The minority has no rights.

Hopefully the title of this post grabbed your attention.  It doesn't mean what you think, and I am going to try and explain as part of this post.  The outgoing 112th congress is the worst ever.  This is not hyperbole, it is actually measurable (though there is room to dispute the criteria).  In 1948, Harry Truman dubbed the 80th congress the "do nothing congress".

Nevertheless, the 80th congress passed more than 900 bills, while the 112th passed fewer than 200(even when Newt Gingrich was speaker and Bill Clinton president, congress managed to pass more than 300 bills).  Part of the problem with the current congress is their abuse of the filibuster.

Simply put (because it is a bit more complex that this) filibuster forces a 60/40 majority on certain bills, rather than the usual simple majority of 51/49.  The filibuster is often defended on the grounds that it defends the rights of the minority.  You must keep in mind that, in this instance, we are not speaking of visible minorities or ethnic minorities or religious minorities.  We are simply speaking of the party that won the fewest seats in the Senate.  One might argue that they are an ideological minority (Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or progressives), but that reasoning would be specious--these are accidental minorities.  Rather, these minorities are 'minor' precisely because they could not convince enough people to vote for them.  For better or for worse, it means that they have to compromise more than the majority party. This is not a prejudice, the way it would be were we speaking of a gender minority--it is simply an effect of the electoral process (there is always a winner and a loser).  So, the next time you hear the phrase "the rights of the minority" in the context of filibuster reform, know that this is just nincompoopery.

Here's some more reading.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/07/13/13-reasons-why-this-is-the-worst-congress-ever/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/05/17-bills-that-likely-would-have-passed-the-senate-if-it-didnt-have-the-filibuster/

Watch out for that CLIFF!

Tuesday night brought with it several changes--no, there was no change in the White House; the House is still Republican and the Senate still Democrat.  But the congressional elections were a huge win for women and for doctors.  So now it's time for the legislature to get to work.  First on the agenda is avoiding a natural disaster--not Sandy, not the Nor'easter, but the Fiscal Cliff.  If you're like me, you've seen this phrase in the news often lately and wondered what this proposed precipice problem is all about.  As it turns out, the phrase is only half accurate: the problem is fiscal, but it is not a cliff at all (as Matthew Yglesias explains here).  Indeed, the so-called cliff is simply the expiration of certain fiscal policies including the Bush tax cuts, and which will affect the economic recovery of and slow growth in the US.  How do we avoid such a burden at a time when the US is already suffering a slow recovery in a terrible recession?  Well, congress and the White House need to work together to replace the existing-but-getting-ready-to-expire policies with new ones--or as I like to put it: Speaker Boehner and President Obama need to do their jobs.  In other words, all this fiscal cliff talk is simply the professional politician's version of waiting to write your essay until the night before it is due when you've known about the deadline since the beginning of the semester.