Why It Is Important To See How Your Congressperson Is Voting In Washington…

Previously, some reg­u­lar folks did­n’t both­er pay­ing atten­tion to bor­ing stuff like how con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives vote on issues. Instead, many vot­ers wait­ed for elec­tion time to be edu­cat­ed before mak­ing their vot­ing decisions.
Today, how­ev­er, the stakes are much high­er, it seems; how rep­re­sen­ta­tives and US sen­a­tors vote on issues is crit­i­cal because the issues seem far big­ger and more con­se­quen­tial because, in many ways, they are.
Over the last sev­er­al decades leg­isla­tive bat­tles were waged in the mid­dle between the cen­ter-right and cen­ter-left. Finally, they would find a sweet spot in the cen­ter, and the bill would become law.
Not so today, the ide­o­log­i­cal divide is so wide that there is hard­ly any com­mon ground on which to find solutions.
The Republican par­ty has lurched so far to the right that Democrats do not have a gov­ern­ing part­ner to work with. Democrats are forced to nego­ti­ate with the dif­fer­ent wings in their own party.
There remain a few Republicans in Blue states forced to play the bi-par­ti­san game, but noth­ing gets accom­plished by their will­ing­ness to work with Democrats.
Most of the posi­tions that the Republican par­ty now take are hand­ed to par­ty lead­er­ship by shad­owy out­side right-wing groups.
Those posi­tions are anti­thet­i­cal to repub­li­can and good gov­er­nance, so Democrats can­not sup­port those posi­tions nat­u­ral­ly. The Republican par­ty lost all cred­i­bil­i­ty because it does­n’t even acknowl­edge truth any longer; this makes work­ing with them on leg­is­la­tion impossible.

During Obama’s tenure, they adopt­ed a pos­ture, which they have rolled out once again, nego­ti­ate on bills, offer amend­ments, draw out debate on bills, and even when they get what they asked for, vote against the final bill.
The idea is to waste time, hop­ing that the Democrats will get noth­ing done, giv­ing them a mes­sage to run on.
Votes now are about whether to cre­ate a bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate an insur­rec­tion that invad­ed the seat of gov­ern­ment, com­mit­ted a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of felonies, includ­ing murder.
Who would have thought that this would be a polit­i­cal thing?
Democrats and Republicans band­ed togeth­er after ⁹⁄₁₁ and gave George Bush incred­i­ble pow­ers to go after those who destroyed the twin tow­ers in Manhattan.
After the dredged-up Benghazi inci­dent, Trey Goudy and the oth­er Republicans in the con­gress held dozens of hear­ings which turned up absolute­ly noth­ing nefar­i­ous or under­hand­ed by Hillary Clinton or the Obama Administration.
However, find­ing some­thing unto­ward was not the rea­son for the series of hear­ings and the dis­in­for­ma­tion Goudy, Jim Jordon, Devin Nunes, and the oth­er right-wing ide­o­logues waged.

The idea was to have hear­ings that would lead into the Presidential elec­tions of 2016, which is exact­ly what they did.
It is no won­der that the pro­posed bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion to get to the bot­tom of who, how, why, of the January 6^th insur­rec­tion does not have the sup­port of Mitch McConnel or Kevin McCarthy, the top two con­gres­sion­al Republicans, they knew what they did. They expect that a com­mis­sion to explore the events of January 6^th, 2021, would do the same thing.
Votes are now about set­tled laws, Roe v Wade under assault because the supreme court sud­den­ly decides to hear an abor­tion case from Mississippi. The right-wing Supreme court has stead­fast­ly decid­ed to throw out (stare deci­sis) by upend­ing set­tled laws; even when the court is not asked to vis­it a cer­tain sec­tion of some laws, it does so any­way and make changes to the hor­ror of the minority…
Brett Kavanaugh, Amey Coney-Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, John Roberts, & uncle Clarence Tom-azz are the right-wing judges that are deter­mined to reshape America, return­ing the nation to the decades before the civ­il rights fights of the 60s.
Votes are about the vot­ing rights, set­tled laws that the Roberts court upend­ed for no rea­son oth­er than the ide­o­log­i­cal cru­sade that the court is on. For exam­ple, in 2013, while Barack Obama was in the White House, the Roberts-led court struck down sec­tion 4(b) of the 1965 vot­ing rights Act in Shelby County Alabama vs. Holder.
In sim­ple terms, the court’s log­ic was that the law was no longer need­ed because the racist con­di­tions which exist­ed then no longer exist.
In her dis­sent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg ridiculed the court’s argu­ments stat­ing that the rul­ing was the equiv­a­lent of walk­ing with an umbrel­la in the rain, then throw­ing away the umbrel­la because you weren’t get­ting wet.
Since then, all across the nation and par­tic­u­lar­ly in Republican-run states, Republicans have embarked on pass­ing vot­er sup­pres­sion laws not seen since after reconstruction.

