Month: June 2010

Some books are overrated. The Grapes of Wrath is not. It is the most brutal of all great works, and it has the most poignant ending of any book I’ve ever read. At its heart, it is a book about the way that financial interests and big business on the coasts of this country affect the little guy. In this particular case, we’re talking about the Dust Bowl tenant farmers of Oklahoma and the migrant workers of California. It was Chapter Five (pdf) that taught me about the merciless logic of banking, and it also taught me about the importance of someone in government having a willingness to look out for the little guy. After having read that chapter, I never had to wonder again why so many people from Middle America look askance at me for growing up in the New York metro area. New York is where Wall Street is, and Wall Street?

Some of the [land] owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold.

And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshipped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling.

If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank—or the Company—needs—wants—insists—must have—as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them.

These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the men were a little proud to be slaves to such cold and powerful masters. The owner men sat in the cars and explained. “You know the land is poor. You’ve scrabbled at it long enough, God knows.”

The squatting tenant men nodded and wondered and drew figures in the dust, and yes, they knew, God knows. If the dust only wouldn’t fly. If the top would only stay on the soil, it might not be so bad.

The owner men went on leading to their point: “You know the land’s getting poorer. You know what cotton does to the land; robs it, sucks all the blood out of it.”

The squatters nodded—they knew, God knew. If they could only rotate the crops they might pump blood back into the land.

Well, it’s too late. And the owner men explained the workings and the thinkings of the monster that was stronger than they were. “A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that.”

And the owner men explained the workings and the thinkings of the monster that was stronger than they were. “A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that.”
“Yes, he can do that until his crops fail one day and he has to borrow money from the bank.”

“But—you see, a bank or a company can’t do that, because those creatures don’t breathe air, don’t cat side-meat. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don’t get it, they die the way you die without air, without side-meat. It is a sad thing, but it is so. It is just so.”

And so the tenant farmers had to get off the land because their farming was no longer profitable. And there was no mercy from the faceless monster back in Manhattan that was driving the logic.

So, why is it that all but two of the Democrats who voted against the Wall Street reforms today come for the southern half of this country? How did the South become the best friend of Wall Street? What happened to the sons and daughters and grandchildren of the Dust Bowl Okies? Did their preachers tell them that what’s good for Wall Street is good for the country? Did their minds get poisoned by talk radio? Why on earth would Tom Joad vote for a politician who sticks up for the banks?

Men walkin’ ‘long the railroad tracks
Goin’ someplace there’s no goin’ back
Highway patrol choppers comin’ up over the ridge
Hot soup on a campfire under the bridge
Shelter line stretchin’ round the corner
Welcome to the new world order
Families sleepin’ in their cars in the southwest
No home no job no peace no rest

The highway is alive tonight
But nobody’s kiddin’ nobody about where it goes
I’m sittin’ down here in the campfire light
Searchin’ for the ghost of Tom Joad

He pulls prayer book out of his sleeping bag
Preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag
Waitin’ for when the last shall be first and the first shall be last
In a cardboard box ‘neath the underpass
Got a one-way ticket to the promised land
You got a hole in your belly and gun in your hand
Sleeping on a pillow of solid rock
Bathin’ in the city aqueduct

The highway is alive tonight
But where it’s headed everybody knows
I’m sittin’ down here in the campfire light
Waitin’ on the ghost of Tom Joad

Now Tom said “Mom, wherever there’s a cop beatin’ a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there’s a fight ‘gainst the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me Mom I’ll be there
Wherever there’s somebody fightin’ for a place to stand
Or decent job or a helpin’ hand
Wherever somebody’s strugglin’ to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you’ll see me.”

The highway is alive tonight
But nobody’s kiddin’ nobody about where it goes
I’m sittin’ downhere in the campfire light
With the ghost of old Tom Joad

Copyright © Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)

The House passed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 today in a 237-192 roll call vote. That’s not quite the end of the matter though.

There’s still a nightmare scenario for Democrats: An unforeseen reneging by one of the three Republicans who helped shape the final compromise on the legislation could leave them a vote shy. And at this point, they have few if any means of changing the legislation.

But the Democratic authors of the legislation — House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd — have both implied that the deal is done.

Frank told reporters last night that the House would not proceed to the bill, as they did today, unless they’d received the proper assurances from the Senate that the legislation would certainly pass.

