Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

The Prosecutor And The Felon

Yesterday, Joe Biden dropped out of the Presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris.

My thoughts–in no particular order:

I love Joe Biden. He has been a transformational President– an incredibly consequential one. Much as I admired and supported Barack Obama, Biden–calling on a long career of public service, and political savvy deepened by experience–accomplished far more. His legacy will be both an important and a sterling one.

That said, he is old (younger than I am…but let’s not go there…) and his decline was becoming obvious. His continued campaigning allowed the MAGA cultists to focus public attention on that decline, rather than on the existential threat to America presented by Trump and his racist cult. They will now be deprived of that tactic.

One of the constant complaints I’ve heard about the Democratic campaign the past weeks has been that the party has failed to hammer home the multiple, significant accomplishments of the Biden administration. One consequence of yesterday’s announcement has been that it has introduced the ability of the pundits and Democratic officeholder to engage in a hagiography of sorts: people commenting on Biden’s decision have used his announcement that he is backing out as a cue to celebrate a Presidential term that has been truly transformational–and to remind the American public of the multiple accomplishments of that term.

That’s all to the good. But going forward–and assuming Kamala Harris will be the nominee–what I think we will see is, in a very real sense, a fascinating, contemporary replay of the Civil War. (Hopefully, with less bloodshed, although with MAGA, one never knows.)

Kamala Harris will pledge a continuation of Biden’s policies, and those policies are infinitely more popular than those of Project 2025, which–as someone has noted–poll like Ebola. But what MAGA will find intolerable is that Harris is female and Black, and–worse still–has a Jewish husband.

Let’s be honest: absolutely no one looks at Donald Trump, a self-engrossed ignoramus who knows nothing about government and cares about nothing but himself, and sees someone competent to occupy the Oval Office. What they see–and what the research amply confirms–is someone who gives them permission to hate out loud. MAGA is a racist cult. It is today’s Confederacy, today’s war on Black people. The only difference between the original Civil War and the one taking place today (aside from the lack of muskets and powder-horns or whatever the arms of the day looked like) is that brown people, gay people, Muslims, Jews–anyone who isn’t a fundamentalist White Christian–is now part of those “Others” that MAGA folks insist cannot be “real Americans.”

The replay of the Civil War will be a nod to the past. But Kamala Harris has been a prosecutor, and what will be a far more contemporary facet of the upcoming campaign will be the face-off between a Prosecutor and a convicted felon.

Prosecutors are charged with upholding and applying the rule of law. Those of us who are lawyers of any kind have been appalled by a series of rogue decisions by a Supreme Court dominated by justices appointed by Trump. That Court has discarded any pretense of following precedent, and for lawyers serving in government jobs–prosecutors and public defenders, counselors to government officials–the destructive effects of Trump’s judges on the legal system have been incredibly painful. The prospect of electing a convicted felon to the highest position in American government is unthinkable to anyone who understands the importance of equal justice under the law. As a former longtime prosecutor, Harris is in a position to emphasize just how unthinkable that prospect ought to be.

So–here we are. Democrats now will have a youthful, dynamic and highly intelligent candidate, versed in the law, who will represent a successful administration that has passed important and popular domestic legislation and internationally has secured worldwide respect. The Republican cult will remain in thrall to an elderly candidate who is an increasingly incoherent convicted felon who consistently reinforces his lack of both civility and sanity, and whose potential victory terrifies leaders of the world’s democracies.

Joe Biden may have saved America. He deserves our gratitude and undying respect.

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Why And How Women MUST Vote In November

As some Indiana readers of this blog probably know, one of my volunteer activities is with a relatively new organization, Women 4 Change Indiana. The organization was founded in the wake of the 2016 election that put a mentally-ill, racist misogynist in the Oval Office. It works to improve Hoosier governance, opposing gerrymandering, engaging in a variety of civic education efforts, and–in the weeks and days leading up to elections–to get out the vote.

Recently, I was tasked with producing brief–but hopefully compelling–messages about the importance of women’s votes. Women 4 Change highlights those reasons on its website, and (in case you’ve missed them) I’ve compiled them below.

For women, especially, the upcoming election is about one over-riding issue: what is—and isn’t– government’s business? The Dobbs decision did more than allow legislatures to eliminate women’s reproductive rights; it challenged the longstanding constitutional doctrine that there are certain things individual citizens get to decide for ourselves. That doctrine—called “substantive due process” or “the right to privacy” prevents government from making decisions that should be left up to the individual: what you read, who you marry, whether, when and to whom you pray, what political opinions you hold. In answer to the question “who decides?” the current Supreme Court says “government.”

In the upcoming election, women especially need to vote for candidates who will support the return of America’s traditional, non-partisan judiciary. When ideological or corrupt judges are on the bench, women and minorities suffer, and the public loses respect for the legal system and the rule of law.

