BRINGING BACK COMMON SENSE TO GOVERNMENT

You one of the classic taunts of that Sarah Palin speech a week ago was “How is all that hopey - changy stuff working out for you?” Well we don’t have those things because the Republicans don’t play by the rules. It used to be that filibusters were only used on rare occasions in the senate, as history bears out. But during the Clinton administration the filibuster rates were jacked up by the Republicans, and it was worse under George W Bush under the democrats. But nothing is as bad as the situation we have now where the filibuster is as common as brushing your teeth in the morning. Tom Harkin is introducing an anti-filibuster rule where on the first vote the vote is still sixty needed to override. Two days later the requirement drops to 57 and two days later, to 54 and finally two days later it reverts to 51. Senator Harkin points out that in the old frontier days you had senators from Georgia or Kentucky or Tennessee, who had to travel a long ways to Washington. Often the common people did not know what their congress was doing and it took time to notify the common people. But today with instant communication, this doesn’t mean much. The filibuster is now used “all the time” on everything. There were bills that ended up passing 98 to nothing that were filibustered by the Republicans. Also appointments have been held up. Last week seventy nominees were blocked by the will of one Republican senator. Now they are saying that President Obama should appoint all seventy in recess appointments. Republicans such as Reagan and Bush made routine use of recess appointments. I don’t see what the President has against using the powers that he has. For instance he could overturn “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell” by executive order if he wanted to. But he is choosing not to do it. A lot of people in the service are being “outed” by third party gossip and immuendo, rather than a service man coming forward and saying “I’m gay”. But there are other things the President could be doing. For instance according to George Washington’s blog last week, instead of strengthening our regulations of banks and financial institutions, deals are being made now NEVER to regulate certain aspects of bank behavior. It’s like they have instituted statutes against any regulation of certain institutions at all. Timothy Geitner needs to be removed from office as utterly unqualified to hold the post. His past is just too questionable. In getting rid of Geitner we may actually be pleasing a few Republicans, which is what Obama always says he wants. He is holding on to a non-existent thread of bipartisanship. This administration isn’t running on hope; it’s running on fumes.

After the 9 – 11 attacks on the Twin Towers certain emergency regulations were put into place. We have been in a “state of emergency” since 9 – 11. Obama did not recind these regulations but instead renewed them. I don’t think these times call for a perpetual “emergency” status. Living in phoney red or orange alerts or whatever- - will only numb us to the idea of any emergency at all when someone needs to call a real emergency. It would seem these “states of emergency” are just vehicals to violate people’s civil rights. We don’t need that. We need a third party desperately to run in 2012 to remedy all of these problems and bring back common sense to politics.