Why Do Elected Officials Fail to Heed the Constituents?
run75441: Student Loan Justice Organization has started a letter/email campaign to Senator Elizabeth Warren via one of her aides Joshua Delaney. I have read Senator Warren on numerous occasions and she has been forthright in her proposals and opposition to the Financial and Banking industry taking advantage of the Middle Class. For whatever reason, Senator Warren has been reluctant to take up the crusade for students who have been indentured to a system which has no protection, a protection President Trump availed himself of (as well as many others) numerous times before his presidency.
The denial of basic bankruptcy did not come about only because of Republicans. Then Democratic Senator Joe Biden sponsored the bill and Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow (Senate Finance Committee) voted for the passage of this bill. Now, there appears to be a reluctance on the part of Democrats to right a wrong they helped to perpetuate and allow a partisan kleptocrat to cause more harm to this country’s future resource.
Anyhoo, this is Student Loan Justice’s Org.’s Ed McKinley’s letter to Senator Warren’s aide Joshua Delaney (Joshua_Delaney@warren.senate.gov) asking for help, help which Joshua appears to be reluctant to give.
Hello Josh,
I am aware that you have heard from a few members of our group over the past week or so. I appreciate your efforts to respond to their concerns. Moreover, I believe you when you say that The Senator’s office was unaware of this show and its unfortunate decision to use senator Warren’s name in such an ill-conceived program.
Nonetheless, I feel compelled to offer you some insight into the responses I received from folks who have read your response. Let me just sum it up by saying I am doing you a favor by not asking you to endure them.
Let me be clear. I fully understand Senator Warren’s trepidation toward introducing an HR 2366 companion bill into the Senate at this time, it is unquestionably a very daunting task to try and push this legislation through this congress.
Be that as it may, here is what you apparently fail to understand. I am dealing with thousands of individuals from all over the political spectrum who have united to fight for a common cause. This may well be the only meaningful issue facing this country that has a truly bipartisan group working together. Let that sink in for a minute.
This group of people continues to grow and organize in spite of enduring one gut punch after another. In spite of what is now perceived as nothing more than lip service from politicians, who have put us on hold for years, we continue to build an unstoppable force.
I understand that your response may well be genuine, but I am being honest with you when I say it has, for the most part, left members with a bad taste in their mouths and great disappointment in Senator Warren.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos proposes; “A rule to make it harder for defrauded students to get their loans forgiven” is just another example of the violation of right that even today’s president has availed himself of multiple times.
Where is the Democrat’s counter in opposition to Ms. Devos’s proposal?
Yes, introducing a bill at this point has obvious challenges. Our position is that we would rather have a bill that we can fight for and fail than nothing at all. I’m not sure what it will take to help you understand that while you feel paralyzed by the GOP opposition, at least half of my members are conservatives. They are not so willing to buy the Democratic line. It befuddles me that you are so reluctant to recognize what an incredible opportunity this is.Name me one other significant issue you are pursuing that enjoys such a strong bipartisan audience. Think about what that could mean for The Senator’s credibility, not to mention the kind of fight we are capable of when partisanship of the day is neutralized.
Our membership is the tip of the iceberg that will ultimately roll over its opposition, but I fear the fallout at that point will be significant. These people are suffering and are simply sick and tired of being put off by politicians from both sides of the aisle.
I, strongly urge Senator Warren to introduce a companion bill to the Senate. Give these people something to fight for. It is downright foolish and shameful to ignore the pleas of our members while hoping and praying for a wider window of opportunity that may never open.
Consider the possibility that GOP maintains control into the next session. How would you suggest we proceed then? This task is not yours alone to undertake. It is ours. We are simply asking for Senator Warren to file the necessary papers and let us do our thing.
We will settle for nothing less because we cannot afford to. Futures are being squandered and lives being lost. If Senator Warren is serious about restoring bankruptcy protections it will be an impossible fight without us. PLEASE, untie our hands and let’s get to work.
Best Regards,
Ed McKinley, LICSW
Student Loan Justice MA
Nice post. I see no downside for the Warren, and all Dems, making this a part of their platform.
Alternately, we could just adopt the European (and other civilized parts of the world) approach of stringing the payments out over much longer, basing them on ability to pay and clearing the debt after 25 years or something.
Do you not see the irony of the statement that, “there appears to be a reluctance on the part of Democrats to right a wrong they helped to perpetuate.” Congress seems reluctant to restore the labor unions that they destroyed in the first place as well. Why would evil doers ever reverse what they did to begin with?
Do you really need to ask, “Why do elected officials fail to heed constituents?” They answer is right in front of our noses. It is because they are paid by business interests, through “lobbyists,” to act against the interests of their constituents. They will heed their constituents when the “lobbyists” with their wheelbarrows filled with cash disappear from the streets of Washington and the hallways of Congress.
@EMichael
The downside for Democrats is that the financial industry would quit contributing wheelbarrows filled with cash to their reelection campaign funding.
BillH,
Why would banks do that? They got paid for the origination of the loans and the servicing. Very, very few student loans are held in portfolio by banks. Almost all have been sold in ABSs.
Meanwhile, most of the damage that has been done to unions, though not all, has been done at the state level. Though Reps have done almost all of the damage, and most recently filibustered card check. Not to mention that the the total ah part of the gop house(they call themselves the freedom caucus, my description is far, far more accurate) is pushing a federal right to work law.
