Reading the news lately, I was reminded of the old rhyme for brides: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”
Something old? This morning’s Star had a story about the nearly three million dollars in fees being paid by the Ballard Administration for services in connection with the ill-conceived fifty year lease of Indianapolis parking meters. This may have been a bad deal for the city, but law firms and mortgage bankers did quite well. I believe this gets filed under “blessed are the deal makers, for they shall inherit the goodies” or perhaps the even older “he who has, gets.”
Something new? I vote for the absolute brazenness with which the current Indiana legislature has favored the haves over the have-nots. Although people who can afford to make contributions and pay lobbyists have always had an edge, this year the majority has been absolutely shameless. The rhetoric has been about “shared sacrifice” at a time when money is tight. So they reduced corporate tax rates and made up the difference by requiring “shared sacrifices” from the most vulnerable: eliminating dental coverage for most Medicaid recipients, cutting the number of children who will be eligible for CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (despite the fact that 75% of that money comes from the federal government), increasing co-pays for infants and toddlers with developmental disabilities, and depriving poor women of desperately-needed healthcare by de-funding Planned Parenthood.
Something borrowed? Citizens Action Coalition issued a news release yesterday about legislative approval of higher profits for utilities, allowing shareholders of those utilities to “borrow” from the school corporations and municipalities–and ultimately the taxpayers–that will have to pay higher rates. That’s small change next to the smoke and mirrors that accompanied the Ballard Administration’s deal to sell the water company to Citizens. The deal allowed the administration to get a big up-front payment it could use to pave streets and make infrastructure improvements. That “saved” tax dollars, which will have to be “borrowed” from rate-payers later.
I began blogging regularly when I stopped writing for the Indianapolis Star, but for the same reason–I want to be part of the discussion around policy issues facing the city, state and country. So while I am deeply appreciative of requests to reprint something I’ve posted, those requests are unnecessary–I’m delighted if you want to disseminate something I’ve written.
In fact, I hope readers will re-post, tweet, send to your crazy uncle–whatever. It absolutely validates the effort, and it makes me feel useful!
After the Republicans in the Statehouse passed House Bill 1242, changing the election law in order to avoid the consequences of having run an ineligible candidate, my husband shook his head. “It’s enough to make you ashamed of ever having been a Republican.” This from a man who worked for the GOP for over fifty years–working on campaigns, working at the polls, driving people to vote, and serving in a Republican administration.
We have both bemoaned the radicalization of the party we used to call ours: the mean-spiritedness, the shortsighted focus on tax caps at the expense of public goods, the homophobia and the thinly veiled racism that emerged in the wake of Obama’s election. But HB 1242 is nothing less than an attack on the rule of law.
John Adams famously said that our constitution established the rule of law, not the rule of men. The Founders gave us limited government. That didn’t mean that the size of government was to be limited, as many seem to think. It meant that the same rules have to apply to everyone, that there are limits to the ways in which official power can be used.
Scholars identify eight elements of the rule of law:
Laws are necessary, and must apply to all–including government officials.
Laws must be published.
Laws must be prospective in nature so that the effect of the law may only take place after the law has passed.
Laws must be reasonably clear and specific, in order to avoid arbitrary enforcement.
Laws must avoid contradictions.
Laws cannot require people to do impossible things.
Law must stay sufficiently constant through time to allow rules to be understood; at the same time, the legal system should allow for timely revisions when the reasons for the law have changed.
Official action should be consistent with the declared rule.
Our sense of fundamental fairness is offended if someone is punished for violating a rule that was passed only after he acted. We would be outraged if a person who violated an existing law managed to get it changed so that he escaped punishment. We might not be able to point to the precise element of the rule of law that had been violated in such cases, but we’d know instinctively that it was wrong.
If the legislature ultimately decides that current laws governing electoral vacancies should be changed, fine. Those new rules can be applied prospectively, to future cases. Changing the rules when they fail to favor you, so as to escape the consequences of your own misbehavior, isn’t just unfair. It isn’t just contrary to the rule of law.
The more we see of Paul Ryan’s “innovative” budget proposal, the more mean-spirited it gets.