Sounds like a done deal, but with the Republicans, you never know for sure.

Meanwhile, Elena Kagan sailed through her confirmation hearings.

On the military issue, the strong support that Kagan has received from Harvard graduates now serving in war zones provides a strong rebuttal to any argument that Kagan is “anti-military.” On the constitutional issues receiving the most focus–abortion, gun owners’ rights, the scope of Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause–Kagan acknowledged the Court’s existing precedents. And on interpreting the Constitution, she set forth an approach that acknowledges the relevance of “original intent” but leaves room for other considerations such as precedent and the principles embodied in the Court’s precedent. (It will be hard for Republicans to attack this approach in view of Senator Sessions’ statements that “originalism has its limitations” and that “each theory has its limitations.”)

And both Democratic and Republican Senators said that Kagan was more forthcoming than previous nominees.

The immediate impact of this hearing will be Kagan’s confirmation as a Justice.

We may not know how good she’ll be for a few years, but for the president this has already been a good week.

Also, there’s pie.

Ambition and orthodoxy (Kagan’s hero is also Dershowitz’s) was just posted by Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss:

Elena Kagan, the nominee to the Supreme Court, was dean of Harvard Law School in 2006 when she introduced Aharon Barak, chief judge of Israel’s High Court of Justice, during an award ceremony as “my judicial hero.” She explained (per the New York Times):

He is the judge or justice in my lifetime whom, I think, best represents and has best advanced the values of democracy and human rights, of the rule of law and of justice.

Turns out that Kagan (who testified today that “Israel means a lot to me”) is not alone. In The Case for Israel (2003), Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz writes:

This book is respectfully dedicated to my dear friend of nearly forty years, Professor Aharon Barak, the president of Israel’s Supreme Court, whose judicial decisions make a better case for Israel and for the rule of law than any book could possibly do.

Who is Barak? In Beyond Chutzpah, Norman Finkelstein says that Aharon Barak was “a leading proponent” of guidelines allowing torture– making Israel the “only country in the world where torture was legally sanctioned,” according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. He also gave a green light to administrative detentions, even as the judge conceded, “there is probably no State in the Western world that permits an administrative detention of someone who does not himself pose any danger to State security.”

And he approved the barrier wall that crosses through occupied territory, of which Finkelstein says:

If all branches of Israeli government and society bear responsibility for this impending catastrophe [the end of the two-state solution], the share of the HCJ and especially its liberal chief justice, Aharon Barak, is relatively larger. Due to its moral authority the HCJ was in a unique position to sensitize the Israeli public. Beyond helping fend off external criticism of Israel’s annexationist policies, the HCJ chose to mute the collective Israeli conscience.

Of course Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul not long after he published that book.

Finding Elena Kagan paired up philosophically with Alan Dershowitz may be too much for most liberals to bear. Is she just another exceptionalist that regards lawlessness in Israel a necessary fact of life, while portraying herself as an honest to god liberal American judge.

There’s not a goddamned liberal bone in Dershowtiz’s body. So who is it that we are about to confirm as a Supreme Court justice?

Invading Iraq was a bit like using a nuclear weapon to kill an ant…sort of. I don’t know what the hell John Boehner is thinking saying the same about passing a Wall Street Reform bill to address the financial catastrophe. That’s not just tone deaf; it’s political malpractice on a Joe Barton level. And Obama didn’t forget to swing.

Russ Feingold talks a good game but I’m not sure he plays one. He acts like all the administration needs to do is accede to his demands and financial reforms will pass, when the opposite appears to be the case.

Daniel Pipes likes to demonize Muslims but he doesn’t like to draw responsible conclusions. For example, the Times Square bomber explained his actions:

The judge asked Shahzad after he announced an intent to plead guilty to all 10 counts of his indictment: “Why do you want to plead guilty?” A reasonable question given the near certainty that guilty pleas will keep him in jail for long years. He replied forthrightly: I want to plead guilty and I’m going to plead guilty 100 times forward because – until the hour the US pulls it forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and stops the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan and stops the occupation of Muslim lands and stops killing Muslims and stops reporting the Muslims to its government – we will be attacking [the] US, and I plead guilty to that.”

