“The Epoch Media Group's news sites and YouTube channels have spread conspiracy theories such as QAnon and anti-vaccine misinformation, and false claims of fraud in the 2020 United States presidential election."
Again, you fail to give a single specific example. ALL of their articles have permalinks and are unpaywalled... so point out a few examples that exhibit factual errors.
"The simple answer is the same reason we have an ongoing climate crisis and a student loan crisis that Republicans refuse to let Congress address..."
That tells you all you need to know about Commondreams' partisanship: all committees of both houses and all roll calls are under full control of the Democrats. There is no mechanism for Republicans to limit Congress from "addressing" anything. Filibuster is limited to calling for votes only. The House can literally push through legislation all the way from drafting to passage without allowing Republicans to even see the bill, as was done with ObamaCare.
That tells you all you need to know about masonic's partisanship. The bill was in Congress for 9 months before being signed into law. It was modeled after Massachusetts's law which was modeled after alternative models proposed in the 90s to then first lady Hillary Clinton's universal healthcare.
I definitely agree that Democrats are sleeping on their laurels when it comes to policy, but they do not have the votes to do much of anything, partially because their constituencies are disadvantaged, partially because they have many more internal conflicts than Republicans do at the moment.
But there is only one group in recent history that has tried ANYTHING to make healthcare more accessible and cheaper, and it was the 111th Congress in which Democrats had slim majorities.
>they do not have the votes to do much of anything
This is a flat lie that you repeat. The Democrat caucus collectively "has the votes" to do essentially anything. They could even end the Senate filibuster rule! (It's just a rule of the chamber that can be overturned by simple majority, and they run the Rules committee.)
Perhaps this is why Democrats lose. They are still playing a game where decorum and rules matter. I have no question that Republicans would not care for such pesky parliamentary rules when they inconvenience them.
Perhaps you would prefer a world where Democrats run roughshod through those rules and pass legislation. I would prefer if they didn't.
> There is no mechanism for Republicans to limit Congress from "addressing" anything.
A few flaws in your logic:
You are doing some sleight of hand with the term “Addressing”.
Any spending bills require require 66.7% yes votes in both houses of Congress, which Democrats don’t have.
You mention filibuster, but the modern problem is a cloture vote. It can currently be rejected by a single _staffer_ of any Congressperson _via email_, so it’s not as much of a party issue as it is a heckler’s veto.
Republicans have a more restrictive policy called the Hastert Rule where nothing will be brought to a vote unless the majority of Republicans whip it. Hence, even if Americans want it, some of Team Red, and most of Team Blue agree (enough for a supermajority), Republican policy is to not allow it for vote. Republicans are every bit as flawed as Democrats in this sense.
The issues with committees and subcommittees are numerous. Individual deal making, seniority, etc. whether the larger party wants something doesn’t mean the party can force an individual Congressperson to do it.
Anyone who pretends like this is a Team Red versus Team Blue is either disingenuous or naïve about the details.
Very few Democrats in Congress want single payer healthcare, so don’t pretend like Team Blue could do it right now. ObamaCare (Patient ACA) was a very Republican proposal from the 1990s, only Republicans have moved the Overton Window to make lots of Americans think it was a radical left takeover of healthcare.
>Any spending bills require require 66.7% yes votes in both houses of Congress
This is absolutely false and, in fact, has never been the case.
>a cloture vote. It can currently be rejected by a single _staffer_ of any Congressperson _via email_
This is absolutely false as well. You are confusing hold requests with cloture and are confusing the Senate with the House. Cloture is a formal roll call vote in the Senate; no "staffer" participates.
> There is no mechanism for Republicans to limit Congress from "addressing" anything.
Except for Sen. McConnell (like when he limited Congress from addressing Merrick Garland's Supreme Court nomination, neglecting his and other Republican Senators' duty to "advise and consent" on the President's nominations), though, to be fair, he has been far more reasonable since dumping President Trump.
But, generally speaking, that is basically the playbook of Republicans in Congress. They've been a powerful and overrepresented minority for more than two decades, so they can't move forward with their own agenda, they instead stall all other agendas, and nothing gets done. Then they complain during elections that Democrats can't get anything done. It's gaslighting, pure and simple. Republicans gaslight not only the vast, vast majority of their own party, more than 99%, they also gaslight American voters and Democratic Senators and Representatives. They can't win by playing fair and honest, so they haven't bothered with that honorable tactic in, well, decades. Republicans are and have been holding the country hostage and have turned the US Senate into a ineffective legislative body and basically have made a farce of the Framers' intentions. They're anarchists, basically. Republicans and anarchists have more in common than what distinguishes them.
As an outsider, this seems like a disingenuous take, but I might be missing something.
Do you think there's any negative effect to allowing a filibuster to occur on things guaranteed to be rejected by the Republicans? Could that time be better spent otherwise? If so, doesn't this imply that it's a soft limitation (sure they could put up a lame duck bill I guess).
I think your parent’s take is that the filibuster only affects floor votes, but all of the stages of bill making before that are unaffected by the filibuster.
The Filibuster has been replaced by the Cloture Vote as the heckler’s veto of Congress. It is quiet/anonymous, can be done by staffers (not just Congresspersons), and can be done remotely. Hence this is a stronger heckler’s veto today than in the past.
And it _is_ disingenuous because Republicans have the Hastert Rule, which is even more restrictive on what can come to a floor vote than what Democrats do.
"The NRA spent $250M on the 2020 presidential election."
These people are flat liars. NRA doesn't have that kind of budget.
Per opensecrets.org, NRA spent $786,052 in campaign donations for the 2020 cycle total (Congress and Presidency). They spent an additional $2.2M in total lobbying costs in 2020 and $3.2M in 2019.
Nothing remotely approaching the claimed "$250 million".
Not quite. He entered office with net neutrality in effect but then changed the regulatory umbrella it fell under into one without net neutrality in 2009, which Comcast and Verizon took advantage of in the courts. It wasn't until 2015 that ISPs were categorized in Title II and made subject to net neutrality constraints again.
Obama also nominated Ajit Pai to the FCC in the first place.
