Democrats censure Senator Sinema

[alang1216]

And we don't need immigrants for that. We have plenty of Americans that can do the job.

So where are they hiding?

With nearly a quarter of a million job openings nationwide for long-haul truck drivers, the call of the open road is going largely unheeded. During these tough economic times with layoffs, pay cuts, and high unemployment, trucking companies are still struggling to fill their open positions. As David Heller, director of safety and policy for the Truckload Carriers Association, tells CNN money, “Nobody wants to drive a truck.”

The demand for truckers is steadily increasing, up from the 1.5 million drivers on the road now. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 330,100 additional trucking jobs are expected to be added to the rolls between 2010 and 2020, representing an overall increase of 20%. But these positions are difficult to fill, and even harder to keep filled. The pay isn’t bad: Truckers earn a median annual wage of $37,930, which is $4,000 more than the median wage for all jobs, according to the BLS. The top 10% of truck drivers make more than $58,000 per year. So why do so many long-haul trucking jobs remain unfilled?

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Is it fair that the vote of a resident of NYC has less weight than a voter from Iowa?

Who said less weight? They still have more weight because they have more electors in the college. But what they don't have is such power to rule the country.

I understand why it is the way it is and 250 years ago it was fine. America has changed a lot since and what doesn't adapt and change will become extinct.

Nothing has changed in the way power is distributed. Remember a President of our country is not just President of the people, but President of the land as well. So what if NYC ran out of places to bury their garbage and decided to dump it in your state of Wyoming? Why should a President care? They have just a little over a half million people there and probably the voting adults are less than half of that.

 

[DBA]

This is about voting rights.

You actually believe that don’t you?

 

[Devils_Advocate]

How manly of those Democrats, going after a poor, defenseless woman and not Manchin.

Pussies.

Manchin has been in the Senate so long that he knows Schumer, Biden and many others dirty little secrets, so they ain’t going after him at all…

 

[alang1216]

Who said less weight? They still have more weight because they have more electors in the college. But what they don't have is such power to rule the country.



Nothing has changed in the way power is distributed. Remember a President of our country is not just President of the people, but President of the land as well. So what if NYC ran out of places to bury their garbage and decided to dump it in your state of Wyoming? Why should a President care? They have just a little over a half million people there and probably the voting adults are less than half of that.

All good points but I see the system as no longer working as it should. I'm fine with the Senate but the filibuster needs reform. It is not in the Constitution and is being abused. One Senator has even filibustered his own bill. I see the Senate as a protector of small states, the EC is not needed and allows for minority presidents.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

So where are they hiding?

With nearly a quarter of a million job openings nationwide for long-haul truck drivers, the call of the open road is going largely unheeded. During these tough economic times with layoffs, pay cuts, and high unemployment, trucking companies are still struggling to fill their open positions. As David Heller, director of safety and policy for the Truckload Carriers Association, tells CNN money, “Nobody wants to drive a truck.”

The demand for truckers is steadily increasing, up from the 1.5 million drivers on the road now. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 330,100 additional trucking jobs are expected to be added to the rolls between 2010 and 2020, representing an overall increase of 20%. But these positions are difficult to fill, and even harder to keep filled. The pay isn’t bad: Truckers earn a median annual wage of $37,930, which is $4,000 more than the median wage for all jobs, according to the BLS. The top 10% of truck drivers make more than $58,000 per year. So why do so many long-haul trucking jobs remain unfilled?

And they are bringing in immigrants to take these jobs, that's the problem.

How can pay increase when you have people coming here to undercut potential rate increases?

The problem in trucking is way too much government. The solution is destroy these bureaucracies that oversee trucking and let Congress make the laws and fines. Every year they make it harder and harder on American truckers until they finally say F-it. I quit! They are not solving any problems, in fact just creating new ones. They made it so hard on me that's what I did. I said F-it and went on disability. In the meantime, these same bureaucracies are allowing these foreigners to come here and take our jobs. In many cases they have no experience, no training, and our government gives them reciprocity for what their country considers a CDL, which in their country anybody can get for five bucks and a pack of cigarettes.

In the end we have more dangerous truck drivers on the road, some of them that can't speak English yet alone read our English road signs. The first time they ever drove a tractor-trailer is when they got a job in this country.