Shahzad insisted on portraying himself as replying to American actions: “I am part of the answer to the US terrorizing [of] the Muslim nations and the Muslim people, and on behalf of that, I’m avenging the attacks,” adding that “we Muslims are one community.”

Nor was that all; he flatly asserted that his goal had been to damage buildings and “injure people or kill people” because “one has to understand where I’m coming from, because… I consider myself a mujahid, a Muslim soldier.”

WHEN CEDARBAUM pointed out that pedestrians in Times Square during the early evening of May 1 were not attacking Muslims, Shahzad replied: “Well, the [American] people select the government. We consider them all the same.”

The responsible conclusion is not that all Muslims feel the same way about America and America’s foreign policies as Shahzad does. But a not insignificant minority of Muslims do feel that way and we can expect the threat of terrorism to remain with us for as long as we wage this War on Terrorism. We can’t shut down the threat by bombing and occupying Muslim lands.

That is why it is safer to remove our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan than it is to keep them there. It’s understandable that we’d like to leave those nations more democratic and stable than we found them, but we shouldn’t confuse ourselves by thinking that we get a straight-up benefit in domestic security by continuing to have a military presence there. It should be possible to prevent safe havens from reconstituting themselves in Afghanistan without a military presence on the ground.

I think Joe Biden’s position is the closest to being correct because it does the best job of making a cost/benefit analysis.

Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

In Zambia, sorghum–a drought resistant cereal that thrives in the country– was considered a “poor man’s crop” in the past, often shunned by small-scale farmers for the more commercially viable maize. But an article in the June issue of Farming Matters explains how a Zambian brewery with a new brand of beer is changing the way small-scale farmers think about sorghum.

While most clear beers such as lagers and pilsners are made with expensive, imported malts, the Zambian Breweries‘ Eagle Lager is made from sorghum. A subsidiary of the South African-based SABMiller, Zambian Breweries purchases sorghum  from local farmers, increasing farmers’ income and providing local grocery stores with an affordable lager.

To help farmers partner with the brewery, the Cooperative League of the United States of America (CLUSA), with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), provides loans for farmers’ start-up expenses, as well as agricultural training to make sure their crops meet the brewery’s quality standards. With CLUSA’s support, the brewery gets a consistent supply of sorghum to produce its beer and farmers gain access to a secure market, a fixed price for their crop, and a consistent income.

To produce larger crop yields of higher quality sorghum, CLUSA and the brewery, encourage farmers to implement conservation agriculture–a combination of simple techniques such as minimal or zero-tillage, ground cover, crop rotation and inter-planting.  Conservation agriculture can reduce the need for inputs, including artificial fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides. And it benefits the other crops farmers are growing by helping improve soil fertility, controlling pests and weeds, and improving water management. In Zambia, maize yields have been increased by 75 percent and cotton yields by 60 percent thanks to conservation agriculture. (See also: Using the Market to Create Resilient Agriculture Practices, To Improve Competitiveness of Rural Businesses, Linking Farmers to the Private Sector, and a Sustainable Calling Plan.)

While Zambia Breweries’ collaboration with local farmers is working, not all partnerships between companies and farmers go so well. Without appropriate regulation, companies may take advantage of a monopoly; farmers can become indebted to the company and lose control of their farms and crops;  and A BIG financial incentive to grow a specific crop can threaten overall crop diversity.

But  in Zambia, more than 4,500 small-scale farmers in 14 districts are currently seeing an increase in their incomes due to their contract with Zambia Breweries. Recognizing the significance of this benefit, the Zambian government recently lowered taxes on Eagle Lager in order to encourage Zambian Breweries to continue working with local small-scale farmers.  And SABMiller is trying to form similar partnerships with sorghum farmers in Uganda, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and Mozambique.

To read more about how partnerships between local companies and small-scale farmers can improve livelihoods and provide other benefits to the environment and community see: Protecting Wildlife While Improving Food Security, Health, and Livelihoods, Improving African Women’s Access to Agriculture Training Programs, and Using Small Businesses to Create Local Markets.

Photo Credit: FAO

Thank you for reading! As you may already know, Danielle Nierenberg is traveling across sub-Saharan Africa visiting organizations and projects that provide environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty.  She has already traveled to over 18 countries and visited 130 projects highlighting stories of hope and success in the region. She will be in Burkina Faso next, so stay tuned for more writing, photos and video from her travels.  

