Daily Archives: 7 October 2021

More Biden, et al., Disingenuousity

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On the matter of raising our nation’s debt ceiling, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) and the Republican caucus in the Senate have been crystalline for months: Progressive-Democrats in both the House and the Senate have the votes to raise the debt ceiling by themselves, and they have the responsibility to do that, given their decision to pass spending bills with no Republican input, without even talking to Republicans in any serious fashion to seek their input on spending.

Now comes President Joe Biden (D).

He called on Republicans to “get out of the way” and let Democrats quickly raise the debt limit. Asked whether he could guarantee that the US would be able to raise the debt ceiling before the deadline, he put the onus on Republicans: “No, I can’t. That’s up to Mitch McConnell.”

Of course, it’s impossible for the Republicans, being the minority party in both houses of Congress, to be in the way in any shape or form. They can’t stop the Progressive-Democrats from raising the debt ceiling; they don’t have the votes.

All that’s required is for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) and his Progressive-Democrat caucus, along with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) with her Progressive-Democrat majority, to move the raise along through reconciliation—either as a stand-alone bill or by each house passing the extant reconciliation bill, then adding the debt ceiling raise during Conference Committee discussions. Bills coming out of Conference are passable via simple majority votes—no Senate filibusters on Conference-agreed bills.

The latter move, in particular, would let Schumer put Senators Joe Manchin (D, WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D, AZ) on the spot, forcing them to choose between reneging on their pious promises to not vote for a $3.5 trillion bill they say is too much to spend all at once and whose breadth of content they say is too broad in order to vote for a debt ceiling raise, or sticking to their promises and thereby vote down the debt ceiling raise.

Nor would that jeopardize a subsequent clean debt ceiling raise bill, should Manchin and Sinema prove themselves good for their promises: the Senate’s Parliamentarian has already said that the Senate’s two reconciliation bills per session limit would not be applicable. A third bill, dedicated to passing a debt ceiling raise, could be done functionally as reconciliation by “modifying” the second reconciliation bill.

Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi know all of this full well. They’re just trying to duck their personal and Party responsibilities.

It’s a Start

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And it’s coming from a county school board in North Carolina.

A North Carolina county school board has passed a policy that will discipline or fire teachers who undermine the US Constitution, tell students that American historical figures weren’t heroes or portray racism as systemic in America.
The vote Friday by the Johnston County school board is part of a larger campaign to stamp out critical race theory from American schools.

This is a critical start, even if it did come only after the County’s Board of Commissioners had threatened to withhold $7.9 million until the school board acted.

The next step is to include in the curriculum an emphasis on a number of aspects of the shameful acts of our history that really did occur, unlike the…nonsense…in the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory:

  • It was the Democratic Party that demanded slavery in one of “their” new States for every free State admitted to our nation during the run-up to our Civil War
  • It was the Democratic Party that took “their” States out of our nation and forced that Civil War
  • It was the Democratic Party that, in the aftermath of that Civil War, produced the KKK to keep freed blacks “in their place,” lynching and otherwise murdering those and their white supporters who didn’t “mind their place”
  • It was the Democratic Party that, in the aftermath of that Civil War, pushed for gun controls explicitly to keep freed blacks unarmed and helpless against their KKK
  • It was the Democratic Party that enacted Jim Crow laws to keep black Americans from being able to vote
  • It was the Democratic Party that pushed for, and enforced in “their” States, segregation
  • It was the Democratic Party that pushed for minimum wage laws in order to keep southern black Americans from moving north and earning a living by competing for jobs on the basis of the pay they’d require for their labor

In today’s current event lessons, it’s also necessary to emphasize continuing aspects of our history:

  • It’s today’s Progressive-Democrats that still push for gun controls, with those controls’ disparate impact on minorities’—blacks’ in particular—ability to defend themselves
  • It’s today’s Progressive-Democrats that push to defund police departments, so no one else—particularly government—can defend them, either
  • It’s today’s Progressive-Democrats that are reviving segregation by pushing identity politics
  • It’s today’s Progressive-Democrats that, in a back door Jim Crow move, are pushing to defeat or rescind already enacted voting laws that both make it easier to vote—particularly for minorities—and make the voting more secure

These aspects of our history, and the players involved, are too often glossed over in our grade school history lessons, in our junior high history and civics lessons, and in high school.