That can’t work due to the filibuster.
they call themselves the freedom caucus, my description is far, far more accurate) is pushing a federal right to work law
Democrats could “buy” lower income voters back (which have in effect become the swing voters) — instead of the other way around — by extending a Republican concept of mandated cert-decert union elections for all 100% of private workplaces, not just 7%.
Why Not Hold Union Representation Elections on a Regular Schedule?
Andrew Strom — November 1st, 2017
“Republicans in Congress have already proposed a bill [Repub amend] that would require a new election in each unionized bargaining unit whenever, through turnover, expansion, or merger, a unit experiences at least 50 percent turnover. While no union would be happy about expending limited resources on regular retention elections, I think it would be hard to turn down a trade that would allow the 93% of workers who are unrepresented to have a chance to opt for unionization on a regular schedule.”
[cut and paste]
I used to think that making (already illegal) union busting a felony – even at state level – was the way back to a free labor market. I didn’t imagine the management/labor civil war that could break out across country as criminal justice systems grappled with the decades emboldened (illegal) union busting genie resisting with all its bloated might being squished back into the law abiding bottle:
Instituting a brand new enforcement arm to cover 160 million employees trying to retake collective bargaining rights?
New enforcement branch office buildings?
New courthouses?!
New prisons to put away losing managements – if this works?
Legions of lawyers draging every single (criminal) case down to its last appeal within appeals?
Management with a million and one excuses for “easing out” organizers?
Billions of billionaire backing emboldening every last line of defense?
RICO prosecutions (plural) to begin when management excuses start to pile up and overlap – after the necessary years to qualify as a pattern?
Elliot Ness had it easy with Al Capone compared to corralling millions of “legit” business owners back into (lawful) collective bargaining ways with 160 million solidarity deprived employees.
[snip]
Push Strom’s proposal — win back low income voters overnight by finally doing something for them that they feel Obama and Hillary never did — create Germany overnight. What are we waiting for??????????????
Dennis,
How about the ability to do what you want?
60 218 and 270.
Without that, criticizing Dems as not doing something is a total waste of time and totally counter productive.
BTW,
Low income voters vote for Dems everywhere. I cannot imagine where your thought process in that area comes from.
By income, Clinton led only among voters with a 2015 family income under $50,000 — a group that included 36% of the voters in the exit polls.
https://www.businessinsider.com/exit-polls-who-voted-for-trump-clinton-2016-11#by-income-clinton-led-only-among-voters-with-a-2015-family-income-under-50000-a-group-that-included-36-of-the-voters-in-the-exit-polls-4
Low income voters vote for Dems everywhere.
NYT’s Nate Cohn: “Just as Mr. Obama’s team caricatured Mr. Romney, Mr. Trump caricatured Mrs. Clinton as a tool of Wall Street” … “At every point of the race, Mr. Trump was doing better among white voters without a college degree than Mitt Romney did in 2012 — by a wide margin.”
“[Mr. Obama] would have won Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin each time even if Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee had been severed from their states and cast adrift into the Great Lakes.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/upshot/how-the-obama-coalition-crumbled-leaving-an-opening-for-trump.html
All those enthusiastic people you see getting suckered at Trump rallies will come running back if we offer them a real way to straighten out their lives — give them their econ and pol power back (then they can straighten the world out all by them selves — it’s sort of like an unfunded mandate — mandate cert elections and get out of their way).
**************
How about the ability to do what you want?
60 218 and 270.
I really don’t know what you mean.
Majorities in te Senate, the House and the Electoral College. Control . . .
Dennis,
You do realize that this was the first Presidential elections since the Voting Rights Act was handicapped by the Supreme Court, right? WI was certainly lost due to it. And more than likely MI also. Meanwhile, taking elections in 08 and 12 and making statements like Obama wins without the cities ignores the suppression; Comery; russian interference and the simple fact that Clinton was not Obama .
One more thing, almost no one who voted for Trump had ever voted for a Dem in their entire life. And they will not do so now. People do not change their voting patterns, they only change whether they vote or not. That is the key to every election.
Majorities in …
The idea is you push the regularly scheduled union-cert election amendment to the NLRB when campaigning — then, you get legislative majorities. Then, you make the amendment the law of the land …
… big as any civil rights bill. When I explained the American labor market to my late, more articulate brother John, he came back with: “Martin Luther King got his people on the up escalator just in time for it to start going down for everybody [witness the west and south sides of Chicago].” And we weren’t even talking about Martin Luther King.
C”mon Man!
Did you know that WI and MI are right to work states? Made so by the white working class voting in Reps that grabbed the chance to strangle unions?
That the rep based supreme court just started to strangle public unions across the united states? A court makeup a direct result of the white working class voting in reps that made it so?
Wake up and smell the roses. These white working class people do not vote for working class interests. They haven’t done zo since the civil rights acts. Thinking pro union talk is going to get them to vote Dem ignores 50 years of history.
Nothing wrong with being pro union (though you might want to actually pay attention to how legislation is made law a lot more than you do). Hope it works. But without 60, 218 and 270 there is no chance. And the white working class is not going to help you at all.
Meanwhile if it actually works, we can drag the white working class along with us. But don’t think for a minute they would not be kicking and screaming the whole way.
What would Jimmy Hoffa say?
Warren is voting for more pentagon spending, and pushing NATO into occupying Poland.
And that tactical nuke for the Trident SLBM…….. can send a small nuke for Montenegro from the Indian Ocean.
non sequitur
Hoffa would clearly say, “How could you white union members vote against unions the last fifty years?”