If you enjoy reading this diary, we blog daily on  Nourishing the Planet, where you can also sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly blog and travel updates.  Also, please don’t hesitate to comment on our posts, we check them daily and look forward to an ongoing discussion with you

After my post last night about American companies using minerals from the Congo which supports a genocidal conflict there, some of you asked what you could do to help stop the trade in conflicts minerals that has led to millions of deaths in Congo, war crimes, rape, slavery and the spread of STDs in Africa. Well I did some more research today, and here’s some more information and ideas on what you can do along with some added information about the inadequate response of the Electronics Industry to this problem and the need to make this a foreign policy priority of the Obama administration.

Follow me below the fold, please:

So, What can you do to stop this trade?

Here’s some ideas from yesterday’s Kristof article:

The Obama administration also should put more pressure on Rwanda to play a constructive role next door in Congo (it has, inexcusably, backed one militia and bolstered others by dealing extensively in the conflict minerals trade). Impeding trade in conflict minerals is also a piece of the Congo puzzle, and because of public pressure, a group of companies led by Intel and Motorola is now developing a process to audit origins of tantalum in supply chains.

Manufacturers previously settled for statements from suppliers that they do not source in eastern Congo, with no verification. Auditing the supply chains at smelters to determine whether minerals are clean or bloody would add about a penny to the price of a cellphone, according to the Enough Project, which says the figure originated with the industry.

“Apple is claiming that their products don’t contain conflict minerals because their suppliers say so,” said Jonathan Hutson, of the Enough Project. “People are saying that answer is not good enough. That’s why there’s this grass-roots movement, so that we as consumers can choose to buy conflict free.” Some ideas about what consumers can do are at raisehopeforCongo.org — starting with spreading the word.

Again, the website for RAISE Hope for Congo is HERE

Here’s an email exchange with Steve Jobs posted at that website (via WIRED magazine):

WIRED’s Gadget Lab blog just published a post highlighting the first-ever direct response from the Apple founder about conflict minerals, a problem that plagues every electronics company and thus links consumers to the war in Congo – if unwittingly.

Here’s the exchange between Apple loyalist Derick Rhodes and Jobs, as reported by WIRED:

Hi Steve,

I’d planned to buy a new iPhone tomorrow – my first upgrade since buying the very first version on the first day of its release – but I’m hesitant without knowing Apple’s position on sourcing the minerals in its products.

Are you currently making any effort to source conflict-free minerals? In particular, I’m concerned that Apple is getting tantalum, tungsten, tin, and gold from Eastern Congo through its suppliers.

Looking forward to your response,

Derick

Jobs’ reply:

Yes. We require all of our suppliers to certify in writing that they use conflict few [sic] materials. But honestly there is no way for them to be sure. Until someone invents a way to chemically trace minerals from the source mine, it’s a very difficult problem.

Sent from my iPhone

It’s a very welcome development that Jobs decided to personally weigh in on this issue and respond to a concerned consumer, because ultimately it will be decisions by him and other industry leaders that will give customers the choice to go conflict free. But because we have a couple of questions with his argument, Enough is replying in kind. Here’s an email we just sent to him:

Thanks, Steve. You have always blazed a path where others thought it impossible.

Tracing minerals isn’t easy, but it can be done. The chokepoint is at the smelter, where the raw mineral ores are processed into metals. Tin and tantalum firms that supply electronics companies have started tracing programs in the past six months, and certain electronics companies are beginning to audit this process.

But to guarantee to consumers that iPads, iPods and iPhones are verifiably conflict-free, we need more resources and commitment from industry leaders like you. We have a roadmap to accomplish this, through tracing, auditing, and certification. Would you like to meet and talk further?

As anyone can tell, Jobs’ answer is grossly inadequate.

I suggest you contact your favorite electronics’ manufacturers (I will with Dell) and ask them to do more than just accept letters from their suppliers regarding conflicts minerals from the Congo, letters which are often worthless buts of paper designed only to evade legal responsibility. Tell them to get on board with a serious effort to audit the source of the minerals they use to produce the electronic gadgets we all love. I don’t want to be supporting a war that has killed millions and neither should you.

Use the email above as a model or call their customer relations departments directly.

