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national politics & policies partisanship

Abolish. Or Set in Stone

The filibuster is racist. 

That’s what Progressive House Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D‑Wash.) claimed … as long as Democrats were to control the U.S. Senate. 

“The choice is clear,” she once tweeted. “Abolish the Jim Crow filibuster.”

The filibuster demands a 60-​vote supermajority in the 100-​seat Senate in order to shut off debate and vote on most legislation. Yet, in recent times, both parties, when in the majority, have carved out exceptions.

To be clear, the majority party could at any time kill the filibuster. It is simply a Senate rule — not a law, not a constitutional provision. 

Why get rid of it?

If “we had the trifecta” (meaning control of both chambers of Congress and the White House), Jayapal urgently supports ending it: “because we have to show that government can deliver.”

Why keep the rule?

She wants to use the 60-​vote threshold against Republicans; she certainly wants to block them from delivering.

Mock Jayapal’s hypocrisy, as we may, but it is ubiquitous in the capital. Besides, there are more consequential issues to address. 

Either the United States Senate should have a filibuster rule or not. Let’s debate and decide. But one thing is clear: the Senate should not have a 60-​vote majority requirement that either majority party can jettison whenever it so desires. 

Put the filibuster into the Constitution. 

Or — because an amendment is such a long, arduous process — pass a statute establishing the filibuster in law. This would at least provide a presidential check on Congress monkeying around with it. 

And on this one matter, abolish the hypocrisy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders nannyism Regulating Protest

Who Works For Whom?

On the difference between citizen control and a cheap imitation…


Rob Port likes something I do not: North Dakota’s Senate Concurrent Resolution 4001. 

I have previously applauded Port in this space, for his excellent political commentary on Say Anything Blog, columns for the Forum News Service, and on his WDAY AM-​970 radio show in Fargo.

Today? Boos.

The constitutional amendment, pre-​filed for next year’s session by Sen. David Hogue (R‑Minot), would require any future constitutional amendment petitioned onto the ballot by citizens and then passed by voters in a statewide General Election to … pass the Legislature twice — in two separate sessions — to be enacted. 

Hogue’s amendment exterminates the power of the people to bind their representatives constitutionally, arming the Legislature with a veto to overrule the people. 

Port worries that the ballot initiative process has “become an avenue by which deep-​pocketed, mostly out-​of-​state interests” are “buying their way onto the ballot and drowning out opposition with expensive marketing.”

He points to Measure 1, an ethics amendment, funded by “Hollywood activists.” In full disclosure, Liberty Initiative Fund contributed $250,000 from “out of state” to help a North Dakota committee place Measure 2 for “citizen only voting” onto last November’s ballot. But these measures were sponsored and voted for by the citizens of North Dakota, who have every constitutional right to work with folks from outside the Peace Garden State. Even me.

This is worse than the “overkill” Port admits. It changes the rules so that the people could no longer check their elected officials, but only beg those officials for any desired reform.

Thus defeating the very purpose of the citizen initiative process. 

SCR 4001 is democratic suicide. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 


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Senator, David Hogue, petition, initiative, ballot, democracy, North Dakota

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