Author Archives: Sheila

And Now, An Extra: The Democrats

Indiana’s state Democratic convention is over, and as promised, I will devote a post to that party’s slate of statewide candidates. They provide a striking contrast to the theocratic culture warriors who believe they will glide to victory because this is Indiana.

I have admired Jennifer McCormick since she was Indiana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction. That admiration grew when she publicly repudiated the GOP. Unlike other spineless Republican officeholders, she opted to leave a party that held a legislative super-majority and pledge allegiance to a minority party that now stands for positions she cares about–positions the GOP has abandoned. It took guts–and principles.

Jennifer is running a disciplined, strategic campaign focused on those issues: reproductive freedom, public education, union rights and a living wage, and fiscal responsibility. You can learn more about her here. 

McCormick chose Terry Goodin to run for Lieutenant Governor. Unlike the Christian Nationalist running for that spot on the GOP’s ticket, Goodin is highly qualified for the position, which is largely focused on agriculture and rural affairs. A former state legislator, Goodin is currently Indiana state director for USDA Rural Development, and has deep roots into communities that tend to vote overwhelmingly Republican. (Like McCormick, Goodin also served several years as a public school superintendent.) 

Goodin was initially criticised by Democrats who pointed to his vote in 2011 against same-sex marriage, but like many other Americans, he has grown; he issued a heartfelt apology for that vote, which he now considers hurtful and wrong. He has enthusiastically endorsed McCormicks priorities, especially on reproductive choice and public education.

Valerie McCray is a genuine political outsider. A graduate of Arsenal Tech High School in Indianapolis, she navigated the challenges of being a single mother, while earning a BA, MA, and Ph.D from the University of Michigan, and has spent 35 years as a practicing psychologist. Her professional experience underscored for her the effect of public policies on multiple populations, and convinced her to take her fights for a woman’s right to choose and “beyond-subsistence” wages to Washington. Because she knows “what it’s like to be a struggling middle-class American; a single mom, a student using the same bag for books and diapers,” she will champion “union support, healthcare for all, equal rights for everyone, strengthening public education, and repealing Citizens United,” and she promises to “fight for student loan debt reduction, closing the wealth gap, and funding environmental efforts.” You can learn more about Dr. McCray here.

In their recent convention, Democrats chose Destiny Wells as their candidate for Attorney General. Wells ran an impressive, albeit losing, campaign for Secretary of State two years ago, which she says taught her valuable lessons. Coming, as she says, from eight generations of Indiana farmers, she was a first generation college student at IU; she joined the National Guard and ROTC and today is a  a U.S. Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel. Along the way, Wells earned a law degree which led to experience serving multiple levels of government and with NATO. (She’s been an Associate Corporation Counsel for Indianapolis, and a Deputy Attorney General for Indiana.) A major theme of her campaign is “restoring integrity to the Office of Attorney General”–a theme that will resonate with anyone who’s familiar with the operation of that office under Todd Rokita. You can learn more about Destiny and her positions here.

Not only are all of these individuals accomplished and highly qualified for the positions they seek, they are running against a collection of looney-tune MAGA extremists. Braun spent his six undistinguished years as a Senator cozying up to Trump. Beckwith is a self-identified Christian Nationalist whose only experience in public office– on a library board– outraged the community by attempting to censor books that offended his fundamentalist religious beliefs. He has NO experience relevant to the job he seeks. Banks is–as I have documented–a culture war zealot and MAGA anti-woke crusader, a clone of Beckwith. And it is impossible to summarize the multiple times I’ve posted about the despicable and unethical behaviors of Attorney General Todd Rokita.

All of these men are anti-choice, anti-gay, and anti-woman. 

There is absolutely no reason why the impressive slate of candidates being run by the Democrats can’t win-if they have the resources to distribute their messages and bona fides. (Unless, of course, you agree with the pessimist assertion that all inhabitants of rural Indiana are ignorant racist theocrats who will vote Republican because they agree with the appalling positions of the GOP candidates.)