In my last company, my employer promoted drivers. Instead of looking for new tractor-trailer drivers, he offered our straight truck drivers the job. He had one of our experienced drivers train him, take him to get his test, and offered him the first available tractor-trailer position. Until that time, they got experience filling in for one of us when we took the day off.

But starting next month, that all comes to an end. The bureaucrats decided that anybody driving must complete a government class. That's on top of any training you already got. This includes advancing from a Class B to a Class A as we did in our company. More problems we don't need.

 

[citygator]

Another example of how similar the two parties can be.

Don't toe the line, and we'll censure you, Dem or Trumpster.

They won their seats. That's the way it goes. Sheesh.

Dems censor over a policy dispute supporting free and open elections. Pubs censor members for not blowing the orange man’s illiberal activities under the rug. Not the same.

Having said that you’re spot on with they were elected so vote how they feel and man up for next election.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

All good points but I see the system as no longer working as it should. I'm fine with the Senate but the filibuster needs reform. It is not in the Constitution and is being abused. One Senator has even filibustered his own bill. I see the Senate as a protector of small states, the EC is not needed and allows for minority presidents.

Nope. The college performs the same thing it did 250 years ago, and that is stop mob rule. The only way to change that is a constitutional amendment, and good luck with that one.

The Senate is allowed to make their own rules on voting, and nothing in the Constitution prevents that. The reason they want to change the filibuster rule now is they are trying to once again cheat the election system. They want to federalize elections in this country so the Communists win every time. They know they are going to get killed in 2022. That's why the new commie claim is that the 2022 elections are already illegitimate before the first vote is cast.

 

[Coyote]

I cannot agree. If legislation cannot get 60 votes in the Senate on its own merits, then it shouldn't be made into law and should not be passed with 51 votes as soon as the senators get exhausted from speaking. All you're doing is delaying the inevitable and eliminating any chance of future compromise and cooperation.

Sometimes obstruction is a good thing when a bad law is passed or a better law is possible.


"Carve outs predated Reid"

When might that be? Link please.

The problem is that the use of the filibuster (like gerrymandering) has gone way beyond precedent. It is no longer a tool used to block the occasional legislation that is intenable to the minority party, it is tool for obstruction. How long have we essentially been in grid lock…a couple decades?

It is not that a piece of legislation can’t pass on it’s merits, it is that one side decides NOTHING will pass on purely partisan grounds. It used to be that the minority side realized they would have to give on some issues, or negotiate in order to get something out of it. But now they just push the filibuster button.

When Reid made his carve out, he was looking at an unprecedented blocking of judicial nominees, not on merit, on principle because the Republicans decided they were going to block everything that president might attempt and hold judgeships for a possible future Republican president. How can that possibly be good for our country?

A few facts about the filibuster…it isn’t set in stone, it wasn’t part of our Constitution. It began in 1837, when the senate changed the rules for cutting off debate. It hasn’t been with us “from the beginning”. Even the 60 vote threshold is not set in stone.

Fixing the Senate Filibuster

Even if the filibuster cannot be abolished, there are ways to fix it that would clear a path for major democracy reform.

www.brennancenter.org

The filibuster itself has been changed numerous times. Between 1969 and 2014,  161 exceptions to its supermajority requirement were created. Senate majorities from both parties have approved carve outs and other changes related to executive branch and judicial nominations, budget reconciliation measures, and more. Even the 60-vote threshold has not always been a defining feature of the filibuster. In 1975, the Senate voted to lower the threshold from 67 votes to 60, as one response to the demand for reforms in the aftermath of Watergate.

1969 predates Harry Reid. So no, he did not start this process.

An example of how broken this process is the now yearly fight over raising the debt ceiling, a process that used to be bipartisan, routine, and unexceptional. I don’t think most people even realize what is. It is not spending. It is for money already spent, so we can pay bills. You don’t like it? You need to make changes before it is spent, not after. The near constant brinksmanship the filibuster allows over this sends ripples not just through our economy but around the world. Will the US default on it’s debts? And it negatively effects our financial ratings as a nation.


When does preserving minority rights become a tyranny of the minority?

When does preventing extreme legislation from passing and forcing compromise and negotiation become nothing more than total or near total obstruction?

