Public Policy and Governance – Page 28

Running Against Looney-Tunes

As I’ve been following Indiana’s races for both the Statehouse and the U.S. Senate, I’ve come to realize that what passes for “the Left” in the Hoosier state has a lot in common with the more liberal Republicanism of my younger days. For example, when the GOP was still a political party and not a cult, I was a member of “Republicans for Choice”–along with lots of other Republicans.

Another good example is my friend Trish Whitcomb’s campaign for Indiana House District 69.

Trish’s father was former Indiana Governor Ed Whitcomb. Governor Whitcomb–then a traditional Republican– championed the environment, childcare, and increased federal funding for education. Trish shares those values–I first met her when we were both focused on the health of public education in Indiana–but today’s GOP has abandoned all of them, so Trish is a Democrat.

And her campaign–like that of Marc Carmichael, who is running for U.S. Senate–pits her against a wack-a-doodle Republican. In Carmichael’s case, it’s “god squad” Jim Banks; in Trish’s case it is “armed at all times” Jim Lucas.

Lucas has been in the news a lot lately. A few weeks ago, it was for drunk driving; this week it was for flashing his holstered handgun at students who were visiting the Statehouse seeking legislative action to curb gun violence.

When contacted by TheStatehouseFile.com later and told the students were threatened by him flashing a gun, Lucas shrugged off the incident. He said he was “simply showing an inanimate object” in order to prove a point about guns.

Lucas has a well-earned reputation as the legislature’s most rabid “gun nut”–he routinely introduces and sponsors bills further weakening restrictions on firearms, and is on record advocating arming teachers. He shrugs off the concerns of law enforcement, insisting (along with the NRA) that personal safety can only be secured by “good guys” with guns. In 2022, he suggested the Uvalde school shooting might be a false flag to take away Americans’ gun rights.

During the confrontation with the students, he mischaracterized a Supreme Court ruling, insisting that the Court had decided police have no obligation to protect them.

The conversation included a back-and-forth between Lucas and the students. Lucas told the students the police are not obligated to protect them so they needed to be prepared to protect themselves. He brushed off the students’ comments about the impact of school shootings on their lives, saying no law is going to fix gun violence.

It isn’t simply his love affair with guns. Lucas’ Facebook page has been a scandal for years. As a columnist for the Indianapolis Star put it back in 2022,

Call me naïve, but there was a time when I believed maturity came with age and with certain positions came a sense of decorum and standards of behavior.

Well, I’ve learned this is not the case: Maturity and age aren’t synonymous, and just because you’re in an esteemed position doesn’t mean you act accordingly.

That brings me to Rep. Jim Lucas, R-Seymour, who I’m convinced is stuck in adolescence. How else can you explain his continual sophomoric behavior?

Lucas has a long list of controversial posts, which I’ll get to later, but his latest gaffe had him backtracking on Facebook, trying to explain why he made such a post. Lucas used a quote possibly erroneously attributed to Joseph Goebbels — a Nazi. But not just any Nazi. Goebbels was the minister of propaganda. He and his wife poisoned their children and killed themselves.

The column went on to list other Lucas posts: one of a woman in a car trunk, posing the question of whether your wife or dog loves you more, and several making light of violence against women; a photo of a gallows with two rope nooses together with an article about a Black man who had pleaded guilty to rape; a photo of Black children dancing along with the words “We gon’ get free money!”

In fact, Lucas’ Facebook page has long been a cesspool of racist and misogynist posts and comments. The Star column pointed out that, in 2021, when Black legislators shared their experiences with racism, “Lucas decided he didn’t have to listen and walked out.”

The news media do a real disservice by labeling people like Banks and Lucas “conservative.” The party that used to be home for genuine conservatives had a platform; it offered policy ideas. You might agree or disagree with those ideas, but they fostered the kind of debate and negotiation that made legislation better. It is unfair to genuine conservatives (who today are largely “Never Trump” ex-Republicans) to call a collection of rightwing clowns, wack-a-doodles, and proto-fascists “conservative.”

Visit Trish Whitcomb’s website and send her some money. And while you’re at it, send some to Marc Carmichael.

