How Harry Reid Killed The Gun Control Bill

The corporate media reports that a law with new gun purchase regulations “failed to achieve the necessary 60 votes” in the U.S. Senate. It got “only” 54 votes, “six shy of the 60-vote threshold.”

What the media didn't mention is that the U.S. Senate is a body with 100 members. To most people, “winning” a vote means getting a majority. A majority is more than half of something. More than half of 100 is 51.

So why is 60 votes needed to pass anything in the U.S. Senate? Is it a law? Is it required by the U.S. Constitution?

No, it's just a Senate “rule,” the so-called filibuster rule- although actual filibustering, that is, talking and talking on the floor of the Senate, is virtually never involved. A rule the Senate made up itself. [1]

A rule the Senate could change.

But won't.

More precisely, a rule the Democratic Party hack and Senate “leader” (or “fuhrer” in the German)

Harry Reid, a reactionary from Nevada, refuses to change.

Why is it up to Harry Reid to change it?

Because he controls the power to change the rule. You see, the “democratic” U.S. Senate is quite authoritarian like that.

Every new Senate term, a handful of Democratic Senators entreat Reid to allow “reform” of the filibuster “rule,” begging for it to be watered down a bit. So this year, Reid did. Now a single bill can no longer be “filibustered” five separate times in the “legislative process.” (Why more than one vote is needed to pass a law anyway would no doubt be a mystery to most people, if they were even aware of the fact.)

If Reid had ever, in all his years as Senate boss, allowed the filibuster rule to be abolished, or at least require actual filibustering (speechifying on the Senate floor by Senators), then a majority of Senators could pass laws, as every normal legislative body does. Therefore the failure to pass a modest tightening of gun laws is squarely the fault of Harry Reid, and of his party. [2]

So why does Reid- in fact why do the Democrats- keep handing the GOP veto power over legislation?

Well, there are various excuses. Some fall into the category of Fear. They're afraid of Republicans.

Another excuse is the sly hint that if (when) they're in the minority, they'll want to filibuster.

Which is bullshit. The Democrats never filibuster GOP outrages. In fact, the Democrats have helped pack the Supreme Court with reactionaries. (Which exposes as particularly cynical the Democrats scare/political extortion tactic of telling voters “If the GOP wins, they'll appoint anti-choice Justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade!”) To give just two examples: the slippery Joe Biden, as then-chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, helped install Clarence Thomas, a dumb ideological operative with no judicial experience, on the country's top court, telling Democratic Senators privately that Anita Hill was a liar. And Antonin Scalia, an utterly fanatical reactionary, was confirmed as a Justice by 98-0 in the Senate. Those weren't 98 all-Republican votes either.

No, the real reason is that the Democratic Party is pro-Imperialist and pro-corporate oligarchy. In order to dupe people who are loosely called “liberal” into voting for them and giving them money, they need an alibi and a scapegoat for the political crimes of the two-party dictatorship. Giving the GOP veto power, giving Republicans the power to decide the laws of the land even when they're a minority, suits their slimy political purposes perfectly. Can't ever do anything decent for the people? It's the GOP's fault! The Democrats tried! They just couldn't get enough Republican votes. The GOP gives the Democratic Party cover for the reactionary policies it secretly supports. [3] 
 

Well, the Republicans are supposed to be your opposition, assholes!

I mention in passing that the U.S. Congress has always in fact been reactionary, except for brief periods during and after the Civil War, and when it was forced by the economic crisis of the Great Depression to pass New Deal legislation to salvage capitalism. Before Southern White racists migrated en masse from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, the Democratic majority in Congress included a huge chunk of reactionary, virulently racist Southerners. Together with Republicans, these Southern Democrats in fact constituted a reactionary majority.

Aside from the filibuster absurdity, the U.S. Senate may be the most undemocratic elected “ democratic representative body” on the face of the earth.