Is this system still working for us as a country? Is it supporting bipartisanship? Or does it only support partisanship?

 

[alang1216]

And they are bringing in immigrants to take these jobs, that's the problem.

How can pay increase when you have people coming here to undercut potential rate increases?

The problem in trucking is way too much government. The solution is destroy these bureaucracies that oversee trucking and let Congress make the laws and fines. Every year they make it harder and harder on American truckers until they finally say F-it. I quit! They are not solving any problems, in fact just creating new ones. They made it so hard on me that's what I did. I said F-it and went on disability. In the meantime, these same bureaucracies are allowing these foreigners to come here and take our jobs. In many cases they have no experience, no training, and our government gives them reciprocity for what their country considers a CDL, which in their country anybody can get for five bucks and a pack of cigarettes.

In the end we have more dangerous truck drivers on the road, some of them that can't speak English yet alone read our English road signs. The first time they ever drove a tractor-trailer is when they got a job in this country.

In my last company, my employer promoted drivers. Instead of looking for new tractor-trailer drivers, he offered our straight truck drivers the job. He had one of our experienced drivers train him, take him to get his test, and offered him the first available tractor-trailer position. Until that time, they got experience filling in for one of us when we took the day off.

But starting next month, that all comes to an end. The bureaucrats decided that anybody driving must complete a government class. That's on top of any training you already got. This includes advancing from a Class B to a Class A as we did in our company. More problems we don't need.

Sounds like I hit a nerve? I don't know much about trucking but I wonder why there are so many regulations? My guess is that each is a reaction to a real problem that came up. That government class requirement is likely because not every company trains its drivers as well as yours and the untrained were causing accidents.

 

[alang1216]

Nope. The college performs the same thing it did 250 years ago, and that is stop mob rule. The only way to change that is a constitutional amendment, and good luck with that one.

I get it, anyone who doesn't vote like you is part of a mob. Sounds rather elitist to me.

The Senate is allowed to make their own rules on voting, and nothing in the Constitution prevents that. The reason they want to change the filibuster rule now is they are trying to once again cheat the election system. They want to federalize elections in this country so the Communists win every time. They know they are going to get killed in 2022. That's why the new commie claim is that the 2022 elections are already illegitimate before the first vote is cast.

No, as Trump himself noted, if elections are free, fair, and easy, GOP candidates would have a much harder time.

 

[Concerned American]

working a lot of hours and can't reasonably vote in person

Make election day a national holiday and that will remove that barrier and need for anything but "in person" voting except for those who are infirm. Military stationed off of US bases are the only other exception. Voting can be accomplished on US foreign bases.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

I get it, anyone who doesn't vote like you is part of a mob. Sounds rather elitist to me.

No, as I stated, I just don't think one city or state should be the ruling factor for the entire country. Politicians wouldn't even campaign in such states because it would be a waste of time. The EC makes those states a little more valuable as their EC votes are what they need even if only a few. In other words if a tornado wiped out a town in a less populated state, left to a pure democracy, the President wouldn't even send aid. He'd sooner spend all our money where he gets votes from.

No, as Trump himself noted, if elections are free, fair, and easy, GOP candidates would have a much harder time.

To some degree he is correct. The welfare vote belongs to the Democrats and welfare people don't care (or know) enough about voting to put the slightest energy into voting. That means our representatives are ultimately chosen by completely politically ignorant people. That's why Dementia is our President today, and look at what he did to this country in one year.

If we have more politically educated voters, we end up with better representation. People who do understand our country, our policies, what's at stake will do anything to vote, and those are likely Republican voters. Even our founders debated the idea of not allowing all people to vote because of what we see now.

I like to use this scenario: Let's say the MLB decided to allow the citizens of the city to pick players instead of the owners or managers. In my city, you had to demonstrate you had an acute knowledge of baseball to vote. In your city, anybody could vote. You'd probably have more voters, but they'd be voting on how cute a player is, their nationality, their hot wife or how they did doing a commercial. So which one of our cities would you suppose would have the better team?

 

[task0778]

It is not that a piece of legislation can’t pass on it’s merits, it is that one side decides NOTHING will pass on purely partisan grounds.