If you care about women’s reproductive liberty, public education, intellectual freedom and civic equality, send these candidates money. Volunteer for one of their campaigns. 

And vote Blue up and down the ballot.

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The Real GOP Platform

Well, the GOP has produced a platform. I suppose we should consider that a welcome change from 2020, when the party didn’t bother. (The excuse then, as I recall, was “whatever Trump wants is our platform;” now, they evidently realize he has no policies; his sole agenda is “look at me!”)

But as Robert Hubbell has pointed out, the real GOP Platform is Project 2025. As he has also noted, although the “official” Republican platform is pretty horrific, Project 2025—the actual platform–is a fascist wet dream. The GOP Platform, appalling as it is, whitewashes that vision.

For example, the GOP Platform mentions the word “abortion” only once to say that the decision has been returned to the states. Project 2025 references “abortion” 922 times to describe how access to abortion will be denied at the national level through congressional legislation and how access will be restricted in every program possible—from emergency medical treatment to foreign aid to healthcare in the military.

It isn’t just abortion. The same extremism is true of other issues.

Project 2025 promises to “dismantle the administrative state,” gut the civil service, strip the EPA of its ability to protect the environment, actively discriminate against LGBTQ people (including by excluding transgender people from the military), promote the role of “faith-based” organizations in delivering government services, and more.

As truly horrifying and unAmerican as Project 2025 is, the “official” platform intended to “soften” GOP intentions is pretty terrifying too. Hubbell listed several of its White Nationalist, xenophobic planks.

1. Seal The Border, And Stop The Migrant Invasion

2. Carry Out The Largest Deportation Operation In American History

9. End The Weaponization Of Government Against The American People

10. Stop The Migrant Crime Epidemic, Demolish The Foreign Drug Cartels, Crush Gang Violence, And Lock Up Violent Offenders

15. Cancel The Electric Vehicle Mandate And Cut Costly And Burdensome Regulations

16. Cut Federal Funding For Any School Pushing Critical Race Theory, Radical Gender Ideology, And Other Inappropriate Racial, Sexual, Or Political Content On Our Children

18. Deport Pro-Hamas Radicals And Make Our College Campuses Safe And Patriotic Again

19. Secure Our Elections, Including Same Day Voting, Voter Identification, Paper Ballots, And Proof Of Citizenship.

A number of the far Right members of Congress aren’t waiting for the election and the GOP’s presumed victory. As Common Dreams has recently reported, they are taking advantage of the fact that media attention has largely turned to the election campaign, and are using that comparative lack of public scrutiny to embark on what the publication called “an austerity rampage” that would “demolish public education” and “let corporate price gouging run rampant.”

With much of the public’s attention on the looming presidential election and high-stakes jockeying over who will take on Donald Trump in November, congressional Republicans in recent weeks have provided a stark look at their plans for federal spending should their party win back control of the presidency and the Senate.

The appropriations process for Fiscal Year 2025, which begins in October, is currently underway, with congressional committees engaging in government funding debates that are likely to continue beyond the November elections.

In keeping with their longstanding support for austerity for ordinary Americans, Republicans in the House and Senate have proposed steep cuts to a wide range of federal programs and agencies dealing with education, environmental protection, Social Security, election administration, national parks, nutrition assistance, antitrust enforcement, global health, and more—all while they pursue additional deficit-exploding tax giveaways for the rich.

These proposals are more evidence–if any was needed– that the goals outlined in Project 2025 now represent the basic philosophy of a once-respectable political party. 

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, has been attempting to sound the alarm over the GOP’s proposals, which she has warned would “demolish public education,” endanger the health of women and children, gut mental health programs, “let corporate price gouging run rampant,” and “expose children to dangerous products.”…

Congressional Republicans’ spending proposals for next fiscal year are in line with the draconian cuts pushed by Project 2025, a sweeping far-right agenda from which Trump—the presumptive GOP presidential nominee—is attempting to distance himself as horror grows over the initiative’s vision for the country.

Project 2025’s 922-page policy document calls for more punitive work requirements for SNAP recipients, massive cuts to Medicaid, the abolition of the Department of Education, the elimination of major clean energy programs, and the gutting of key Wall Street regulations.

