Last night, David Waldman came to the LCDC presented his work on Congressional procedure and how to reform the cloture rules in the Senate. He was invited because not only is he a nationally-recognized expert on the subject, but he’s also a neighbor who lives right here in Loudoun.

His presentation was a total success, as many members spent a long time afterward discussing the niceties of procedure, the Senate and what can be done. The essential process for fixing the filibuster is as follows.

• At the opening of each new session of Congress (the January after an even-year election), each house of Congress votes on the rules it will use during that session. Those rules pass by a simple majority. That means that a simple majority (51 Senators) can vote to change the filibuster rules in January 2011. Senator Tom Udall has committed to making the necessary motion to open filibuster rules up for discussion and potential change.
• If that motion to discuss change succeeds, the question of how to change it becomes relevant. One option for filibuster reform is Sen. Bennet’s proposal to make the motion to proceed non-debateable. Essentially, that would make it impossible to filibuster the question on whether or not to even have a debate. This would cut the amount of delay in half (of course, half of infinity is still infinity).
• Another serious option is Sen. Harkin’s proposal to reduce the number of votes required to end debate over the course of that debate. Under this proposal, it would still take weeks to end debate, but it would be possible to end debate with a simple majority – something that is impossible now.

If nothing else, passing these three motions (1. The motion to open up the rules for discussion, 2. Making a motion to proceed non-debateable, 3. Making the number of votes necessary for cloture variable with the length of the debate) would get the Senate moving, in a legislative sense, again. It wouldn’t become the superhighway that the House is, but it wouldn’t be total gridlock either.

The power to fix the filibuster problem in the Senate rests with our Democratic Senators. Click through to see how you (yes you!) can take action, today, to help get things moving in the Senate in January.After the positive response from LCDC membership to his presentation last night, David was kind enough to send along links to the things that we can do:

• Progressive Congress is the organization sponsoring David’s work on cloture and process reform. Click through and join their efforts.
• Credo Action is providing matching funds and petitions for the Fellowship that is allowing David to dedicate time to this effort.
• Finally, you can donate directly via ActBlue to the Fellowship fund itself.

As David mentioned last night, the key to getting the right thing done is getting it on the minds of our Congressmembers early. That means that for cloture reform to happen next January, we need to get Sen. Warner and Sen. Webb to start positioning themselves to vote for it now. Hearing from us makes a difference, so please take the time to write our Senators about this, today. Feel free to steal this language:

Dear Senator,

The Senate has become the graveyard of good legislation. Over 250 good bills have been passed by the House of Representatives only to be filibustered to death by Republicans in the Senate.

Abuse of the rules of the Senate has become the last refuge of Republican scoundrels, and I am asking you to put up with it no longer.  In January of 2011, I ask you to vote for changes to the cloture rules of the Senate. Specifically:

• Please vote to pass Sen. Udall’s motion to open the cloture rules for debate at the commencement of the next Congress.

• Please vote to pass Sen. Bennet’s rule change making the motion to proceed non-debatable.

• Please vote to pass Sens. Harkin and Shaheen’s proposal to gradually reduce the votes necessary to close debate as that debate continues over the course of days.

The time has come to make Congress work for the American people.

Thank you for your time.

We have the power to change Congress, let’s use it.

The conference report on Financial Reform passed the House the other evening, adding another accomplishment to the pile of things the House of Representatives has gotten done for the people of America since January 2009. It was a pretty solid vote, with 237 members (out of 435) voting in favor of the bill.

One of those voting against fixing our broken financial system? Frank Wolf. Along with most Republicans in the House, he put Wall Street over Main Street.

Luckily, we have a candidate for Congress who knows that you and I should come first, Jeff Barnett.  When the Bill passed the House, Jeff Barnett had this to say about Frank Wolf’s “no” vote.

“I am disappointed that my opponent voted against a bill that would empower consumers and guard against the reckless speculation that shook the foundations of our economy,” Barnett said. “Frank Wolf’s vote last night sends an unmistakable message about his priorities: our thirty-year incumbent is a powerful defender of the status quo. Frank Wolf chose to defend big banks instead of standing up for working families. Frank Wolf voted to leave intact the system that cost so many their jobs and their savings. That’s unacceptable.”