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Then And Now

A week or so ago, my husband and I watched an American Experience episode titled “Nazi Town”–a PBS documentary about the extent of pro-fascist opinion in the United States in the run-up to World War II.

The documentary left me both saddened and (unexpectedly) hopeful.

I was saddened–to put it mildly– to learn of the enormous numbers of Americans who had embraced Nazi ideology. Until recently, I had assumed that the great majority of Americans actually believed in democratic government and the protection of civil liberties. I knew, of course, that a minority of my fellow-citizens harbored less comforting views, but I had no idea of the extent to which the American people endorsed truly horrific hatreds and were ready–indeed, eager–to hand the country over to a strongman who would relieve them of any responsibility for political decision-making.

In the 1930s, the nation had dozens and dozens of “Nazi camps,” where children were indoctrinated with White Nationalism. The German-American Bund enrolled hundreds of thousands of Americans who affirmed the notion that the country was created only for White Protestant Christians, and endorsed a “science” of eugenics confirming the superiority of the Aryan “race.” Racism and anti-Semitism were rampant; LGBTQ folks were so deep in the closet their existence was rarely recognized.

All in all, “Nazi Town” displayed–with scholarly documentation and lots of footage of huge crowds saluting both the American flag and the swastika –a very depressing reality.

But the context of all that ugliness also gave me hope–even in the face of the MAGA Trumpers who look so much like the Americans shown giving the “heil Hitler” salute.

I’m hopeful because we live in a society that is immensely different from that of the 20s and 30s.

During those years, the country experienced a Depression in which millions of Americans were jobless and desperate. America was also in the throes of Jim Crow, and most White and Black Americans effectively occupied separate worlds. Thousands of people–including public officials– wore white robes and marched with the KKK. Europe’s age-old, virulent anti-Semitism had not yet “matured” into the Holocaust, and Hitler’s invasion of Poland–and knowledge of what came after–were still in the future. Few Americans were educated beyond high school.

World War II and discovery of the Holocaust ultimately ended the flirtation with fascism for most Americans, and in the years following that war, the U.S., like the rest of the world, has experienced considerable and continuing technical, social and cultural change. As a result, the world we all inhabit is dramatically different from the world that facilitated the embrace of both fascism and communism. (In fact, it is the extent of those differences that so enrages the MAGA culture warriors.)

Today, despite the contemporary gulf between the rich and the rest, America overall is prosperous. Unemployment has hit an unprecedented low. Many more Americans are college educated. Despite the barriers that continue to face members of previously marginalized populations, people from different races and religions not only live and work together, they increasingly intermarry. Many, if not most, Americans have gay friends, and some seventy percent approve of same-sex marriage. Television, the Internet and international travel have introduced inhabitants of isolated and/or homogeneous communities to people unlike themselves.

Although there is a robust industry in Holocaust denial and other forms of racial and religious disinformation (I do not have a space laser), Americans have seen the end results of state-sponsored hatreds, and even most of those who harbor old stereotypes are reluctant to do actual harm to those they consider “other.”

The sad truth is that many more of my fellow Americans than I would have guessed are throwbacks to the millions who joined the KKK and the German-American Bund. The hopeful truth is that–even though there is a depressingly large number of them–they are in the minority, and their numbers are dwindling. ( It’s recognition of that fact, and America’s changing demography, that has made them so frantic and threatening.)

I firmly believe that real Americans reject the prejudices that led so many to embrace Nazi ideology in the 20s and 30s.

Today, most of us understand that real Americans aren’t those who share a preferred skin color or ethnicity or religion. Real Americans are those who share an allegiance to the American Idea–to the principles enumerated in the Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights.

In order to send that message to today’s fascists and neo-Nazis, we need to get real Americans to the polls in November.

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Disagreeing With David French

Yesterday, I promised to discuss an issue on which I strongly disagree with David French. Chevron is that issue.

Allow me to explain.

The Supreme Court is currently hearing a case that’s likely to overturn or eviscerate something called the Chevron Doctrine. That doctrine requires courts to “defer” to an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statutory delegation.

For example, Congress might direct the EPA to achieve a certain clean air result, but since few Congressmen have the technical background to tell the EPA just how to achieve that result, experts at the EPA must determine what regulations are needed to reach that goal. The Chevron doctrine requires the courts to “defer” to that agency’s expert determination unless the court finds it unreasonable.