John Roberts, the chief jus­tice, is a for­mer Reagan admin­is­tra­tion lawyer with hatred for vot­ing and civ­il rights. So much for Roberts’ disin­gen­u­ous com­ments that there are no Democratic or Republican judges, judges call balls and strikes[sic]
Some strike zones are much wider than oth­ers; it depends on who is call­ing balls and strikes jus­tice, Roberts.
Voting is about whether the Republic remains one.…… or does it devolve into a dic­ta­tor­ship ruled over by a socio­path­ic narcissist.
Voting is about whether native Americans are allowed their rights. It is about whether the nation takes on cli­mate change and pre­pares for it while tak­ing steps to mit­i­gate and roll back its dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences to our planet.
Voting is about African-Americans right to exist as full human beings in a coun­try in which there are ele­ments hell­bent on stomp­ing on the rights of peo­ple dif­fer­ent than they are.
Voting is about clean drink­ing water, edu­ca­tion for our chil­dren, health­care, ensur­ing that chil­dren do not go to bed hun­gry, clean air, and a future in which those who worked hard can be secure in their lat­er years.
Voting is about the anti-Asian hate crimes bill that was passed into law recent­ly. It is for those rea­sons that we need to know who are the peo­ple oppos­ing these fun­da­men­tal pieces of leg­is­la­tion that are nec­es­sary to fix some of the chal­lenges in an ever-chang­ing environment.

HERE ARE THE REUBLICAN HOUSE & SENATE MEMBERS WHO VOTED AGAINST THE BILL

• Robert Aderholt of Alabama
• Rick Allen of Georgia
• Jodey Arrington of Texas
• Brian Babin of Texas
• Jim Banks of Indiana
• Andy Biggs of Arizona
• Dan Bishop of North Carolina
• Laurne Boebert of Colorado
• Mo Brooks of Alabama
• Ted Budd of North Carolina
• Tim Burchett of Tennessee
• Kat Cammack of Florida
• Jerry Carl of Alabama
• Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina
• Michael Cloud of Texas
• Andrew Clyde of Georgia
• Tom Cole of Oklahoma
• Warren Davidson of Ohio
• Byron Donalds of Florida
• Jeff Duncan of South Carolina
• Virginia Foxx of North Carolina
• Matt Gaetz of Florida
• Louie Gohmert of Texas
• Bob Good of Virginia
• Lance Gooden of Texas
• Paul Gosar of Arizona
• Mark Green of Tennessee
• Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia
• Michael Guest of Mississippi
• Andy Harris of Maryland
• Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee
• Kevin Hern of Oklahoma
• Yvette Herrell of New Mexico
• Jody Hice of Georgia
• Clay Higgins of Louisiana
• Ronny Jackson of Texas
• Mike Johnson of Louisiana
• Jim Jordan of Ohio
• Trent Kelly of Mississippi
• Doug LaMalfa of California
• Barry Loudermilk of Georgia
• Nancy Mace of South Carolina
• Tracey Mann of Kansas
• Thomas Massie of Kentucky
• Tom McClintock of California
• Mary Miller of Illinois
• Alex Mooney of West Virginia
• Barry Moore of Alabama
• Ralph Norman of South Carolina
• Steven Palazzo of Mississippi
• Gary Palmer of Alabama
• Scott Perry of Pennsylvania
• August Pfluger of Texas
• Tom Rice of South Carolina
• John Rose of Tennessee
• Matt Rosendale of Montana
• David Rouzer of North Carolina
• Chip Roy of Texas
• John Rutherford of Florida
• Greg Steube of Florida
• Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin
• Randy Weber of Texas

In the sen­ate Missouri’s Josh Hawley the insur­rec­tion­ist vot­ed against its pas­sage as well.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.