“My opponent was blind to the onset of the financial crisis when he chaired one of the committees charged with oversight of the SEC. Last night, he had an opportunity to make up for that blindness by voting to protect consumers and investors. Instead, Frank Wolf opposed a bill that will bring security and stability to the financial system. Our Nation cannot afford another two years of Rep. Wolf’s obstructive short-sightedness,” Barnett warned. “I am committed to bringing a new brand of pragmatic and anticipatory leadership to Washington. The 10th District deserves a Congressman who understands both the productive power of the markets and the need for sensible rules to hold them accountable.” – Jeff Barnett

The time has come to change who is representing us in the House. Support Jeff, today!

David Waldman (aka Kagro X) is a remarkably gifted analyst of procedure. He has been writing on the intricacies of Senate rules for years, and is working on cloture reform today.

David will be the LCDC’s guest speaker this Thursday.

This month’s guest speaker, Mr. David Waldman, will share with us the lessons he’s learned and put into practice as a political activist and esteemed blogger. Mr. Waldman will be talking about how a deeper understanding of Congressional procedure promotes more effective activism and advocacy and discuss the ways we can more effectively interact with our US Congressman in the 10th CD.

Date: Thursday, July 1st

Place: Board Room of the Loudoun County Government Center, 1 Harrison Street, S.E. in Leesburg.

Directions: http://www.loudoun.gov/Default.aspx?tabid=628

Social: 6:30pm

Meeting: 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Post-meeting Social at VINTAGE 50: 9:15pm

Incidentally, the Leesburg District will be providing the food this week and we promise it will be both plentiful, and good.

So come out this Thursday and learn a thing or two about the procedures by which Republicans screw up the Senate!

It’s been a slow blogging week, but last night, at our LCDC executive committee meeting, we discussed a posting on the LCRC website about our 10th District Congressman, Frank Wolf.  In the posting, it says that Rep. Wolf “has been working to improve transportation for nearly 30 years”.  Now, I will agree with my friends on the LCRC; he has been working on that, as have all of our Northern Virginia members of Congress. But it’s been 30 years – is transportation any better now than it was 30 years ago? He’s going to stake his claim on that?It was a little over two years ago that the Dulles rail project (aka, Metro to Dulles) was almost scuttled due to Rep. Wolf’s ineptitude. Back in late 2008, Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters announced that unless there were changes made to the rail plan, the project would be disqualified from receiving $900 million in federal grants. Without that grant, rail to Dulles would be dead.

How was Rep. Wolf responsible for that, you say? Rep. Wolf was in the majority on the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee for Transportation and HUD (that’s a mouthful).  That subcommittee has jurisdiction over the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the agency that runs Metro. One would like to believe that a congressman who sits in the majority on a subcommittee that approves the budget of the Department of Transportation would be a little more in tune with how the department was doling out its’ funds, and whether or not that agency was questioning the viability of a major transportation project in his congressional district. A project on which he stakes his reputation, nonetheless.

But Virginia officials were blind-sided with that ruling, and Rep. Wolf pleaded with Governor Kaine to help with securing those federal funds.  Which Governor Kaine did, keeping the project on track.  And for which (President Bush’s) Transportation Secretary Peters praised him:

Governor Tim Kaine deserves much credit for his overwhelming commitment to this proposal and for spearheading the changes necessary to move it forward.

In short, with almost 30 years of congressional service, and with 16 of those years being in the Republican majority on the Transportation Appropriations subcommittee (8 of those years under a Republican President), and also serving from 1995-2000 as Chair of that subcommittee, Frank Wolf hasn’t made transportation in the region any better for us. In fact, it took action by a Democratic Governor to save Wolf from the embarrassment of losing $900 million in federal funding for Dulles rail.

We can do better. It’s time to do better.  Jeff Barnett can do better.  

Oh the tangled links we weave when we link to inform.

He remembers a blast, the smell of smoke, oil and blood. He remembers ammo “cooking off”. He lost consciousness. – Circling the Moon

• Lawmakers Should Be at Least as Thoughtful About Abortion as Women Are – A compelling discussion of policy impacts on women and their life decisions.
• The Real Story – The actual story of how a CBS reporter got blown up in Afghanistan. A must read blog post.
• What Happens To Your Body If You Drink A Coke Right Now – It turns out, the cocaine was redundant.
• Water and and Access: Arsenic in Bangladesh Aid agencies in Bangladesh dug wells without checking for heavy metals. Local residents had told the agencies that the wells wouldn’t be good. Agencies need to work WITH communities.
• The Reagan Revolution Comes Home To Roost – How conservatism kicked America in the gut, with charts!
• Leading Cornell Doctor Performing Genital Cutting – You mean you thought medically-unnecessary genital mutilation was only practiced by patriarchal religious sects on the little girls of some “other” culture? Wrong.
• Texas GOP platform – It’s a big Plate o’ Crazy.
• Rolling Stone’s McChrystal interview shows the magazine’s nonmusical side – The Post writes an article about the pop culture magazine that has consistently been out-reporting them for a while now. And it’s a good summary of why that’s the case.