Be polite, but firm. Let them know that you don’t want to support the deaths of millions of our fellow human beings, even indirectly, and neither should they. Give them the website to RAISE Hope For Congo. Tell them a penny additional cost to audit the sources of these minerals is a small price to pay.

Also contact the US State Department at 202-647-4000

Ask to speak to someone in the Bureau of African Affairs to register your concern about what the United States is doing to stop the trade in Conflicts Minerals in the Congo.

Point then to the columns by Kristoff and other articles such asthis article:

Even though the Enough Project, an anti-genocide activist group, estimates that only a fifth of the world’s tantalum comes from Congo, they consider the gadget industry “one of the drivers of the conflict.”

Companies like Intel, Apple, and Motorola have pledged to audit their supply chains more carefully and to remove the so-called “conflict mineral” sources, but Enough Project representatives insist that most of the impetus to clean things up is being placed on the companies’ suppliers and warn that tech companies can’t be content to take suppliers at their word. Intel has been pressured on its Facebook page to support legislation that would reduce trade in conflict minerals, and the Enough Project recently produced a “Get a Mac” spoof that seeks to spread awareness about the issue, condemning both Macs and PCs for using conflict minerals.

It’s clear that these supply chains need to be overhauled—something that hasn’t gone ignored by the companies who rely on them. And while it’s naive to think that manufacturing gadgets with conflict-free tantalum would immediately end Congo’s plight, understanding the realities of where these supply chains begin is a necessary step toward truly cleaning them up.

And this one, too:

Heavy-weights of the computer and electronic industries have joined forces to rid their supply-chains from “blood minerals” coming from the Congo’s militarized mines.

They are supporting “Phase 2” of the initiative developed by the tin industry organization International Tin Research Institute – ITRI, to address the problem of minerals, mainly tin and tantalum, coming from militarized mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Militarized mining has meant massive use of forced labor, widespread violence against workers and the population in general, continued abuses of human rights, and unending war.

ITRI says that “Phase 1”, implemented in July 2009, was “a comprehensive due diligence plan for tin minerals exported from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).” It has now announced “Phase 2” of its policy, called ITRI Tin Supply Chain Initiative, iTSCi.

iTSCi would represent:

the first practical field trial designed to address concerns over ‘conflict minerals’ from that region and has required significant commitment and funding, around US$600k, to be put in place in order to go ahead.

[…]

I have also contacted Annie Dunnebacke at Global Witness, an NGO that investigates and campaigns to prevent natural resource-related conflict and corruption. I wanted to know what she had seen in the region, on her last field trip last February, and how that related to the industry’s initiatives.

She told me that GW’s team>

gathered documentary evidence (…) that some comptoirs [trading houses] implementing the ITRI scheme are currently sourcing from militarised zones. Our recent investigation also highlighted that the national army (mostly brigades commanded by former CNDP [Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple] rebels) have taken over the majority of the mining sites in eastern Congo (with the exception of gold, much of which remains under FDLR [Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda] control

This means, according to her view, that Phase 1 was only about

ensuring that comptoirs have their paperwork in order – licences, taxes, things they should have been doing by law anyway. It is not an accomplishment, it does not address the conflict minerals problem in any way and is merely belated compliance with basic elements of Congo’s laws.

However, other situations in which illegally extracted natural resources enter the supply-chain of large global corporations showed that compliance with the law is a prerequisite to any successful attempt at banning such products from regular markets.

Annie Dunnebacke’s stronger point is that if

the ITRI scheme does not cover the army – so it does not address the heart of the problem.

She also argues that

companies that source minerals from eastern DRC have a responsibility to make sure their supply chains are free of all materials from militarised mines right now, not at some point in the future. The violence associated with militarised mineral trade is not a future prospect, it is immediate and is costing lives. Any scheme that does not include regular field investigations and independent audits by companies is meaningless.

Seriously, the electronics industry believes $600,000 is an adequate response to stop this horrific trade? It’s window dressing and they know it. The NGO Global Watch has already shown that these efforts are inadequate and merely a cheap cover for their continued trade in conflict minerals which invariably end up supporting the criminals who are engaging in slavery, rape and war. It’s a public relations effort to forestall serious efforts to deal with this issue.

Tell the State Department that they need to sit down with the electronics manufacturers and come up with a real strategy to end the use of conflicts minerals from the Congo. Tell them 6.9 million deaths and human rights violations as this scale is more than enough reason to end our official indifference to the plight of the people in the Congo. We don’t need to send in the troops but we can and should find ways to end the easy export of these minerals and their use in our electronic devices.

