Public Policy and Governance – Page 289

California–Yes, California!– Shows Us That Government Can Function

Something very strange is wafting in from the Left Coast. I think it is called sanity.

Long derided as the “land of fruits and nuts” and the poster child for official disfunction, California has turned itself into a model for diminished partisanship and adult legislative behavior.

The state has turned a gigantic deficit into a surplus and renounced the toxic partisanship that had regularly led to budgetary gridlock–not to mention the recall of a governor not so many years ago. As the New York Times recently noted,

But in the past month, California has been the stage for a series of celebrations of unlikely legislative success — a parade of bill signings that offered a contrast between the shutdown in Washington and an acrimony-free California Legislature that enacted laws dealing with subjects including school financing, immigration, gun control and abortion.

The turnaround from just 10 years ago — striking in tone, productivity and, at least on fiscal issues, moderation — is certainly a lesson in the power of one-party rule. Democrats hold an overwhelming majority in the Assembly and Senate and the governor, Jerry Brown, is a Democrat. The Republican Party, which just three years ago held the governor’s seat and a feisty minority in both houses, has diminished to the point of near irrelevance.

Political scientists in the state credit several recent reforms for the turnaround–especially the abandonment of gerrymandering in favor of nonpartisan redistricting. As a result, Representatives are no longer beholden to rabid base voters in deep red or deep blue districts, and thus fearful of “getting primaried.”

Unlike candidates in carefully drawn partisan districts, Republicans running for office in California are no longer insulated from demographic shifts. That’s particularly important in states like California, where growing Latino and Asian populations tend to vote for progressives. One Republican quoted in the Times article acknowledged that the redistricting–along with changes to a nonpartisan primary system– were “freeing lawmakers from obedience to their party bases.”

Majority rule should reflect the will of real majorities. Gerrymandering has given minority factions a veto over majority preferences–it has enabled a sort of legislative “ju jitsu,” the results of which we have recently seen all too clearly.

Here in Indiana, we can choose to be Texas or we can choose to be California.

We should emulate California, but the signs aren’t auspicious.

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Ignorant? Or Venal?

Question of the day: are the Tea Party zealots venal? Or are they simply ignorant?

As the nation struggles to emerge from the latest unforced error by the Keystone Kop wannabes we inexplicably elected, I have one small request: let’s retire the loudmouths demanding ever more cuts to programs that don’t personally benefit them.

And yes, Marlin Stutzman, I’m looking at you.

Stutzman wants to cut food stamps that benefit poor children, but not the 200,000+ he gets each year in farm subsidies.

I guess we can categorize Stutzman as “venal”–or at least selfish and hypocritical. But what can we say about Idaho Tea Partier Tedd Collett, who ran for office demanding that government discontinue any and all involvement with medical care–and whose ten children are on Medicaid?

Shades of the idiot who attended a Town Hall a couple of years ago with the now-famous sign demanding that government “keep its hands off my Medicare!”

Okay, I suppose the two categories aren’t mutually exclusive.

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Winners and Losers and the Democratic Process

There’s a common saying among political geeks (of whom I am admittedly one): elections have consequences.

This is shorthand for the essential bargain of democratic systems. We The People agree not to wage war and/or insurrection, and instead to conduct contests at regular intervals, during which we try to convince a majority of those who will cast a vote to see things our way. Those contests–called elections–are supposed to be fair (we aren’t supposed to use trickery or intimidation to keep eligible citizens from the polls, for example), and when they are over and the votes are counted, the contenders are supposed to abide by the results.

Now, the losers don’t have to like the results. They don’t have to agree with the wisdom of the electorate. They can console each other by agreeing that the voters were stupid or venal or misled. But in our system–in any legitimate system–the losers’ recourse isn’t sabotage; it’s the next election.

Yesterday’s headlines made it glaringly clear that a substantial portion of the GOP, locally and nationally, is no longer willing to play by those rules.