Take Food Stamps–another target for “savings.” According to Meteor Blades over at Daily Kos, Ryan would change food stamp dollars to block grants, which would be funded at only 80 percent of the current level of spending. “That means cuts of $127 billion between now and 2021. To achieve that would require dropping millions of low-income Americans from SNAP rolls or cutting their benefits or some combination of both. Ryan doesn’t specify. This “reform”—astonishing what gets that label these days—would also impose new restrictions on recipients, including time limits on how long they would be eligible to receive food stamps.”
We are just beginning to emerge from the most significant economic downturn since the Great Depression. Thousands and thousands of hardworking, taxpaying Americans lost jobs and home, and a significant number of people who had always been self-sustaining found themselves on food stamps. Their needs, however, cannot compete with the need to protect the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% of earners.
Ryan’s defenders will claim that these historically low tax rates will generate investment and translate into jobs. The evidence against that is overwhelming and compelling.
This is really an effort to dismantle the remnants of our already dangerously frayed social safety net–by self-proclaimed “Christians” who have no understanding of their own religion’s teachings, and no empathy for anyone who doesn’t look just like them. And it is unforgivable.
Or we could just call this post “the arrogance of power.”
I used to argue with friends who deliberately voted for divided government. It didn’t seem logical to install a system where little would get done–where agendas could easily be blocked. A vote for divided government was a vote for gridlock rather than action.
Gridlock has never looked so alluring.
For the first time in several years, the Republicans hold all the power in Indiana–they have a majority of the House and the Senate, and they have the Governor’s office. And they are using their unconstrained power with a vengeance. There’s been the stuff we all expected: we’ve seen the redistricting maps, for example, and as we all know, had the Democrats held all the power, the maps would have been no less politically motivated. But they haven’t stopped there, and some of the shenanigans have been truly outrageous (a word I try to use sparingly).
Two examples just from yesterday: Rep. Scott Schneider–one of the many “culture warriors” who dominate today’s GOP–inserted a budget amendment to completely de-fund Planned Parenthood. In pertinent part, the measure reads “For any contract with or grant made to an entity that performs abortions or maintains or operates a facility where abortions are performed covered under subsection (b), the budget agency shall make a determination that funds are not available, and the contract or grant shall be terminated under section 5 of this chapter.” It passed, with only two Republicans having the guts to vote against it (and several gutless Democrats voting for it.)
Clearly, for the zealots, the health of women who depend upon Planned Parenthood for pap smears, cancer screenings and birth control is far less important than imposing their religious beliefs on the rest of us, and inserting themselves into the most intimate decisions families have to make. What is even more despicable is that, for many of the Representatives who voted with the zealots, women’s health is less important than political pandering.
The assault on women’s health and rights has been part of the GOP agenda for quite a while. It is one of the reasons for the gender gap. But the second example of arrogance was not ideological. It was pure self-serving politics.
As anyone who has been following the news knows, Secretary of State Charley White has been indicted on several counts, including voter fraud. Since the Secretary of State is in charge of elections and voting integrity for the state, this is a bit awkward, to put it mildly. A Marion County Judge has instructed the Election Board to determine whether White was eligible to run for that office. Under current law, if the Board finds that he wasn’t eligible, the candidate with the next highest vote total would be declared the winner. That would be Democrat Vop Osili. Not only would the GOP lose that office, but not having run a qualified candidate for Secretary of State, they would not be deemed to have received ten percent of the vote for that office–a requirement for major party status. They would have to conduct a petition drive to regain ballot access.
But not to worry! If the law disadvantages the majority, the majority will just change the law! And so they did. (Didn’t you always tell your children to play by the rules–but to change the rules so that they’d always win?? Of course you did.)
The GOP majority changed the law to provide that the Governor would appoint someone to fill the vacancy, and to avoid the pesky consequences of having run a felon for high office. Problem solved.
It’s interesting how the self-appointed guardians of our morality see nothing wrong with immoral behaviors that benefit them. In his speech urging passage of the bill to defund Planned Parenthood, Rep. Schneider insisted that the organization was focused mainly on abortion–a statement he had to know was false. He insisted poor women could easily get health services elsewhere (as Stephen Colbert deadpanned a few nights ago, surely Walgreen’s does pap smears!) In other words, he lied in order to advance his own peculiar version of morality. In the case of Charley White, the party of righteousness, the party that insists on law and order, evidently believes that the rules are just for the “little folks” and Democrats.
It’s often said we get the government we deserve. If that’s true, we the people have been very, very bad.
