Fifty-One Percent

In a recent New York Times column, Gail Collins observed “the thing that makes our current politics particularly awful isn’t procedural. It’s that the Republican Party has become over-the-top extreme.”

She left out “mean-spirited and patriarchal.”

I was an active Republican for 35 years, but the party I belonged to no longer exists. There is no more striking evidence of that fact than the poisonous brew of policies that have been collectively dubbed the “war on women.”

The party I belonged to made at least some room for good-faith disagreements about abortion. Today’s GOP not only uses opposition to reproductive rights as an absolute litmus test, it proposes to deny thousands of poor women access to basic health services provided by Planned Parenthood, because that organization spends 3% of its own money on abortions.

Sorry you’re dying of breast cancer, sister, but hey—we’re “pro-life.”

Recently, the extremists have ventured well beyond attacks on reproductive choice. The recent fight over access to contraception was a wake-up call. The fact that Rick Santorum has been taken seriously as a Presidential candidate by a major political party, despite criticizing both birth control and women who work outside the home, is simply chilling.

It’s not just the unremitting attack on women’s right to control our own bodies.  A larger message is that women and children (at least those no longer in utero) are simply unimportant.

In Washington, the GOP defends subsidies for big oil while it proposes deep cuts to social programs that primarily serve women and children.

Speaking of sending a message: in several states, Republicans have championed deeply offensive bills requiring women to submit to demeaning trans-vaginal ultrasounds before terminating a pregnancy, and they have proposed “personhood” amendments that would redefine most widely used birth control methods as abortion, and outlaw their use.

These and literally hundreds of other efforts—silly and serious—convey a breathtaking condescension to those who comprise 51% of the voting population. That condescension was perfectly captured by Rush Limbaugh—he of the “if you want birth control you’re a slut” rant—when he dismissed the idea of a war on women by protesting that Republican men simply want to “protect” us.

When I first went to law school in 1971, I encountered this sort of patronizing, belittling attitude everywhere. But I have news for today’s smug lawmakers: women are no longer willing to smile sweetly and seethe internally.

Pundits talk a lot about the gender gap. It is going to grow.

Here in Indiana, a group of Democratic women did some electoral research, and discovered that over 400,000 Hoosier women who had voted in the 2008 Democratic primary failed to vote in 2010. Had they done so, a number of results would have changed.

There is always a fall-off in voting in non-Presidential years, and a significant number of those women will probably return to the polls in 2012, but this group isn’t taking that for granted. They have formed a “51% Club,” with the express purpose of making sure women vote in May and November. The 51% Club held its first event last week.

I go to lots of fundraisers, but I have rarely been to one as well attended as this one. There are a lot of angry women—and men—right now.

Gail Collins was right. “You can try to fix that [GOP extremism] by working from within to groom a more sensible pack of future candidates, or from without by voting against the Republicans’ nominees until they agree to shape up.”

Those are the choices. A lot of us have made ours.

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Speaking of Gushers….

American taxpayers subsidize the giant oil companies to the tune of 4 billion dollars a year.

The American tax code contains a variety of provisions that make oil production one of the most heavily subsidized businesses in the country, with tax breaks available at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process.

According to the most recent study by the Congressional Budget Office, released in 2005, returns on capital investments like oil field leases and drilling equipment are taxed at an effective rate of 9 percent, significantly lower than the overall rate of 25 percent for businesses in general and lower than virtually any other industry.

For many of the smaller oil companies, the tax on capital investment returns is so low that it is more than eliminated by various deductions and credits. Incredible as it may seem, some companies’ returns on investment are higher after taxes than before.

In fact, oil profits are gushing. According to the organization Public Citizen, from the time George Bush became President in 2001 through the first quarter of 2007, the top five oil companies in the United States recorded profits of $464 billion. By 2011, those numbers were beginning to look like small change: in the second quarter of 2011 alone, the big five oil companies made 36 billion in profit.

That’s profit, not total revenues.

Meanwhile, you and I–together with other American taxpayers–continue to provide the industry with subsidies that have been estimated at between 4 and 8 billion dollars a year.

The various tax breaks enjoyed by big oil probably made sense when the industry was in its infancy. They make no sense at all when the industry is not just profitable, but obscenely so. Nevertheless, a move to eliminate those subsidies failed yesterday in the Senate, despite strong support from President Obama. While the proposal received support from a majority of the Senate, it failed to garner the filibuster-proof 60 votes that are required in order to get anything done in this era of Republican intransigence.

