Harry Reid: Finalist, Shoulda-Woulda-Coulda Division

I’d like to be taken at least a little bit seriously in terms of what I write here, and I know full well that beginning any post with a giant, all-caps “AAAAAAAAARRRGH,” followed by several exclamation points will make me seem like all-that-is-wrong-and-laughable-about-bloggers in a nutshell. Nevertheless, sometimes, there’s genuinely nothing that better than a good AAAAAAAARRRGH!!!!! to sum up the feeling many of us on the left have when we read certain articles in the press.

This was one of those articles:

In May, Harry Reid apologized for killing off a 2010 filibuster reform bill, admitting that the legislative procedure has been “abused, abused, and abused.” Reid has now gone a step farther: the Senate Majority Leader is now openly promising to pass filibuster reform in the beginning of the next Congress if Democrats manage to hold onto a simple majority in the Senate and if Obama is reelected.

Really, Senator? The procedure has been abused? Who knew? (hint: that was sarcasm – EVERYBODY KNEW (even me), well in advance of the January, 2011 opportunity to reform the filibuster). As they say on Twitter, SMH – “shaking my head.” Or, even better: AAAAAAAARRRGH!!!! Because, of course, as any number of bloggers, reporters, television commentators and average citizens who follow politics could’ve told you several years ago, the fact that the GOP minority in the Senate has been trying to force their will-of-the-minority on the country by abusing the filibuster since the Democrats took control of the Senate in 2006 is about the least-surprising item in politics, currently. It’s not even questionable:

Cloture motions filed per congressional session

This information wasn’t secret prior to January, 2011, either. But apparently, it was news to Harry Reid — or, perhaps, due to his close, clubby, “collegial” relationship with the other 99 members’ of the world’s most exclusive club – US Senators – Reid just “felt,” in his heart of hearts, that the GOP just wouldn’t DO such mean-spirited things for political gain. After all, Reid personally knows all those GOP Senators, and they’re really great, once you get to know them! They’d never do that to him!

Of course, I am exaggerating out of frustration what Reid’s actual position probably was at the time in 2010/early 2011. But not by much, I’d bet. What other explanation could there be for one of the people who’s closest to the matter being one of the few people anywhere who couldn’t see the reality of GOP filibuster abuse (or at least couldn’t see the need to take any action regarding it)? Let’s not forget, while we’re at it, that Harry Reid doesn’t have an exactly stellar track record when it comes to prognosticating about what will happen in the body he helms, at least in terms of predicting other Senators’ actions based upon what Reid “knows” of their intentions and their hearts:

First of all, Joe Lieberman, Joe Lieberman is my friend, and he is a good Democrat, votes with us on everything, except the war. So Joe Lieberman is easy to work with.

That was Senator Reid, utilizing his obsidian ball to predict in December of 2007 how easy Joe Lieberman would be to work with in the upcoming congressional session. How’d THAT work out, Senator?

So now, on Friday’s The Ed Show, Harry Reid says, in true Rocky and Bullwinkle fashion, that now he’s ready to really do filibuster reform (“this time, for SURE!“). Reid alluded to having had a change of mind on this back in mid-May, when he apologized to Senators Udall and Merkley (the principal sponsors of genuine filibuster reform in 2010/11) for having squelched their efforts.

So, great news, right? I mean, if Reid now recognizes the foolishness of his past mistake on filibuster reform and is now fully committed to seeing it through, Democrats can simply do at the start of the 2012 congressional session what they could have done at the start of 2010: change the rules of the filibuster, since they are the majority party in the Senate. The beauty of it is, such rule-changes, under the Merkley-Udall plan, are not themselves subject to filibuster, meaning a simple majority vote would suffice.

So what’s the problem? Well, although a lot is still up in the air, and many factors (not least of which may be the outcome of the Presidential race itself) could affect the makeup of next Senate, it’s now appearing likely that the Democrats won’t control the Senate in January, 2012:

Currently, we project the most likely outcome to be Republicans winning 50 seats, Democrats 49, and Mr. King the seat in Maine. Under those circumstances, the Democrats would retain control of the Senate if Mr. King caucused with them and President Obama won re-election, making Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. the tiebreaking vote. Otherwise, Republicans would control the chamber.

In other words, Reid’s abject failure to strike while the iron was hot – when Senate Democrats actually had the CHANCE to make meaningful filibuster reform – not only cost him (and the country) dozens of potential legislative victories to continued GOP obstructionistic abuse of the filibuster from 2010-2012, but also likely put the entire idea of filibuster reform into indefinite limbo, if not outright killed it.

This is a textbook example of what progressives mean when we talk about frustration with Washington – both the executive and legislative branches. Think of this the next time you see the the equivalent of AAAAAAAARRRGH!!!!! coming from a progressive. It’s nice to know Reid recognizes progressives were right in 2009/10 about filibuster reform. It’d have been a lot nicer if it hadn’t taken yet another two years of being able to get very little accomplished for him to realize it.