Follow below the fold for some of the progressive solicitations we’ve actually responded to recently.

Like, for example, making sure that BP provides safety equipment to cleanup workers on the Gulf coast.

• Nausea, nosebleeds, and chest pains – Tell BP that they need to provide safety equipment to cleanup workers. People come first!

Senator Reid is betting big on real, strong legislation to cap our carbon emissions. In light of the political environment, I think it’s great to see Democratic leadership picking to go big, or go home.

Instead of combining climate with clean energy, then listening to conservadems whine that climate has to be ditched in favor of a clean-energy-only bill, Reid is unambiguously coupling climate with a politically popular Spill Bill.  He’s daring conservadems and Republicans to stand with Bad People and Beach Polluters, or stand with the American public.

The ads write themselves.  “Will the Party of Barton vote with BP against America’s clean energy future?”  “Will Republicans keep on apologizing to Big Oil for burdensome regulations, or will they stand up for the American people?”  “Democrats want polluters to pay, Republicans want to give them a license to pollute free.”

The strategy isn’t a guaranteed win.  Already conservadems Landrieu and Bayh are dithering.  Politico, again: “Thus far, Reid can’t count on all Democrats coalescing around this approach. Several say they are fearful that hitching a popular oil reform bill to a big, unwieldy climate plan will just sink legislation that could otherwise serve as a quick, easy and politically popular win.” – DailyKos

This is a big, bold move and deserves our backing. Follow below to write our Senators!  So, I wrote our Senators.

Senator Warner,

I strongly support the strategy of linking climate change (carbon cap) legislation to the Spill Bill. Please come out in favor of Senator Reid’s plan and vote in favor of all motions, procedural and otherwise, necessary to pass it.

Sincerely,

Paradox13

I encourage you do to so too!

Email Senator Webb

Email Senator Warner

(With a tip-o-the-cap to Blue Virginia.)

So it turns out that in the flurry of motions on the CTP, Supervisor Sally Kurtz (D Catoctin), made an error and voted to set Belmont Ridge Road to six lanes instead of four (currently Belmont Ridge Road is two lanes most of the way).

She’d like to hold a hearing to reconsider that vote on Wednesday (she was in the majority on that vote, along with Supervisors York, Buckley, Delgaudio, and Waters), but it turns out that Supervisors York and Buckley will be out of town. Which has made at least one supervisor unhappy about how it will look if they vote to reconsider while part of the majority of the original vote is out of town.

But here’s the thing: It was a 5 – 4 vote. If Supervisor Kurtz is unhappy with her vote then if the vote is reconsidered, it will go 5 – 4 the other way. Right?

If two of the people in the new minority are not there, then it will go 5-2-2. Right?

If Supervisors York and Buckley know that the vote will take place while they are not there, they can leave written statements to be read into the record during discussion of the issue.

In any case, when State Delegates accidentally push the wrong button during a vote, they can file a paper to correct it. I believe this is essentially what happened with Supervisor Kurtz and I hope that the rest of the supervisors will let her reconsider her vote.

Seriously. Read it.

Supervisor Miller will be holding a public hearing for residents of the Dulles district on the Chesapeake Bay Act tonight.

Want to learn more about the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act?

I am interested in hearing Dulles District residents’ opinions regarding the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act. I will be hosting a community meeting to discuss concerns with Dulles District residents. Loudoun County staff will present information and attendees will have an opportunity to ask questions. The meeting will be:

Tuesday, June 22nd at 6:30 pm, Mercer Middle School

For more information about the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act, please visit:

www.loudoun.gov/chesapeakebay

Hope to see you there,

Stevens

If you live in the Dulles district, you should make an effort to come out. A map to the location is below.Here’s a map to the school where the meeting will be held.

Mercer Middle School

42149 Greenstone Dr

Aldie, VA 20105

View Larger Map