French argues that overturning the doctrine would “rebalance” the division of authority between the branches of government. His argument centers on “democratic accountability” and the fact that Congress is broken.

Congress is not performing its constitutional tasks. It’s a broken institution that contains too few genuine lawmakers and far too many would-be activists and TV pundits. Time and again, it has proved incapable of compromise or of accomplishing even the most basic legislative tasks. It’s been 27 years since it even passed a budget on time. And that barely begins to capture the current level of dysfunction, with a razor-thin House Republican majority consistently held hostage by a mere handful of MAGA extremists.

As Congress has shirked its duties, presidents and the courts have filled the power vacuum. Presidents have used the power of their executive agencies to promulgate new regulations without congressional involvement. Executive agencies publish 3,000 to 4,500 new rules per year, and these regulations have a substantial impact on the American economy. Compounding the problem, courts have ratified that presidential power grab by enacting a series of judge-made rules that require federal courts to defer to the decisions of executive agencies.

The answer to “rebalancing” the power dynamic between Congress and the Executive branch is to fix Congress. It isn’t to require federal judges to substitute their judgments for those of experts on increasingly technical issues.

The current doctrine provides an adequate remedy for instances where agencies have overstepped or acted irresponsibly–“unreasonably.” Jettisoning the doctrine will truly open those storied “floodgates of litigation,” allowing monied business interests to tie up proposed regulations for years and hampering agency operations with overly intrusive reviews.

Chevron deference has served the country well. In his Substack letter, legal scholar Steven Vladick addressed French’s “democratic accountability” argument head on.

A common response to that objection is that a world without Chevron is a world in which those interpretive questions won’t be answered by Congress; they’ll be answered by even less democratically accountable federal judges—who are the real “victims” of Chevron deference. After all, if a statute is ambiguous, the real question Chevron asks is whether the agency or the reviewing court is better situated to resolve the ambiguity. To be sure, some of Chevron’s critics argue that this is a false dichotomy—that the real point is that Congress ought to be forced to be clear in all of its delegations to agencies.

There are somewhere north of 430 federal agencies; even if Congress devoted one calendar day each year to one agency, it wouldn’t get to all of them. Thus, the debate in the typical case is usually going to reduce to a choice between leaving the power to resolve the interpretive dispute to the agency’s reasonable discretion or to the courts. Whatever the pros and cons of the two sides in that debate, it’s clear that the case for the courts in that situation is not about increasing democratic accountability.

Vladick also points out that–with respect to democratic accountability– we vote for the President, who can directly control his subordinates. (Although he does’t mention it, no one votes for federal judges.)

French admits that agencies regulate complex businesses and industries, and that they “possess a level of expertise that’s clearly beyond the capabilities of Congress.” He objects to Chevron’s required deference because, in his opinion, it gives the Executive branch too much power.

It’s an abstract argument for a very non-abstract problem.

Let’s get real: A rule requiring judges to “defer” (not “buckle”) to agency decisions when those regulations pass a “reasonableness” test is absolutely necessary in a world where government agencies deal with increasingly complex, highly technical issues that judges simply lack the expertise to decide.

Experts may get things wrong, but I don’t want Aileen Cannon deciding how many parts of arsenic per million should be allowed in the nation’s waterways, or Matthew J. Kacsmaryk invalidating more FDA regulations.

In a war on knowledge, we’ll all suffer.

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A Speech Worth Revisiting

It’s probably a sign of just how suspicious I am these days of quotations on the Internet, but when I saw a post on Daily Kos that purported to be a lengthy portion of a speech by Ulysses Grant, I checked with two separate academic sites to confirm its accuracy.

It turned out it was accurate–and prescient.

Grant might have been commenting on our current national woes when he spoke in Des Moines in 1875.

I do not bring into this assemblage politics, certainly not partisan politics, but it is a fair subject for soldiers in their deliberations to consider what may be necessary to secure the prize for which they battled in a republic like ours. Where the citizen is sovereign and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign — the people — should possess intelligence.

The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.

