we’re just so deeply disappointed…
President Joe Biden in Houston on Friday to take a look at the damage done by the deadly winter storm and give comfort to the people of Texas declared ‘We can do anything. America can do anything’.
For an example of recent great things ‘we can do’, Biden gave the landing of Rover on Mars. Yeah, that was great. But it looks like there are some things great and small that we, that America, can not do.
While at least 32 million workers in America try to survive on a below poverty level minimum wage, we can’t seem to find a way to get a raise for those workers into a economic recovery bill. And why can’t we?
The whole of the ‘we’, the whole of America’s federal legislature, can’t provide relief for our workers because of a Senate rule administered by one non-elected, not constitutionally provided official called the senate Parliamentarian.
So, are we to believe that because that one person said a minimum wage provision can not be included in the covid relief and economic stimulus bill, the Administration, the Senate and the White House are just simply unable to do anything?
Well, Democrats did it in the House! And don’t Democrats also have the edge in the Senate and don’t Democrats have the White House? ‘We’ can land a Rover on a far away planet but can’t raise the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15?
Really? It’s a ‘rule’? A rule is more important than allowing 32 million Americans put some food on their tables, to have some dignity? Really? That’s the hill the White House and moderate Senate Democrats want to die on? Really? OK, then.
But it seems the other caring American politicians don’t (never have, never will) have a problem with Senate rules if the rules impede their agenda. When the Parliamentarian ruled against the Bush Tax Cuts in 2001 Senate Republicans just simply fired the Parliamentarian. Done!
Also on Friday, the Administration released the promised declassified intelligence report on the murder of Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi in 2018; it concluded that, in fact, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ‘directly approved the killing’.
Unfortunately, we can’t do anything about that, either. It seems holding the crown prince accountable for murder would be too difficult. (NOTE 1: It might be important to remember that during the 2020 campaign Biden called Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state with “no redeeming social value”. NOTE 2: Mr. Khashoggi was drugged and dismembered, body parts yet to be found).
Michael McFaul, U.S. Ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, told Lawrence O’Donnell on Friday that not punishing the Saudi Crown Prince is sending a wrong message. McFaul said the Biden administration “could go further,” at the least put the crown prince on the visa ban list.
Yeah, maybe ‘we’ can find the American will to do at least that. Put the murderer on a list!