If this “laundry list” seems insane–a roadmap to anarchy and a new Dark Ages–it is. We are living at a time when a major political party has developed a mass psychosis.

It turns out that Trump isn’t the only Republican who is bat-shit crazy. He’s just more incoherent than the others, so it’s more obvious.

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When Religion Becomes Farce

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Or maybe both.

Most of us have seen the news that Louisiana now requires posting the Ten Commandments in that state’s schoolrooms. What I hadn’t seen reported–until this fascinating article from Salon–is that the version to be posted comes not from the Bible, but from Hollywood. Rather than go to any of the biblical texts, Louisiana opted for Cecil B. DeMille’s, taking the version to be posted from  “The Ten Commandments.”

Actually, that shouldn’t be a surprise–Christian nationalists aren’t known for consulting original texts. Or for honesty.

The article is lengthy–and fascinating. It quotes several biblical scholars who have read–and engaged with–the biblical versions. As one scholar says,

The Ten Commandments recounted in Exodus 34 are nothing like the list of crimes most people know. It starts off: “Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you.”

As he notes, this version is definitely “not the list of ten commandments which most people are familiar with, but it is the only list in Exodus which is actually called ‘the ten commandments.’” (The article notes that similar legislation passed by the Texas State Senate also uses a version that doesn’t appear in any Bible– a “highly Christianized version” with “Judaic elements removed.”)

The multitude of versions and their disputed authenticity leads to what the author calls the “vexing problem of which form of the Ten Commandments should be forced onto schoolchildren….Wikipedia even offers a chart showing how eight different faith traditions group and number the commandments.” No wonder our MAGA lawmakers opted for the Hollywood version, wildly inaccurate as “The Ten Commandments” was both historically and textually.

Well, if you are going to “edit” the presumed word of God, you might as well make your version support your political ambitions..

Louisiana’s Ten Commandments lawsuit actually disproves the Christian nationalist claim that the Ten Commandments are the basis of America’s moral foundation. One need only compare the text that will go on classroom walls with the text of the Bible. Louisiana lawmakers edited and abridged the biblical commandments to “improve” the Word of God, to make them more moral. Gone is the reference to a jealous God punishing innocent children for the crimes of their parents (Exodus 20:5); the crime of exercising their right to freely worship. Lawmakers used our modern morality to edit the word of their God. Louisiana’s heavily edited commandments undercut the very claim they are supposedly making.

There is, of course, a wide discrepancy between genuine Christianity and Christian Nationalism, as clergy friends of mine keep reminding me. The latter is a thinly-veiled political movement, and it bears less and less similarity to religious belief. As the article notes,

If this were an intellectual debate, we could stop here. But it’s politics, which is full of challenging absurdities. Trump was only a distant spectator to the Louisiana bill, but he’s both a symptom and a super-spreader of the underlying moral abyss. Eight years ago, many evangelical Christians had their doubts about Trump. His running mate, Mike Pence, clearly helped calm, as did “apostle” Lance Wallnau, whose book “God’s Chaos Candidate” compared Trump to the Persian King Cyrus, a “heathen” instrument of God’s will. But now Trump openly compares himself to Jesus and his followers eat it up, while his flagrant violations of the Ten Commandments are shrugged off, at best. Pastors who preach on the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus told his followers to “turn the other cheek,” are accused of pushing “liberal talking points.”

In short, Trump has helped catalyze a profound disorientation of Christianity, deep into gaslight territory. By comparison, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry is just a garden-variety Republican liar. “If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver,” he said on signing the bill. It’s an obviously illogical claim — you could also start by not nominating a convicted criminal for president — that’s also ludicrous and false in several different ways.

One sociologist is quoted as explaining that Christian nationalism has two goals: to signal to the MAGA base that they are culture warriors fighting “leftism, Marxism, woke-ism, state-sponsored atheism or whatever else scares conservative white Americans;” and as a distraction from Republican policy failures. It’s notable that US News recently ranked Louisiana dead last among all 50 states, and no. 47 in education.