Wow – Twice In One Week

Dean Baker catches Tom Friedman looking very silly, indeed – again. Of course, this recent column will not make Friedman look silly to any of his regular readers who are both not informed through other means already and too incurious to doubt Friedman’s statements of fact, because Friedman sounds so convincing when he pontificates thusly on things he knows little about, like the debt crisis engulfing the Eurozone (particularly Greece):

Germans are now telling Greeks: ‘We’ll loan you more money, provided that you behave like Germans in how you save, how many hours a week you work, how long a vacation you take …’”

Baker’s point is that there are indeed people who know already (or are willing to research before they opine about) things like Greek’s debt crisis and comparative working hours in various European countries. It’s just that Tom Friedman isn’t one of them. As Baker notes:

If we look to the OECD data, we see that the average number of hours in a work year for Germans in 2008 (the most recent data avilable) was 1430. This compared 2120 hours a year for the average Greek worker. This means that if Germans want the Greeks to be more like Germans in the number of hours a week they work and the length of their vacations then they want the Greeks to work less, not more.

Friedman supporters (presumably, or possibly just conservatives) have rushed to Friedman’s aid in the comments, pointing out that 70% of Germans are employed, versus 62% of Greeks, and suggesting that fact means too many Greeks are “sitting on their hands.” But in Greece – as here – very few of  the unemployed are actually to blame for their lack of employment; fewer still prefer it to working for a living. The government may have mismanaged things recently, or even over a long period, in order for such high unemployment to be present, but it’s hardly the case that 8% of Greeks (compared to Germans) are sitting around not working because they WANT to. Believing that comforting old canard would require, for example, here in the States, one to believe that the number of lazy people has nearly doubled from only a few years ago…and that it will likely drop again over the next few years. Viewed in that light, it’s easy to see what a transparently false rationalization such arguments are — but that never stops the defenders of the “bootstraps theory” – or, apparently, Tom Friedman’s fans – from making it.

Sweet Jesus, Rick Santorum Is An Idiot

This man should never, EVER be allowed near the Oval Office.

That is all.

Georgia Boldly Leading The Way…Backward

Ah, Georgia. The Peach State. My state. Where, thanks to Governor Nathan Deal and the heavily GOP-controlled legislature, we see the final fruit of GOTea policymaking. Or, rather, the lack of fruit. Jay Bookman at the AJC has the forehead-smacking (though entirely predictable) details:

After enactment of House Bill 87, a law designed to drive illegal immigrants out of Georgia, state officials appear shocked to discover that HB 87 is, well, driving a lot of illegal immigrants out of Georgia.

It might almost be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

The resulting manpower shortage has forced state farmers to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry.

Barely a month ago, you might recall, Gov. Nathan Deal welcomed the TV cameras into his office as he proudly signed HB 87 into law. Two weeks later, with farmers howling, a scrambling Deal was forced to order a hasty investigation into the impact of the law he had just signed, as if all this had come as quite a surprise to him.

The results of that investigation have now been released. According to survey of 230 Georgia farmers conducted by Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, farmers expect to need more than 11,000 workers at some point over the rest of the season, a number that probably underestimates the real need, since not every farmer in the state responded to the survey.

Siiiigh. As Bookman says, “it might almost be funny if it wasn’t so sad.” The problem, of course, is that what has happened is, two conflicting desires of the GOTea party have come into conflict with one another on the issue of immigration – with predictable results – and the loser is the entire state’s economic fortunes…all in a time when the economy is already in none-too-great shape.

Those conflicting desires are a) exploiting cheap, hardworking illegal immigrant labor (who often, out of fear of ICE, will work at or below minimum wage for long hours) in order to provide cheap produce at maximum profit, and b) the “patriotic” urge to get all those dang “illegals” who are stealing our jobs (and setting fires, LOL) to go back where they belong right now, damnit!!

Well, the state’s already been doing the first of those things, quietly and without fuss, for some time now. In truth, Georgia’s agribusiness has, since the very beginning, depended upon labor that was either considerably sub-market wages or, um, free ifyouknowwhatimean **cough**. and, over the past fifteen years or so, Georgia has risen in rank among the states from its 1996 rank of #17 (pdf) to its current rank of #7. My family moved here in 2003, and though I have only my own anecdotal evidence to go on, it seems to me that the population of Spanish-speakers working in traditionally low-ish paying jobs here has risen just in that time. i’ve even heard lifelong Georgia residents who are fellow liberals remarking bitterly that “brown is the new black in Georgia.”

Only now, with the recent frenzy of tea party/Palin/McCain anti-immigrant sentiment, Georgia’s Republicans appear to be trying the second of those desires/goals: gettin’ rid of all the “illegal aliens.” With results that, as Bookman points out, are “entirely predictable and in fact intended.” And there aren’t any good, immediately-obvious solutions, either:

It’s hard to envision a way out of this. Georgia farmers could try to solve the manpower shortage by offering higher wages, but that would create an entirely different set of problems. If they raise wages by a third to a half, which is probably what it would take, they would drive up their operating costs and put themselves at a severe price disadvantage against competitors in states without such tough immigration laws. That’s one of the major disadvantages of trying to implement immigration reform state by state, rather than all at once.

The pain this is causing is real. People are going to lose their crops, and in some cases their farms. The small-town businesses that supply those farms with goods and services are going to suffer as well. For economically embattled rural Georgia, this could be a major blow.

That’s even putting it somewhat mildly, I think. But I agree completely with Bookman’s rueful conclusion:

We’re going to reap what we have sown, even if the farmers can’t.

Obama Can’t Be Everything Bad

C’mon, conservatives, tea-partiers, conspiracy-theorists. This is getting ridiculous, and I KNOW there are some of you out there who want to at least appear as if you’ve got brains in your heads. Obama can’t be ALL of these things, as one most excellent graphic I saw this morning put it:

Best Photo Of The Week

Says it all, really. (via Alan Colmes)