others like it can go "green" and recycle a few cheap labor dollars.

Movement of individuals off welfare to expand the workforce and ripping up regulations to enable the creation of low end employment will apparently be the GOP method of job delivery. The path not taken requires good education and winds through a good environment. But we can't have that!

Find Wall - Bang Head.

Can Senator Susan Collins get anymore wishy-washy with her pretend moderate stance? Apparently not according to this piece at Talking Points Memo:

Today in outrageous new benchmarks for bipartisanship, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) says she'd be more likely to vote to ratify the START Treaty if former Presidents, George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush were to speak out in support of it.

To which the Huffington Post has this on-the-mark reaction:

It's almost comical at this point. The typical Beltway cant on Ms. Collins is that her long political career is due to her propensity for being a gutsy, independent thinker. What are her independent thoughts on the START treaty?

Sadly, we have a United States Senator representing Maine in Washington who masquerades as an independent voice of moderation but who always needs cover whenever risk of the right's scrutiny here or there is possible.

OK, let's stop banging our heads now, be sure to tell everyone you know about Susan Collins' falsetto independent-moderate voice.

Snowe Sues to Overturn Rights for Maine Citizens

Senator Olympia Snowe now begins her journey from the hard right wing of the GOP to the ultra new and improved hard right wing of the tea party GOP alliance. Yesterday our US Senator from Maine signed onto an amicus brief in support of a Florida lawsuit's plaintiffs that challenges the Constitutionality of health care reform.

This is a dual announcement made in Florida to be heeded here in Maine. The first announcement is that Senator Snowe will run for re-election in 2010 and is beginning to position herself to blunt any primary challenge from the right. The second announcement by Senator Snowe is that she has abandoned any concern about poor and middle class Maine citizens and their need for a sane approach to health care rights which they need and support.

In post titled Lessons from the 2010 Maine elections, I submitted the following for consideration.

Snowe is safe.
With the tea party on the move nationwide, this may seem counterintuitive. However in Maine if you are a diligent incumbent Congressperson or Senator you get returned with a comfortable margin. That is our history and true to our nature we bucked a significant national trend that flipped the house and swept away two Democratic seats next door in NH. Snowe may draw a tea party primary challenger to crush in her primary but look to the GOP establishment and Governor LePage to assist her. The Democratic challenge to her needs to focus on her abandonment of moderation now and which is certain as the tea party pushes her further right which may be where safety meets reality.

Snowe is now abandoning the diligence and moderation noted above by playing into national out-of-state political gamesmanship to secure herself within the GOP. Snowe will be safe...within the GOP. However, over 60% of voters in the recent Governor's race rejected the tea party GOTP candidate who will slip into the back door of the Blaine House with a 38% plurality. Both Representatives Pingree and Michaud were returned to Congress by solid majority margins in a bad year for Democratic incumbents who voted for health care reform. Democrats need to focus on Senator Snowe now; she can be defeated by us if we forcefully and continually expose her abandonment of poor and middle class Maine citizens as so obviously apparent in her latest political maneuver.

Plan A

State Party Maine Democrats were rejected by Maine voters on November 2nd. It might be easy to say that we were swept away in a national red tide of tea but that does not account for the solid reelection of Mike Michaud and Chellie Pingree. They represent the perceptions, opinions, and political desires of Maine citizens in Washington but local Democrats do not in Augusta.

This sounds like a bitter reality pill that we are forced to swallow but silently accepting that or seeking excuses for it will lead to continued rejection. We are cast into a new role, that of minority, opposition, and most importantly of all, alternative. Redefining this moment as an opportunity seems perhaps trite but this is a time for an opening to be seized to renew our party in order to serve the people of this state with a vision for a prospective Maine that they will desire, support, and protect.

We need to adopt a plan to build an affirmation of aspiration with articulation yielding application.

These can be just a set of cliché words on a screen or paper if we dismiss November 2nd and go along with business as usual. To do so is to invite more November 2nds. With Republicans in total control of Maine state government, we must define ourselves anew. The Democratic Party needs to hold many local meetings and a state conclave tomorrow, not next year, to determine its direction.

We must do so not to merely attempt to position the party, not to craftily market ourselves to the electorate, but rather to know ourselves so we can build trust with Maine citizens and offer them effective solutions to Maine challenges, based on moral assurances that help all of us meet higher objectives. We need to search for what our vision is in governance both pragmatic and moral, agree on the broad brush stokes philosophically, and then employ effective constant communication to build alliances and obtain individual allegiances to not just win elections but mandates of ongoing actions.

Affirmation of our fundamental beliefs is vital to ensuring that we have identified the essential ingredients of both the moral positions and pragmatic governance principles we value for our state. It is essential that our core values are an expression of our deepest vision and not a whimsical reaction to polls, politicians, or perceived popularity.

Aspiration is what we need to shape from our core beliefs. We can say “no” today to Republican rule with authority if we reject their recently used tactic on the national level of saying “no” to obstruct and destroy. It may have yielded electoral success fleetingly for them but is a cynical strategy that contributes nothing to the common good. We can do better; we will say “no” because we aspire to a finer alternative that we will define completely.

Articulation of our message is critical to connect to Maine citizens and of far greater vital consequence, to earn their trust. We must not solely wallow in the mechanics of communications which are certainly also due to be reviewed. We have to express our message as the best possible, well thought out, and pragmatic but visionary alternative vision of Maine governance. And to greatly impact the electorate, we need to stick to it and avoid sugarcoating Republican-lite repackaging with a laser like focus on being absolutely and directly on message. We must express beliefs that can be believed in not puffery to perform for the present.

Application of our principles is our ultimate goal. We are not seeking a reactive moment of affiliation with us in the voting booth for a foundation to reelect individuals for the sake of triumph without reward to the voter. We need not cringe at the concept of voter reward in our politics if it is delivery of an exceptional and equitable life in Maine. We seek voter affiliation for the long term to govern well with trust to achieve worthy objectives and will invest the time and energy to earn it.

Democrats form the party that looks forward; let’s move forward.