The bad news: the legislative day today was squandered by filibuster.
The good news: the people in the know are confident FTH will get its shot at a vote on the Gourmet Beer Bill.
That said, let me speak to the post below. In the comments section there is a lot of anger directed at Phil Poole based on our outline of what is going on with his filibuster. The long and short of it all that is that he’s someone who is stopping business from getting done in the Senate and when you’re waiting on a bill to come up for a vote, that’s really, really frustrating. Thus the anger.
But let me remind everyone that politics is a very complicated, multi-faceted matter. It’s not uncommon for things to not be what they seem, and you can bet there’s always more to the story than you know.
All of that segues to my observation that today’s filibustering was not solely the work of Poole; it was perpetrated by several different people working together. In other words, even if Poole’s issue had been resolved yesterday, we still would have seen a filibuster today. Lots of people have lots of beefs.
I disapprove of the use of the filibuster tactic in this manner so I’m definitely not defending anyone. But I do want to make it clear that we as citizens can’t solve the problems of our Senate by directing ire at one member. The problems I’ve come to recognize are deeply rooted, systemic issues that might require some sort of divine intervention to fix. What we as Free The Hops supporters need to do is focus on working within the broken system as it exists to get what we want. That’s the only option we have at this time.
So let’s please back off the rhetoric directed at one or another Senator, recognize that the system itself is broken, and just do what needs to get done to pass our bill. I’m told we’ll have a chance to do just that. Let’s be ready for it.