I suppose there is something admirable in the GOP’s loyalty to the 1%–those George W. Bush once called “his base.”   They refuse to tax the rich (and by “tax,” I mean raising the top marginal tax rate by 3% to the still historically low levels of the Clinton administration). They refuse to eliminate or reduce subsidies for obscenely profitable oil companies–indeed, Paul Ryan’s budget proposal would visit a world of hurt on people who depend on Medicaid, Medicare or other social programs, but it reportedly increases subsidies to big oil.

So much for the GOP’s purported concern about deficits.

From a fiscal policy perspective, these positions are simply unfathomable. And it is really difficult to believe they are politically palatable. Maybe the theory is that if they raise enough of a fuss about transvaginal probes and contraception, no one will notice.

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Audacious in Chicago

This morning’s New York Times reports that Rahm Emmanuel will announce a 7.1 billion-with-a-b infrastructure improvement plan for Chicago. Improvements will be made to everything from the water system to the airport, from public transportation to parks. The improvements will be financed primarily through a public-private investment trust, details of which Mayor Emmanuel is supposed to announce later today.

I found this paragraph particularly interesting:

Some public-private partnership projects have been criticized as giveaways to the private businesses that take them over — including two prominent cases in Chicago itself, the privatized Chicago Skyway and the city’s parking meter system, which obligate the city to leases that span generations. Mr. Emanuel says that the city has learned an important lesson, and that “I am not leasing anything,” or selling off the city’s assets, he said in an interview. “I’m using private capital to improve a public entity that stays public.”

Great cities are places people want to live. As former Mayor Hudnut repeatedly reminded us, livable cities are first and foremost “cities that work.”

Most of us don’t want to live in housing that is unkempt and run-down, but we also understand that we aren’t improving our situation if we sell the stove to pay for new carpet.

In order to build a great city–especially in these days of fiscal hurt–its leaders need vision, and the audacity to insist that investment in the public square is both necessary and important. The audacity to refuse to sell off public goods to private profiteers.

The audacity to defend and maintain great urban spaces for the generations of citizens who will enjoy them.

Why Voting for the Man, Not the Party, Doesn’t Work

A few years ago, after choosing between two particularly uninspiring candidates on election day, I told my husband that I would no longer vote for the lesser of two evils. Instead, I would vote for the candidate who was pandering to the least dangerous constituency.

It sounds snarky, but I would argue that it isn’t a bad rule to follow.

Take Mitt Romney, the likely GOP Presidential nominee. My guess is that beneath that wooden exterior, he’s probably a capable enough manager–and not nearly as asinine as he sounds on the campaign trail. The problem is, if he were to be elected, he would still be beholden to the Tea Party crazies and Good Ole Boy racists he is frantically trying to woo during the primaries. Etch-A-Sketch or no, the systemic realities of our political system would operate to prevent moderation or compromise or evidence-based decision-making.

Here in Indiana, we have two major-party candidates for Governor, both of whom are well to the right of center. Pence, of course, is entirely a creature of the extremist Christian Right–if he’s ever had a truly independent idea, he’s hidden it well. Gregg is a conservative Democrat from Southern Indiana. If Pence wins, he won’t skip a beat: his policies will be tailored to his base, which is fundamentalist Christian, exploitative capitalist, and allergic-to-taxes Tea Party. If Gregg wins, however, he will have to moderate his positions in order to satisfy the Democratic base, which is far more diverse and progressive than he is. (As my youngest son likes to say, your vote for Governor will depend upon whether you want to return to the 1960s or the 1690s.)

Of course, if Rupert the Libertarian wins, all bets are off.

Candidates are captured by their political parties in a number of ways; they are not unembedded political actors no matter how much they’d like us to think they are. In some ways, that’s comforting; we rarely know what we need to know about the candidates themselves, so there is some logic in casting your vote for the person who belongs to the party with the philosophy closest to your own. Party affiliation is one among many “markers” that allow us to shortcut the decision-making process.

On the other hand, when one party goes “off the rails”–when the only people who can get nominated are those prepared to grovel to the basest of the base–average voters are deprived of the benefit of sound policy debates between serious candidates.

When elections devolve into battles between the bumper stickers, when candidates endlessly parrot  focus-group tested pieties, it isn’t possible to vote for the “best candidate.” It isn’t even possible to figure out who that is.