Since polling shows that large majorities of Americans—especially women– care about gun violence, women should take care to explore candidates’ positions on guns and gun ownership. What do the candidates say about the “right” to own and carry assault weapons? Do they support “red flag” laws that keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals and perpetrators of domestic violence? Do they oppose reasonable background checks?

Americans are already experiencing the effects of a warming planet. Women who worry about the livability of the world we’re leaving to our children and grandchildren need to vote for candidates who support government’s efforts to combat climate change, and need to oppose candidates who are trying to slow the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.

In order to leave our children and grandchildren a better world, women need to withhold support for candidates giving aid and comfort to racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia and all the other “isms”–the bigotries that divide Americans into armies of “us” and “them.” Real Americans understand that people should be evaluated on the basis of their behavior, not on the basis of their gender, religion, sexuality or skin color. (When I sent this particular part of the text to the organization, I suggested additional language to the effect that every group is a mixture of good people and assholes, but for some reason, they didn’t include that language…)

Mothers and fathers both have important stakes in the operation of their public school systems—especially in maintaining and protecting the professionalism of teachers and librarians. Women are disproportionately harmed when religious fundamentalists take control of school boards and libraries, because the books that are censored when that occurs are most often those that portray “non-traditional” families in a positive light, but everyone is harmed when teachers are told what they can and cannot teach, and the entire student body is prevented from accessing library books that may offend some citizens.

Quite obviously, these reasons to vote also apply to men–at least the ones who aren’t terrified of living in a world they have to share with females, gay folks and people of color…

Women4Change is non-partisan, so the organization confines its messaging to pleas to turn out– exhortations to vote for the candidates of one’s choice. This blog  most definitely does not operate under that constraint. Every one of the above reasons is a reason to vote Democratic. The Grand Old Party I once worked for has disappeared, and the cult that has replaced it is wrong on every single one of these issues–and plenty of other issues as well.

I’ve given up trying to understand the people who look at today’s Republican candidates– in thrall to a narcissistic ignoramus and his legions of bigots who want to return us to the 1950s — and say “Yep, those are my guys!” I only know that those of us who haven’t drunk the Kool Aid need to vote–and we need to drag our sane friends and relatives to the polls with us.

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The Utilitarian Argument For Religion

When my husband and I first married, we had spirited arguments about religion. (Bad pun intended.) Neither of us was religious, but my husband held particularly negative views of organized religion; I countered by equating religion with philosophy, and arguing that humans needed to have considered beliefs about the meanings of their lives, which either philosophy or religious doctrine could supply.

Over the years, I’ve come to agree with my husband.

Dismissing all religion is, of course, is manifestly unfair. I have several friends among the clergy, and friends and family who are religious in the sense that I once saw religious belief: as a guide to help wrestle with the moral issues that confront all thinking humans. They see the bible not as some inerrant word of God, but as a repository of tales intended to illuminate those moral quandaries and suggest moral/ethical solutions.

My friends are clearly not representative of what we might call public religiosity. 

I recently came across a report that illustrates–unfortunately–the sort of religion that increasingly motivates political theocrats like Indiana’s Beckwith and Banks.

A prominent and prolific theologian in the Church of the Nazarene will face a church trial later this month for advocating for LGBTQ affirmation at a time when the denomination is doubling down on its opposition to same-sex relations.

The Rev. Thomas Jay Oord, an ordained elder and a lifelong member of the denomination, is accused of teaching doctrines contrary to the Church of the Nazarene. He is also being charged with conduct unbecoming of a minister for his efforts to move the denomination to affirm LGBTQ people. The church holds that “the practice of same-sex sexual intimacy is contrary to God’s will.”

I find it fascinating that people who assert belief in the existence of an omnipotent and all-knowing deity have the hubris to believe that they are perfectly able to ascertain the will of that unknowable deity, and are confident that their God–who presumably created the people they hate– shares their prejudices.

This news item is only one of hundreds of similar examples, which brings me to the ongoing arguments about the utility of religion in society. Persuasion recently recapped those arguments, beginning with the position of those who assert that secularism is the source of our social ills. 

A growing cadre of intellectuals think the decline of religious belief has created a moral and spiritual vacuum, which has been filled with surrogate religions like wokeness and political extremism. They believe there’s a crisis of meaning in Western societies as people scramble to fill the “God-shaped holes” in their lives with other objects of worship. They argue that a renewed commitment to the Judeo-Christian tradition is the only way to restore a sense of social solidarity and shared purpose—and perhaps even save the West.

As the essay notes, these “new Theists” present a remarkably one-sided view of the history of religion, and especially Christianity. In contrast, it points to a straight line from Enlightenment humanism to the liberal rights and freedoms that the New Theists erroneously attribute to the influence of Christianity.

Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire challenged the authority of scripture, religious dogmatism, and the power of the Catholic Church. Baruch Spinoza rejected the idea of God as a transcendent supreme being, resisted supernatural beliefs, and made the case for religious pluralism and tolerance. In his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Spinoza said the state should hold sway over religion and argued for a rational interpretation of scripture. David Hume relentlessly challenged the moral and metaphysical claims of religion. While there were gradations of belief and unbelief among Enlightenment thinkers, a core aspect of Enlightenment thought was criticism of religion. And no wonder: the Enlightenment was in large part a response to centuries of religious oppression, dogma, and violence in Europe.

The essay is well worth reading in its entirety, but its basic thrust is that a Judeo-Christian “revival” would be highly unlikely to bring cohesion– “even Christians can’t agree on what it means to live in ‘one nation under God.'”

True, freedom and pluralism can be destabilizing. But as the essay notes, the proposed religious “solutions” are worse than the problem. Reversion to a phoney and contrived “Judeo-Christian tradition” wouldn’t be a step toward “some lost renaissance of cultural cohesion. It would be a return to familiar forms of tribalism, prejudice, and dogma.”

The pastors and politicians seeking to impose religious conformity are pursuing a fool’s errand–using religion (their own, of course) as a tool to achieve social consensus. (As the opening example illustrates, even theologians within the same denomination differ about “God’s will.”) 

At best, they are misreading history; at worst, they’re really advocating Christian Nationalism.  

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Banks Being Banks…

And you thought Micah Beckwith was the most “far out” candidate on Indiana’s statewide Republican ticket, just because he wants to ban books, criminalize abortion and put gay people back in. the closet?

Jim Banks says “Hold my beer.”

I had originally planned to post about reports that Banks approach is refusing to sign a bill funding Veterans programs if  unrelated culture war riders attached by the far Right are removed. Those provisions would eliminate diversity and inclusion programs and further restrict abortion nationwide. He has been quoted as saying that dropping them from a bill addressing practical matters important to veterans–a constituency Banks pretends to care about– will cause him to withhold his vote.

“If they go back to the Dem woke policies — if they fund those policies, I’ll vote against it,” Banks said. 

I wasn’t in any particular hurry to highlight this bit of “just normal for Banks” posturing. After all, with Jim Banks, threats like that just mean the sun rose in the East. He’s all culture war, all the time. Just the other day, he introduced a resolution to overturn a Biden administration rule requiring that foster parenting placements not be hostile to a child’s sexual orientation.

But then I saw this article from The New Republic.

Representative Jim Banks is running to represent Indiana in the Senate, but he categorically refuses to reject an armed rebellion against the federal government.

Banks was asked four times in person by a NOTUS reporter if he opposes a rebellion, and each time failed to give a clear answer. The fourth time, he even insulted the reporter.

I don’t take you seriously enough to answer your question,” Banks said on Tuesday, following three previous attempts on Monday when he instead chose to complain about Democrats. Why has a question with a clear easy answer become such an issue? It stems from a social media post from Banks on May 30, the same night Donald Trump was convicted in his hush-money trial.

Banks’s post on X (formerly Twitter) is pinned to the top of his profile, and has a picture of the Appeal to Heaven flag without any words. That flag today is attributed to Christian nationalism and the far right. It was also a symbol of the “Stop the Steal” movement created by Trump’s followers following the 2020 election, and carried by rioters at the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has attracted criticism for flying the same flag outside his vacation home in New Jersey.

In one of his multiple evasive responses to the reporter’s questions, Banks referenced the upcoming election.

“We’re in unprecedented times, and November will be the result of regular people taking our country back,” Banks said to NOTUS. “And then we’ll have a reset, and then we’ll take back our government and our country from the elites and those who are trying to destroy it. So you can infer whatever you’d like from that post.”

I was previously unfamiliar with NOTUS, which bills itself as a “new Washington publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.” The original article, written by the NOTUS reporter who had conducted the interview, expanded on the conversation, noting that Banks had asked him whether he was a Christian, and whether he’d ever appealed to heaven. He followed that with a rant about the Democrats “weaponizing” the law against their political opponents. (I’m pretty sure that in GOP lingo, “weaponizing” means applying the rule of law to Republicans…)

Banks adamantly refused to answer the question “Do you oppose the concept of a second civil war?”

“That’s a crazy question,” Banks said, without answering it.

And when pressed again for his answer, he didn’t respond, disappearing into an elevator.

On Tuesday, a spokesperson for Banks did not respond to emails requesting the congressman’s opinion on armed rebellion against the U.S. government. On Wednesday, the spokesperson also did not respond to text messages from NOTUS, which were sent to his confirmed cell phone number, attempting again to see if Banks would like to offer clarity. The spokesperson did not answer phone calls from NOTUS ahead of this story’s publication, either.

It’s one thing to disagree with the “biblical perspectives” of people like Beckwith and Banks. It’s more important to recognize that they do not inhabit America’s current reality–or for that matter, any reality. They are thorough MAGA theocrats, convinced that they talk to God, and that God hates the same people they do.

I’m sure mental health professionals have a diagnosis for extreme theocratic zealotry. I don’t.

But I do know that they don’t belong in public office.

 
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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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