As the article accurately concludes, the Christian nationalist agenda stands for the proposition that America is a Christian nation, and Christians (of the right variety) should control every facet of it.

It’s hard to get more unAmerican than that.

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The Price Of Ideology

In posts to this blog, I often criticize ideological rigidity. Hopefully, those criticisms come in a context that makes the meaning of “ideological” clear, but it may be worthwhile to focus on just what it means to be “ideological” rather than simply convinced of the likelihood that some phenomenon is true.

Ideology has a lot in common with prejudice, which means “pre-judging.” (We all know people who firmly believe that “those people” [insert your chosen group here] are lazy, unintelligent, shifty…whatever–and who dismiss any inconvenient evidence to the contrary.)

Ideology extends beyond such categorizing of one’s fellow humans, of course, and its most obvious characteristic is a stubborn refusal to adapt belief to evidence, and to change or at least modify one’s opinion when that evidence is too persuasive to ignore.

The problem, of course, is that persistent rejection of an unwanted reality usually prevents people from coping with very real problems.

The situation in Florida is an excellent illustration of the foregoing, somewhat abstract discussion. A while back, I came across a discussion of the impact of climate change on Florida residents and businesses. It began by focusing on the closure of assisted living facilities in that state as a result of huge increases in the cost of property insurance–not to mention the growing inability to even find a property insurer willing to write such coverage in Florida.

The state of Florida is incredibly vulnerable to climate change and to the newly numerous and severe weather events that change is triggering. Thanks to its shape and location, it is also uniquely vulnerable to rising sea waters–the Miami airport has spent some seven billion dollars “modernizing” and raising the elevation of the facility due to the speed at which Florida’s sea level is now rising. (Currently, by as much as 1 inch every 3 years.)

Right now, the most obvious effect of climate change on the state is the crisis of property insurance rates and availability.

It is not just business that is taking it on the chin. Floridians pay the highest home insurance rates in the country. The good old gator boys love to point out how expensive the Socialist Republic of New York is. But like all conservative rhetoric, it is vacuous self-congratulation with no foundation in reality.

Homeowners in the Sunshine State do not pay state income tax. But, while a married New Yorker earning $70,000 p.a. pays c.$2,726 in state income tax, a married Floridian living in a $300,000 house will pay c.$4,733 more ($6,366 vs. $1,633) than the NYer for home insurance.

Any effort to solve that crisis runs into DeSantis’ ideology–which denies the evidence every sensible Floridian can see.

Global warming denial is a state religion in Florida. As early as 2014, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection bosses banned their subordinates from saying “climate change” and “global warming.” Because, as everyone knows, the most effective way to tackle a problem is to deny it.

In March 2015, The Miami Herald reported what DEP employees had to say on the matter:

“We were told not to use the terms ‘climate change,’ ‘global warming’ or ‘sustainability,’” said Christopher Byrd, an attorney with the DEP’s Office of General Counsel in Tallahassee from 2008 to 2013.

“That message was communicated to me and my colleagues by our superiors in the Office of General Counsel.” Kristina Trotta, another former DEP employee who worked in Miami, said her supervisor told her not to use the terms “climate change” and “global warming” in a 2014 staff meeting. “We were told that we were not allowed to discuss anything that was not a true fact,” she said….

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation deleting even the mention of climate change from state laws. It gets worse. As CNN reported:

The wide-ranging law makes several changes to the state’s energy policy – in some cases deleting entire sections of state law that talk about the importance of cutting planet-warming pollution. The bill would also give preferential treatment to natural gas and ban offshore wind energy, even though there are no wind farms planned off Florida’s coast.

The bill deletes the phrase ‘climate’ eight times – often in reference to reducing the impacts of global climate change through its energy policy or directing state agencies to buy ‘climate friendly’ products when they are cost-effective and available. The bill also gets rid of a requirement that state-purchased vehicles should be fuel efficient.

I’m not sure when ideology morphs into insanity…

A popular cartoon posed the question: what if there isn’t climate change and we made the world more livable for nothing?