Now in this centennial year of our national existence, I believe it a good time to begin the work of strengthening the foundation of the house commenced by our patriotic forefathers one hundred years ago, at Concord and Lexington. Let us all labor to add all needful guarantees for the more perfect security of free thought, free speech, and free press, pure morals, unfettered religious sentiments, and of equal rights and privileges to all men, irrespective of nationality, color, or religion.

Encourage free schools, and resolve that not one dollar of money appropriated to their support, no matter how raised, shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school. Resolve that the State or Nation, or both combined, shall furnish to every child growing up in the land, the means of acquiring a good common-school education, unmixed with sectarian, pagan, or atheistic tenets. Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate. With these safeguards, I believe the battles which created the Army of the Tennessee will not have been fought in vain.

Grant eloquently addressed what I have called “civic literacy”–the need of a “sovereign people” to be both patriotic and informed. As is clear from the context of his words, Grant’s definition of “patriotic” is very different from the jingoism displayed by today’s MAGA Republicans. True patriotism requires an allegiance to the principles of America’s Constitution and Bill of Rights, an allegiance based upon a proper understanding of those documents and the philosophy that animated them.

Grant was very clearly aware that such allegiance and understanding comes from instruction “unmixed with sectarian, pagan or atheistic tenets”–that such religious precepts must be left to the family, the church and private schools “supported entirely by private contributions.”

An eon ago–in 1980–I was a Republican candidate for Congress. I even won a Republican primary. Despite the fact that I was pro-choice and pro-gay rights, among other things, I was considered–and considered myself– to be a conservative. Then and now, I believe the proper understanding of that label includes a commitment to conserve the values that Grant enumerated in that long-ago speech.

I continue to believe that labeling today’s GOP “conservative” is a travesty that works to normalize what is a truly frightening and very unconservative approach to politics and American governance.

True conservatism requires a commitment to uphold the individual liberties protected by the Bill of Rights: freedom of speech and press, Separation of Church and State, freedom of conscience and personal autonomy, among others.

I don’t know the proper label for the MAGA fanatics who have taken over what was once my political party. Culture warriors? White Christian Nationalists? Fascists? Today’s GOP is probably a blend of all those, together with a heavy sprinkling of people who are too civically-illiterate to understand how very unconservative–and dangerous– their party has become.

Grant eloquently defended the extension of “equal rights and privileges to all men, irrespective of nationality, color, or religion.” Today’s Republicans would call him “woke,” and angrily reject him (along with Lincoln) as “anti-American.”

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A Message From GIMA

The Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance–abbreviated to GIMA–is a local organization of faith leaders from a wide variety of religious traditions. Those leaders have come together to collaborate on civic projects that serve the common good of greater Indianapolis–unlike the Christian Nationalists and other theocrats I so often criticize on this site, they are intent on making our city and state a fairer and more equitable place.

The organization is currently focusing on the city’s lack of affordable housing and the crisis in evictions, and it has produced a short video that focuses on–surprise!–the failure of the Indiana legislature to enact enforceable minimal protections for tenants whose landlords fail to provide even minimally-habitable properties, or refuse to make critically-needed repairs.(In all fairness, those abusive landlords represent a relatively small percentage of all landlords in the city, and are disproportionately out-of-state investors. But they cause a lot of misery.)

GIMA focused its efforts on this issue because of what it describes as the “current landscape” of the problem. Its website offers data that confirms the severity and extent of the barriers facing tenants who lack financial and legal means to hold those landlords accountable.

Housing instability, particularly evictions, is receiving its due attention in this critical moment because it’s nearing a full-blown crisis. According to Eviction Lab, Indianapolis is second only to New York in total evictions and Indiana is number one in statewide eviction filings since 2020. We recognize that there are several excellent non-profit organizations that provide direct services, as well as coalitions that amplify the voices and needs of those grappling with the impact of evictions and homelessness through advocacy. We also know that many congregations periodically collect food and clothing – and even temporarily house the homeless.

Those efforts are meaningful, but woefully inadequate to the scope of the problem.

Rather than offering my “take” on the issue, I encourage you to click through and watch the very short (just over 6 minutes) video.

And if you live in Indiana, call your State Senator and/or Representative and ask them to support SB 277–Senator Walker’s tenant repair fund bill.

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