I'll assume by one side you meant the minority party, which could be Dems or Repubs. Some things have been passed with minority help, most recently the $1 trillion infrastructure bill. Before that they passed stimulus checks a few times too. They used to do it before now, which tells me there's nothing wrong with the system.

The problem is that the use of the filibuster (like gerrymandering) has gone way beyond precedent. It is no longer a tool used to block the occasional legislation that is intenable to the minority party, it is tool for obstruction.

When a political party attains a supermajority (60 seats or more) then they have the power to pass whatever they want to without obstruction, and that's the way it oughta be cuz the voters elected them and as we all know, elections have consequences. BUT - when they don't (typically) then it behooves them (majority party) to get things done and that requires or should require at least an attempt to compromise with and negotiate some kind of deal with the minority party. Sometimes it is the minority that won't cooperate, that is true and both parties have done that. But sometimes it is the majority party that won't cooperate by negotiating in good faith; it takes 2 to tango as they say, and it isn't always the minority that refuses to dance.

When Reid made his carve out, he was looking at an unprecedented blocking of judicial nominees, not on merit, on principle because the Republicans decided they were going to block everything that president might attempt and hold judgeships for a possible future Republican president. How can that possibly be good for our country?

Are you claiming that it is only the Republicans that have been guilty of that? Funny thing, the democrats howled long and loud about justice appointments in the last year of a presidency but sang a different tune when it was their president.

1969 predates Harry Reid. So no, he did not start this process.

He sure as hell accelerated it. In 1969, the objection had to do with faithless electors. It lost by large margins. I have no doubt that both sides have used the threat of the nuclear option to advance their political objectives, sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. As far as I know, outside of the reconciliation process the 1st time either side used a carve-out to avoid a filibuster was when Harry Reid did it in 2013. No one has tried to advance new legislation via the nuclear option, ever. Until now.

When does preserving minority rights become a tyranny of the minority?

That pretty much depends on a person's point of view. What if the shoe is on the other foot and the GOP owns the WH and Congress and they use the nuclear option to pass a law that outlaws abortion by a 51-50 margin because the democrats wouldn't support their bill to do that. Let's not pretend that this isn't done by both sides for political purposes. Should we change the rules to forever eliminate any and all minority rights? Should we change the system or change the people in it?

When does preventing extreme legislation from passing and forcing compromise and negotiation become nothing more than total or near total obstruction?

I kinda think extreme legislation ought not to be passed. Period.

Is this system still working for us as a country? Is it supporting bipartisanship? Or does it only support partisanship?

I say that the system isn't perfect and obviously it can be abused for political purposes. But when I see the same people hollering for the end of the filibuster who were the same people hollering against that a few years earlier, it seems plain that we don't have a system problem; we have a people problem. They liked it when it was in their interests to do so and hate it when it doesn't. Fuck that. IOW, we don't need to change the system, we need to change the people in it.

Right now, we have a group of moderate senators from both sides working on reforming the 1887 Electoral Count Act. Maybe it will reduce the chances of another Jan 6, I dunno. A few months ago we had a bipartisan group come up with a bipartisan infrastructure ill that got passed and signed. My point is that bipartisanship is possible and I would rather see more bipartisanship rather than none at all. If the filibuster is abolished, then any chance of such bipartisanship would be gone. Oh, they'll all support certain highly popular measures where opposition is political suicide, but for most issues it's not that way. Yeah, the majority party in the Senate can do as they please if the filibuster is gone, but for the most part you won't have moderates from both parties working together to arrive at some common ground. And that would truly suck.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Sounds like I hit a nerve? I don't know much about trucking but I wonder why there are so many regulations? My guess is that each is a reaction to a real problem that came up. That government class requirement is likely because not every company trains its drivers as well as yours and the untrained were causing accidents.

They train drivers well enough to pass the written and driving test, something these foreigners could never do but are granted a CDL anyway. Yes you hit a nerve because they told me I could no longer work due to health reasons. My doctors would disagree with them, but they made me go to a government approved doctor that didn't treat my conditions. At 60 years old there was not much I could do. Too old to go to school and learn a new trade. No longer able to do physical work for any long period of time, and at the beginning of a pandemic nobody in this country seen in their entire lives. I was fucked by new rules and regulations by a bunch of worthless bureaucrats who had nothing better to do in between poker games.

