Letter to Senators Bennet & Hickenlooper re "The For the People Act, the Manchin Alternative, and the Filibuster

My email sent today to our Senators Bennet & Hickenlooper. How about you? 

Dear Senator: 

Thank you for co-sponsoring S. 1, the “For the People Act.” At a time when too many state legislatures are acting to reduce access to voting and to subvert the democratic process, your willingness to act in support of this fundamental right is crucial. 

I do understand that under the current Senate rules and the disposition of the Republicans, passage of this bill in its current form is highly unlikely. If this bill doesn’t pass, then I urge you to support the alternative sponsored by Sen. Manchin. While I find that many of Senator Manchin’s positions are either naive or utterly self-serving (or both), on this issue (and that of the filibuster), his alternative provides at least a small step forward. I came to this conclusion after reading Ezra Klein’s commentary on Manchin (NYT) and the statement of Stacey Abrams in support of Manchin’s alternative to S.1. To put it simply, if it’s good enough for Ms. Abrams, it’s good enough for me (and you, too). 

Related to this issue, and others that Congress needs to address is the problem of the filibuster. Again, Senator Manchin (along with Senator Sinema) seems to hold the key. And while I urge you to support the repeal of this extra-Constitutional vestige of a bygone era, I know repeal is highly unlikely. But you can reform the filibuster to require a determined minority to hold the floor and speak to their cause (or read from the phone book— if they can find one). The American people might then might consider the issue and appreciate what the minority is attempting to prevent—the passage of meaningful legislation. Also, put the burden on those wanting to dodge a vote by requiring a vote of 41 Senators to continue the filibuster. Put the burden on the recalcitrant minority. 

Thank you for your efforts on these matters. The time to enact some vital legislation is at hand, and I urge you to take every reasonable step to bring these matters before the Senate and to a vote—and continue to support democracy and the rule of law.

s/ Stephen Greenleaf

Thoughts for the Day: Saturday 19 June 2021 Happy Juneteenth to All!

 

Doom

Niall Ferguson

This illustrated the central point of this book—that all disasters are at some level man-made political disasters, even if they originate with new pathogens. Politics explained why World War II killed twenty-five times as many Germans as Americans. Politics explains why COVID-19 has thus far killed eighteen times as many Americans as Germans.

N.B. I suggest that if you prefer, you can substitute human "choices," "actions," or "thought" for politics as they are, per Collingwood & Arendt (and others), more or less the same. I don't believe that NF would disagree much. 

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

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The top 10% of America owns almost 70% of the total wealth of the country—from houses and cars to stocks and bonds—while the bottom 50% own just 1.5% of assets. Back in the 1980s, Reagan’s heady vision seemed to promise that America could grow its way out of addressing poverty and inequity. In 2020, growth—at least in developed countries like the US—looks likely to stay sluggish, as it has for two decades.

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

The hard right’s vote comes from many sources: first-time voters, disgruntled left-wing voters, and, for the most part, disgruntled conservatives. They are socially mixed and some are economically distressed, but one marker of the typical hard-right voter is the lack of a higher degree.

The Idea of History

R. G. Collingwood

Chronicle, then, is the past as merely believed upon testimony but not historically known. And this belief is a mere act of will: the will to preserve certain statements which we do not understand. If we did understand them, they would be history. Every history becomes chronicle when related by a person who cannot relive the experiences of its characters: the history of philosophy, for example, as written or read by people who do not understand the thoughts of the philosophers in question.

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

Humanity had not suffered some mass collapse of creative energy or business acumen any more than it had been engulfed by a sudden international unwillingness to work for a reasonable wage. Economic underperformance, whatever its original cause, had created an investment market that now assumed chronic underperformance to be the norm—and was perfectly capable of fulfilling its own prophecy.

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Jack R. Hart

[A] principal “obstacle to writing improvement is our tendency to dwell on either the final results or the mental origins of writing to the exclusion of the activity of writing, as if an empty gap separated writing from thinking.”