Lastly, call your Congressional representatives and demand they take action to end this murderous trade in which war criminals fund their armies and militias through selling the minerals used in our computers and cell phones. Tell them we need laws with stiff fines for any companies caught using conflict minerals, whether or not they can claim they didn’t know where the minerals cane from.

In short, do what this community does best: become a voice for those who have no voice. It doesn’t require your money, but it does require a little time and effort. And if you do have money tom support this cause, send it to:

RAISE Hope For Congo to support it’s Enough campaign.

Thank you.

Republicans, and even some Democrats, like to say that America is a ‘center-right’ country, and I think they’re probably correct about that. But it’s not really the political beliefs of our citizenry that makes this country ‘center-right.’ Most polling done of Americans’ political beliefs shows them to be quite a bit to the left of where Congress typically lies. For example, the House of Representatives (aka, the People’s House) has an anti-choice majority but no poll shows that the majority of Americans are anti-choice. I think the explanation for this strange result is a combination of uneven distribution (there are lots of districts that are very, very pro-choice and a lot more that are modestly anti-choice) and disproportionate levels of passion (anti-choicers are much more committed to their cause). In any case, the biggest reason our government is far to the right of our people is the U.S. Senate.

This is easier to explain. When California has the same number of senators as Oklahoma, you know something is fucked up right away. Oklahoma has way too much say about what goes on in the Senate, and California has way too little. Far more small states lean Republican than Democratic, and that sways the politics of the country far to the right of where it really belongs.

So, the whole one-person, one-vote thing is badly skewed. Diane Feinstein won reelection in 2006 by winning over five million votes, while James Inhofe won reelection in 2008 with just over seven hundred and fifty thousand votes. Shouldn’t Diane Feinstein’s vote count for five or six times as much as James Inhofe’s?

The Senate is clearly an undemocratic institution. It was born of a compromise that was struck to ensure that we actually had united states backing our new federal government. If not for the two votes per state rule, Virginia and Massachusetts would have dominated our government so much that little Delaware and Rhode Island would never have agreed to join it. Okay, so I understand why this was done. But it skews things. And it’s made immeasurably worse by the filibuster rule, which actually makes it possible for 41% of an undemocratic Senate to block the will of the other fifty-nine percent.

Now, I recognize that this super-empowerment of the minority in our country leads to amazing stability, and that that stability is one of the things that has contributed to making America one of the most attractive places in the world to invest. We’re unique, even exceptional, in that we do not turn on a dime and change our financial or tax policies willy-nilly. If a simple majority could muscle through huge changes, our country would lose this attractive quality immediately. Forecasting the future would be a crapshoot and something essential about our country’s character would be lost. I am not arguing, necessarily, that we want to scrap the filibuster entirely.

But there is a difference between stability and gridlock. For one thing, I do not think that the filibuster is appropriate for presidential appointments. The executive office should be able to fill out its staff in a timely manner. I know this would mean that a filibuster would not be available to beat back controversial judicial appointments, but it’s a price we should pay to make sure that we have an effective government.

I also don’t think that the filibuster should be the final word on legislation. If a senator wants to exert his or her right to have more time to consider a piece of legislation, that’s fine. But a minority should not be able to delay legislation indefinitely. If something is so pressing as to justify using up huge chunks of the legislative calendar to see that it gets a vote, then it should eventually get that vote. Cloture votes should have a sliding scale. The first effort to cut off debate might require 67 votes, the next 60, the next 55, and the last fifty-one. A party determined to have a vote at the 51-vote threshold might have to devote two months of legislative time, but if they’re willing to do that, the issue must be of grave importance, and we can’t allow gridlock to paralyze the government’s ability to tackle pressing issues.

I don’t think most Americans would approve of the undemocratic character of the U.S. Senate if they fully understood it. There might be a strange kind of genius behind it that contributes to our success as a nation, but not if it prevents us from taking action. Not if it thwarts the will of the people to a crippling degree. Not if we can’t have a government that can keep its promises.

Wow. It appears that Daily Kos has concluded that Research 2000 was providing them with fabricated polling data over the last year and a half and they are suing them for breach of contract.