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Sausage-Making at Work

There’s an old saying that the two things you should never watch are sausage-making and law-making. Good as that advice is, it can be very enlightening (if somewhat nauseating) to be present as the democratic process unfolds.

Yesterday, I accompanied the President of Indiana Equality to South Bend, where the Common Council was to deliberate (for the third time) on a proposal to amend that city’s Human Rights Ordinance. The existing Ordinance allowed the Human Rights Commission to mediate complaints of discrimination in employment, public accommodations and housing based upon race, gender, national origin and religion; the proposal being debated was to add sexual orientation and gender identity to that list.

I was there to offer “expert” testimony–my status as an expert by virtue of an imposing title and the fact that I live more than 50 miles away. Opponents insisted that the city had no legal authority to enact the changes, and that the Ordinance was so poorly drafted that enforcement would be impossible. Since the language was identical to that in the Indianapolis Ordinance–which has been in effect for seven years without challenge or problem–that wasn’t exactly a winning argument.

The most audacious claim made by those who opposed the new language, however, was that the standard religious exemption–specifying that the provision would not apply to churches and religious institutions–was inadequate because it would not protect “religiously motivated” discrimination. This is similar to other arguments we’ve been hearing lately: that allowing female employees access to contraception violates the religious liberty of Catholic employers, or that anti-bullying legislation infringes the “free speech” rights of the bullies. The argument is apparently that I should be able to pick on gay people—or black people, or women, or Jews–if my motivation is religious. This is an argument one occasionally hears from those who still believe that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a violation of their individual rights.

There were two hearings: a committee meeting that began at 4:00 pm and the Council meeting, which began at 7:00–and lasted until 1:00 a.m. (And you wondered why there was no blog post this morning!) The hearings were Democracy In Action. (Please note capitals!)

I’ve been to similar debates before, and I fully expected that the conservative churches would bus in lots of their parishioners in order to dominate, if not fill, the chamber. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the “good guys”–wearing big blue paper buttons provided by Indiana Equality–vastly outnumbered the folks wearing red stickers emblazoned with “No Special Rights.”

I was also impressed with the testimony of the very long line of supporters–beginning with the young Mayor, Pete Buttigieg, who began the public testimony portion of the hearing with a brief but powerful speech about the importance of being an inclusive community and doing what is fair and right.

There was a tall, elderly African-American woman who identified herself as a grandmother, and told the councilors they needed to “do what’s right.” There was a representative of the AFL-CIO, who delivered an impassioned plea for inclusion and equality. A young service-member back from two tours in Afghanistan looked straight at the members of the council and said,  “I’m sitting in the front row, right there.” (He pointed to his seat.) “If you vote tonight to tell me that I am not entitled to the same rights I fought to protect for all Americans, then I want you to come look me in the face and tell me why.” There were several ordained ministers, and a bible scholar from Notre Dame, all contesting the notion that being “Christian” meant opposing equality for GLBT citizens.

Those who testified were young and old, black and white, gay and straight. (A surprisingly large number, in fact, were straight.)

The response by opponents was predictable–and much as they tried to argue on legal and policy grounds, the inevitable ugliness soon emerged to discredit them. It was the parade of the “usual subjects”–this is a “Christian Nation,” sexual orientation is a choice, same-sex relationships are “disordered” and “immoral,” protecting GLBT people from discrimination will increase the incidence of AIDS. A nurse graphically described  medical problems she attributed to anal sex (the “ick” factor). Several people asserted that the measure would “promote” homosexuality and the dreaded “gay agenda.”

And I’ve never heard so much talk about who will use which restrooms.

Virtually all of the testimony from opponents was based upon religion: the grandmother who assured the council that a “yea” vote would be a vote against the will of God (she evidently talked to him recently…), the used car salesman/pastor (I am not making that up!) who quoted selected bible verses, and the concluding litany by the self-described “Good man of God” who threw the kitchen sink at the issue: gays cause disease, sin and early death, and they need to repent. Reparative therapy works. It’s a choice. And repeatedly, that prohibiting him from firing gay people, telling him he couldn’t refuse to rent an apartment to a gay person, would deprive him of his constitutional right to  religious liberty.

The council voted 6-3 to amend the Ordinance. I’m not sure who was more persuasive–those of us who supported the measure, or the homophobes who demonstrated why it was necessary.

Democracy worked.

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