Unanimous Consent

A talking point of the current election is that evil* Republicans have been staving off the recovery by placing secret holds on legislation. (*in school I was trained to always use purr words for Democrats and snarl words for Republicans).

In the video below, Evil Republican Jim DeMint describes the evil secret hold process.

According to DeMint, 94% of the legislation that pass the Senate goes through a process of unanimous consent. With unanimous consent, bills pass without going up for debate, amendments or a vote.

During the health-care and finance-reform nondebates, we learned that few representatives read the bills. One can only imagine how few of the unanimous consent bills get read.

On occasion, an uppity Senator will rock the boat and place a hold on a bill to read it. This is the evil secret hold process.

[gasp]

Of all Republican evilness, this reading of bills numbers among the evilest.

Republican evilness has its costs. The talking point is that since only 94% of bills were passed with unanimous consent, then six percent were held up.

Since the recovery didn't happen, it is obvious that delayed passing of bills is the cause.

Don't see the evilness? Because evil Republicans were secretly blocking bills, what should have been The Summer of Recovery turned into a prolonged recession.

I accept that Republicans are evil and Democrats are fluffy bundles of undistilled wonderfulness. So, I thought I would take this post in a different direction.

My first observation is that the flood of legislation flowing through unanimous consent shows that Democrats and Republicans are far more alike than different.

My second observation is that this issue highlights an important aspect of politics and dialectics. A bill will only make it to the floor for public scruntiny if the bill is controversial. This filter means that the public only sees bills when they contain conflicts.

This filtering process over emphasizes the conflicts and creates an illusions that misled the public.

The dialectics creates a system where we see great conflicts on the surface, while the underlying currents wash us to ruin.

The video is worth a view, but I need a conclusion.

So, in conclusion. Republicans are evil creatures who lock Barbie Dolls in boxes with GI Joe action figures to compromise the doll's virtue.



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