In Indiana, voters elected Glenda Ritz by a very substantial margin–a margin exceeding that of Mike Pence, who was elected Governor. The Republicans (who hold all the other offices) aren’t happy that they lost this one. Fair enough. But they have proceeded to cheat, to use the offices to which they were elected to undermine the authority of the new Superintendent, and to strip the office of the powers it had when their guy occupied it. They weren’t–and aren’t–willing to work with her until the next election, when they can try to convince voters to elect their candidate. Instead, they are doing everything they can to thwart the will of a majority of Indiana voters and undermine the democratic process.

Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, we have a group of Representatives–a minority even within their own party–who don’t like a law that was duly passed in a prior legislative session. A majority of Representatives and Senators voted for that law, after many months of debate. It was signed by the President, and its constitutionality was upheld by the Supreme Court. The wisdom of that law was a central issue in the ensuing Presidential campaign–an election Obama won by more than five million votes, and an election in which a million more people voted for Congressional Democrats than for Congressional Republicans.

Poll after poll confirms that a majority of Americans either favors keeping the Affordable Care Act or wishes it had gone farther. But even if that weren’t the case–even if their hatred of this particular legislation wasn’t so irrational and disproportionate–that’s not the issue. In a constitutional republic, the Tea Party goons responsible for shutting down the government cannot justify circumventing democratic processes and holding the nation hostage.

I’m not a particular fan of Thomas Friedman, but his recent column was exactly right. This is a coup. It isn’t an attack on the Affordable Care Act. It is a frontal assault on the democratic process, on government legitimacy, and on the Constitution.

It’s a refusal to play by the rules, an effort to insure that–if they don’t like the outcome–elections won’t have consequences.

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Todd Rokita–Embarrassing Sentient Hoosiers Even More Than Mike Pence

Well, I see that Governor Pence just couldn’t help himself–despite the fact that he didn’t have to step into the controversy over the shutdown, despite the fact that anything he said about it was guaranteed to piss off one side or the other, he simply had to express his approval of an irresponsible and a-constitutional action that is damaging the American economy and hurting millions of innocent people.

Way to go, Mike.

For first class stupidity, though, you really have to turn to Representative Todd Rokita. And leave it to the Daily Show to expose how utterly clueless and embarrassing Tea Party Todd can be.

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Feeding the Wolves

One of the columns in yesterday’s New York Times referenced the old tale–variously attributed to Native Americans, village leaders of old or saintly religious folks– about the young woman who comes to a wise elder to ask what she should do about a recurring nightmare in which two wolves are ferociously fighting. She asks what it means, and is told that the wolves represent two sides of her own nature: the good and bad.

When she then asks which will win, the wise man tells her “The one you feed.”

This, in a nutshell, is why wise people refuse to negotiate with terrorists. Negotiation and compromise are important in many areas of life: between spouses, in legislative chambers, even at times between parents and children. But like all tools, it is important to know when–and when not–to deploy them.

The Tea Party radicals currently holding the nation hostage to their demands are terrorists. Unable to marshal the votes to defeat the Affordable Care Act , unable to defeat a President who ran on a record that prominently featured that Act, they have resorted to the sort of blackmail characteristic of terrorists: give us what we want or I’ll kill or maim the hostage.

The American economy is the hostage.

Even people who are adamantly opposed to the ACA should condemn these tactics, for the same reason that kids on a playground should refuse to give in to the bully who says “Play by my rules or I’ll take my ball and bat and go home.” It’s the same reason we don’t negotiate with rogue states that capture and hold innocent civilians hostage. Giving in to their demands encourages the behavior we deplore. It sets a dangerous precedent for the future–a future in which spoiled brat minorities who don’t get their way through legitimate means can circumvent democratic processes and actually be rewarded for the damage they cause.

Ironically, if these tactics work for Tea Party fanatics today, you can be sure they’ll be deployed by folks with very different agendas tomorrow. As a friend of mine likes to say, poison gas is a great weapon– until the wind shifts.

Giving in to these tactics feeds the wrong wolf.

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