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More On Project 2025

In a weird way, it really doesn’t matter who heads up either the Republican or Democratic national tickets–because this election is rapidly becoming a referendum on the U.S. Constitution and what it means to be an American.

If Republicans win the Presidency and Congress, we are very likely to jettison the Constitution in favor of the provisions of Project 2025. The forces that produced Project 2025 represent the real power structure of today’s GOP; its members see Trump as a convenient “front” because he is ignorant, stupid (those aren’t the same thing) and interested only in garnering attention–thus easily manipulated. Should he be replaced at the top of the ticket, it would either be with someone equally malleable or with a Project 2025 true believer.

Fortunately, the Democrats–unlike the Borg (look it up)–don’t believe that resistance is futile. As Joyce Vance has recently reported, Democrats have created a task force to combat what can accurately be described as an extension of the January 6th coup attempt. The task force has been created by California Congressman Jared Huffman, who described its formation and purpose.

We started by getting leaders from groups across the political spectrum of our House Democratic Caucus to sign on – Progressives, New Dems, CHC, CBC, API, Pro-Choice, Labor, LGBTQ Equality, and, of course, the Congressional Freethought Caucus I co-founded with Jamie Raskin!  From there, several other members signed on, including two from leadership (Joe Neguse and Ted Lieu).  Our ranking Appropriator, Rosa DeLauro, just joined us this week, bringing the Task Force to 15 members, including some of the most effective communicators in Congress.

We’re working closely with experts from more than a dozen leading advocacy groups, including Accountable.US, Democracy Forward, Center for American Progress, ACLU, Protect Democracy, Court Accountability, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and more.

Our work plan starts with over half a dozen subject matter briefings for Task Force members and staff by the end of August.  We’ve already had the first two:  last week on messaging/communications, including some recent polling on Project 2025, and this week, an ominous briefing on how the various elements of Project 2025 link together in a very strategic attack on democracy and civil liberties.  As we complete these “deep dive” briefings, we’re developing and pushing out messaging materials for Task Force members, outside partner groups, and the media.  In September, we will have a big, congressional hearing-like event where we publicly roll out highlights of the various briefings in conjunction with the outside groups.  The hearing will feature testimony from leading experts and different Task Force members will take the lead in presenting different parts of Project 2025.  We believe this event will get a lot of attention and will distill Project 2025 for the American people in a way that helps them understand how radical and destructive it is, why it must be taken very seriously, and how we can stop it.

After added discussion about the task force plans, Huffman addressed the central issue: what would the enactment of Project 2025 mean for the American experiment?

As Huffman explained, Project 2025 is a sweeping attack on democracy and fundamental American freedoms–an attack on health care and reproductive liberty, social justice, the livability of our planet, and much more.

It aims to systematically dismantle our democratic checks and balances and consolidate unprecedented power in a second Trump presidency.  It’s truly a roadmap to make Trump, already an aspiring dictator, into a real one, and to impose a radical social/religious order on all of us.  It exudes an “any means necessary” philosophy, including the explicit embrace of dystopic authoritarian measures like domestic military deployments, detention camps, mass deportations, an unprecedented political purge of the federal workforce, political weaponization of federal law enforcement, and more.  These are my greatest concerns because they would end American democracy as we know it.

There are certainly other worrisome parts of Project 2025, including dramatically weakening public education (with a goal of ending secular public education), sweeping attacks on the environment and rollbacks of climate action, clear threats to our social and retirement safety net, and privatization schemes and other reckless giveaways to powerful special interests.

Rick Wilson has said that Project 2025 “polls like Ebola,” which explains why Trump is suddenly trying to dissociate himself from it, but Heritage worked with over 100 extreme Rightwing groups that are at the heart of Trump’s political base, along with several of the most loyal (and scary) members of the prior Trump administration –- Mark Meadows, Stephen Miller, Peter Navarro, and several others.

The GOP roadmap that is Project 2025 is breathtakingly clear. Those of us who want to keep the Constitution need to ensure that voters know where that roadmap would take us.

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