My driving record speaks for itself. Nearly 30 years driving T/T with no accidents in my name. When I had to leave my license didn't have one point on it and no CSA 2010 points either (don't ask what that is because that is a long explanation).

Then I see these Fn foreigners who couldn't back in a trailer if their life counted on it. They used to run up to my truck asking me for help, and even asking me to do it for them because they didn't know how. Do you blame me for being pissed?

 

[alang1216]

The welfare vote belongs to the Democrats and welfare people don't care (or know) enough about voting to put the slightest energy into voting. That means our representatives are ultimately chosen by completely politically ignorant people. That's why Dementia is our President today, and look at what he did to this country in one year.

I suspect the politically ignorant, inner city, welfare recipients don't even bother to vote. That's why we constantly hear urban Dems talking about efforts to get out the vote. I doubt most welfare recipients are even in cities, there is plenty of poverty in rural and red states.

If we have more politically educated voters, we end up with better representation. People who do understand our country, our policies, what's at stake will do anything to vote, and those are likely Republican voters. Even our founders debated the idea of not allowing all people to vote because of what we see now.

Not too elitist but still probably wrong as education swings voters Left.

I like to use this scenario: Let's say the MLB decided to allow the citizens of the city to pick players instead of the owners or managers. In my city, you had to demonstrate you had an acute knowledge of baseball to vote. In your city, anybody could vote. You'd probably have more voters, but they'd be voting on how cute a player is, their nationality, their hot wife or how they did doing a commercial. So which one of our cities would you suppose would have the better team?

Maybe so but I've heard plenty of conversations about MLB between well informed folk that will never agree on anything about baseball.

 

[alang1216]

They train drivers well enough to pass the written and driving test, something these foreigners could never do but are granted a CDL anyway. Yes you hit a nerve because they told me I could no longer work due to health reasons. My doctors would disagree with them, but they made me go to a government approved doctor that didn't treat my conditions. At 60 years old there was not much I could do. Too old to go to school and learn a new trade. No longer able to do physical work for any long period of time, and at the beginning of a pandemic nobody in this country seen in their entire lives. I was fucked by new rules and regulations by a bunch of worthless bureaucrats who had nothing better to do in between poker games.

My driving record speaks for itself. Nearly 30 years driving T/T with no accidents in my name. When I had to leave my license didn't have one point on it and no CSA 2010 points either (don't ask what that is because that is a long explanation).

Then I see these Fn foreigners who couldn't back in a trailer if their life counted on it. They used to run up to my truck asking me for help, and even asking me to do it for them because they didn't know how. Do you blame me for being pissed?

You got dealt a bad hand. I'm not sure you're pissed at the right people but I don't blame you for being bitter.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

I suspect the politically ignorant, inner city, welfare recipients don't even bother to vote. That's why we constantly hear urban Dems talking about efforts to get out the vote. I doubt most welfare recipients are even in cities, there is plenty of poverty in rural and red states.

They do vote, and because they are in heavily populated areas, even less turnout changes an election. The ones that do vote will if it's convenient enough: multiple day voting, polls open late and on weekends, rides to the polls, mail-in voting, no lines to wait in. The Communists figured out long ago that if you take these people, plop a ballot on their kitchen table, pick it up when they're done, they will get a much higher percentage of those people voting. Did you bother to read what this so-called voter reform is about????

Not too elitist but still probably wrong as education swings voters Left.

The ones with the weak minds that were easily indoctrinated by their professors, yes. But that doesn't discount the fact that lower income people vote Democrat. It's statistically proven.

 

[GMCGeneral]

Not all lines are equal.

This is about voting rights.

You mean Democrat election fraud to ensure permanent one party far Left rule, Fort Fuck!

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

You got dealt a bad hand. I'm not sure you're pissed at the right people but I don't blame you for being bitter.

Why not? Who do you think makes all these useless regulations? The bureaucrats. Trust me, I looked it up.

Back to point, our shortage of drivers are largely due to to those bureaucrats and replacing good qualified Americans that did these jobs with cheap foreign labor is not the solution to the driver shortage. Wage offers will rise and eventually attract enough Americans to do these jobs and make good money at the same time.