Here's what I mean. Each state gets two U.S. Senators, regardless of population. As of July 2012, the population of California was 38 million. The population of the least populous state, Wyoming, Land of Cheney, most powerful VP in U.S. history, was 576,000. That means each resident of Wyoming has the same weight in the U.S. Senate as 66 Californians. A Californian is only worth 1/66th as much as a Wyoman. [4]

Even slaves counted as 3/5ths of a person.

Or look at it this way: the 22 least populous states have a population of about 38,970,000- less than a million more than California. They have 44 Senators- almost half the total, to California's two, or 22 times California's representation. Keep in mind the total U.S. population is about 313,282,000. So states with about 12.4% of the total U.S. population have 44% of the representation in the U.S. Senate.

Of course, the 632,000 residents of the District of Columbia, capital city of the self-proclaimed World's Greatest Democracy, Ever, have no U.S. Senators- and no voting members of the House of Representatives either..

This is the most grossly undemocratic legislature in any nation claiming to be a “democracy,” by far.

Therefore be it resolved: The U.S. Senate must be abolished forthwith.

I know, that was a joke. I was being droll.

The Constitution is written in such a way as to make it impossible to change the fundamental political structure of the nation. The states with unfair power will never vote to give up that power, which would be necessary to change the structure.

Of course, parts of the Constitution are routinely ignored. The first ten amendments, the “Bill of Rights,” for example.

But not this part.

1) The filibuster rule is also called the “cloture” rule, “cloture” being a pretentious term for closing debate. As if they actually debate things, a la that hoary Frank Capra propaganda movie Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. If you watch C-Span, you can see what the self-proclaimed "world's greatest debating body" considers "debate;" sole Senators reading prepared speeches in an empty chamber.

2) Posturing by Party Boss Obama notwithstanding. Recall that Obama was virtually silent on gun control for over four years, until a political breeze was kicked up by the massacre of young children in Newtown, CT. Not the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater massacre, not the maiming of U.S. Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and killing of several others in Arizona, not for that matter the tens of thousands of guns deaths during his time in office- or during his two years as a Senator either- bestirred him to make any effort for regulatory reform on this issue. He can pose all he likes, using the parents of slain children as stage props, but the evidence that this is an issue important to him is quite exiguous. (This isn't just my opinion. Glenn Thrush, Politico's White House correspondent, says Obama has avoided gun control “assiduously throughout his career.” [Thrush on Brian Lehrer radio show, WNYC, 4/18/13.] He also points out that Obama launched no “arm-twisting effort” that other Presidents have done to get legislation they cared about passed.) Even after Newtown, Obama dithered for a month, assigning Joe Biden to study the issue to come up with legislative proposals. Why didn't the Democrats already have a legislative agenda for gun control?

Poring over assassination lists every week is obviously a higher priority for Obama, for one thing. Perhaps he finds it a more satisfying exercise of power to kill, rather than to prevent killing. And I think better gun regulations, if they could potentially save thousands of lives, would save more lives than he imagines he's saved by bumping off the 16 year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, for example, or poor Yemeni villager, or rescue workers in Pakistan's tribal regions with drone “double-tap” attacks. Those latter attacks in fact have nothing to do with “protecting Americans,” as the rote propaganda catechism has it, but with trying to win a hopeless war in Afghanistan.

3) Actually the Democratic Party's real politics aren't really a secret. Just look at the records of Clinton and Obama. Or Carter. Or LBJ, who brought us the Vietnam War, the invasion of the Dominican Republic to reverse an election result, the Brazilian military dictatorship, and other crimes against humanity. Or Harry Truman. Or Woodrow Wilson, who laid the foundations for the modern U.S. police state with the “Espionage” Act and the Palmer Raids. By the way, he was so racist that his first act as President was to purge the Federal Government of all its black employees.

It's only not well known and understood what the Democratic Party is really about because of the assiduous efforts of the Party and the U.$ media to deceive the public.

4) All figures as estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau as of July, 2012. See “List of U.S. states and territories by population” at Wikipedia, or go directly to the U.S. Census Burea.