Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.
Theophrastus (372 BC - 287 BC), from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
UPDATE: I'm adding the video for the voting, so that readers can view it for themselves, and see how extraordinarily brief the actual few seconds of the vote were. It seems probable that the Republicans had decided between themselves to do this in this way, to deprive Democrats of voting.
On Friday, February 25, 2011 the Republican majority in the Wisconsin State House of Representatives passed a bill at 1 a.m. in a manner of seconds, cutting off some Republicans and most of the Democrats in an effort to prevent them from voting. Twenty-eight representatives were present, and attempting to register their vote, most of them Democrats. All of those twenty-eight were elected to represent Wisconsin citizens, who were denied that representation by Republicans and Tea Partiers.
Let me be clear - it was not fair for Democrats to rush through legislation in previous years without time for discussion and debate. To your credit Republicans, you did allow that. But the Democrats did allow everyone present to vote in a reasonable and properly declared time, and by that measure, they were far more fair than you were, by a large margin.
Why do it? What was the purpose of such a move?
They had the votes to pass their legislation, so why pull such a stupid stunt?
Was it frustration at their Governor getting punked - and revealing his lack of moral character and dishonest strategies? Was it an attempt to send some sort of incomprehensible message to the dissenting Democratic Senators outside the state? Was it trying to show the dissenters how little respect they feel for anyone who dissents against their point of view, some weird kind of flipping the bad finger to unions, supporters, and Democrats, not only in Wisconsin but nationwide?
Did the Republican and Tea Party puppet-masters, the REAL Koch Brothers, call them, and tell them to hurry up the delivery of service on their legislation orders? If you didn't get this done quickly, before the expanding levels of peaceful protest eroded that support, did the Koch Brothers and other big donors tell you they wouldn't give you your campaign contribution tips / payoffs? Because if it didn't look like that before when the Governor was punked in a silly prank that became pretty serious, it certainly does look like that now to the outside observers.
What it DID accomplish was to make the vote likely to face a legal challenge, that will hold up any chance of successful passage, and it will guarantee escalating animosity (if that was possible) between Republicans and Democrats, present and absent. I can only hope that for those Republican legislators who went along with this action, that it will come back to bite them in the ballot box. Or maybe at least some of them will face a recall, because these legislators are NOT listening to the actual wishes of their constituents.
What they did was nothing less than tyranny by denying citizens their rightful representation, and that was wrong, very, very wrong. It was downright un-American of them, and I hope large numbers of people tell them so, beginning right here.
I thought the Reppublicans cut off debate, not the right to vote. If so, that is a parlimentary move and probably legal under the rules of their legislature. Now both the Republicans and the Democrats have reverted to unusual parlimentary procedures in order to make a point in Wisconsin. It's high time they all sat down and talked with each other instead of at each other.
ReplyDeleteWhat's scary is that bully techniques, especially on the part of the right, may become common in statehouses and legislatures throughout the country and in Washington DC - especially if Walker gets his way.
Scary thought.
I have no problem with ending debate; they had some 60+ hours of it.
ReplyDeleteI have a huge problem with cutting off voting the second they reached 51 votes in favor they wanted, in apparently far less than a minute - less than 10 seconds by the video tape - leaving most of the Democrats and even some Republicans unable to vote.
I cannot imagine that a 5 or 10 second vote that cuts off that many people who are present and attempting to vote would be legal under existing parliamentary rules - but that is what the courts and parliamentarians are for.
If it is legal, it shouldn't be.
Denying people the right to vote seems to be distinctly Republican these days. Didn't used to be, but it is now.
Just curious because this is the first thing I have seen about this but if everyone else present voted against it would it have changed the outcome? If not then is it possible they had been there 3 days and just wanted to go home. Like I said I haven't been following this but I don't see how it is different from Pelosi getting some Democratic congressmen from districts that had 50% or more registered Republicans to abstain from some of the early health care votes. She had enough votes to pass without them so they abstained so as not to go on record in favor of something at least 50% of their constituents were against.
ReplyDeleteYou are right that this will cause problems unless Wisconsin is very different from most of the states. In the US House once you begin a roll call vote you have to finish it even if every member votes yes (extreme case as they usually do not have roll call votes if they know 80% or more will vote yes since it saves time to just do the all in favor thing).
Looking at that again the whole thing was kinda stupid. At the end he was saying all in favor say aye, the ayes have it. How could he tell with all the shouting in the gallery? I guess they were using some kind of button voting like the US congress since he did read off 51 for 17 against. I have seen a couple votes in Congress and they have buttons for aye, nay, abstain in front of their seat. On some votes they are allowed to vote from their office as they are still in the building even if not in the chamber. The votes I have seen they announce ahead of time that the voting will end in x minutes. Usually at least 15 if they can vote from their office and 30 to 60 if they have to come to the chamber to vote. When time runs out though that is it. I would still guess that whoever the speaker is that after 60 hrs of debate, constant yelling in the gallery, and it being 1 am his thinking was 51 is a win lets get the hell out of here. Not really a proper attitude for a speaker but understandable.
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ReplyDeleteI don't buy into that false equivalence between democratic parliamentary maneuvers (in the US House) and Republican parliamentary maneuvers like this (and using reconciliation to increase the deficit, not reduce it).
ReplyDeleteThe reason those rules were put in place in the (US) House was that Republicans continually submitted amendments that had nothing to do with the bills they were amending them to. In many cases, there were simply swarms of amendments with little relevance (to intentionally slow the process), only a few of which should have been given any attention.
Tim, welcome to commenting on Penigma,and thanks.
ReplyDeleteTuck, yes the Wisconsin legislature does have button voting - they didn't even wait for all the button votes that were being cast instantly to be allowed.
Many of the democrats indicated that they were pushing their buttons to vote as hard as they could, but that they never got through.
No, this does not appear to be a fairly or properly announced vote, and I don't believe you can point to any voting anywhere, state, federal - or even local - that was closed 3 seconds after the vote started.
Clearly, this was one of the plans of the Republicans; they appear to have discussed it and been prepared.
The length of time this bill was in discussion included taking statements from people who were there to provide expert and/or citizen information on the bill at the request of legislators, it was not all speaking by the legislators apparently during those 60 hours preceding the vote.
They just wanted to go home is not an explanation or a justification for telling the Republicans they were going to do this, but not the Democrats, or to cut off voting before completion. They even cut off some republicans from voting!!!!!!
If they wanted to go home, they could have gone home without preventing anyone else from voting.
And 3 seconds? Seriously? Can you tell me anyway that is allowing representative government to deny the vote? That is tyranny!
It has received a lot of attention around here - not to mention lots of posting of the videos. I don't know how you could miss it.
And I imagine the conservative media wouldn't want to brag this up; even they might have the grace to be ashamed of this.