No Equal Rights For You!

In case you consider the concerns addressed in the book I promoted yesterday to be exaggerated, allow me to offer the following evidence that that the GOP is indeed waging war on women–that the Republican Party is working overtime to ensure that we females remain decidedly second-class.

The “Grand Old Party” is focused on denying us bodily autonomy, and in case we missed getting the message, has recently reinforced the message by refusing to extend the deadline for passing the Equal Rights Amendment.

The ERA passed Congress in 1972, having been first proposed in 1923. Constitutional amendments, under U.S. law, must be ratified by three-quarters of all state legislatures, meaning 38 states.

In 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA, but it did so after the 1982 deadline to ratify the amendment had passed.

The Senate resolution would have removed the deadline so that the ERA could become the 28th Amendment. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Murkowski were the resolution’s lead co-sponsors.

Murkowski and Collins were the only Republicans to support the extension. The vote was 51 to 47 to invoke cloture on a motion to proceed, falling short of the 60 votes it it needed.

This would be a good time to reiterate my opposition to the filibuster as it is currently employed. In its current iteration, it bears little or no resemblance to the original rule.

A filibuster used to require a Senator to actually make a lengthy speech on the Senate floor–unlike today. In its current form, it operates to require government by super-majority, and it has become a weapon routinely employed by extremists to hold the country hostage.

The original idea of a filibuster was that so long as a senator kept talking, the bill in question couldn’t move forward. Once those opposed to the measure felt they had made their case, or at least exhausted their argument, they would leave the Senate floor and allow a vote. In 1917, when filibustering Senators threatened President Wilson’s ability to respond to a perceived military threat, the Senate adopted a mechanism called cloture, allowing a super-majority vote to end a filibuster, and in 1975, the Senate again changed the rules, making it much, much easier to hold the Senate hostage.

The new rules allowed other business to be conducted during the time a filibuster is (theoretically) taking place. Senators no longer are required to take to the Senate floor and publicly argue their case. This “virtual” use has increased dramatically as partisan polarization has worsened, and it has effectively abolished the principle of majority rule. It now takes sixty votes to pass any legislation, and has brought normal government operation to a standstill.

Operating together, gerrymandering, the Electoral College and the current iteration of the filibuster have allowed a minority party to exercise unwarranted power and throw sand in the levers of government.

In this case, a majority of Senators voted to assure the equal rights of America’s female citizens–but that majority vote was blocked by the members of what I have come to call the “anti” party–anti-woman, anti-Black/Brown, anti-Gay, anti-“woke.”

Anti-modernity.

I still remember long-ago arguments with what were then fellow Republicans about the necessity or advisability of the Equal Rights Amendment. Those who opposed its passage tended to rely on the language of the 14th Amendment, arguing that women could achieve legal equality under that language, and that a separate amendment was unnecessary.

In the wake of the Dobbs decision, which upended fifty years of 14th Amendment jurisprudence, that argument no longer passes the smell test.

Passage of the Equal Rights Amendment would establish gender equality as a fundamental constitutional right–something that, thanks to Justice Alito, we now know the Constitution doesn’t explicitly guarantee.

It would also bring the United States into compliance with international standards for human rights. (Granted, those standards are widely disregarded, but the United Nations has recognized gender equality as a fundamental human right.)

It took a hundred years for women to win the right to vote–and we have now fought (thus far, unsuccessfully) for an Equal Rights Amendment for exactly that long– it has been proposed and supported by feminists for nearly a century. (A representative of the National Women’s Party, Alice Paul, was the person who first introduced the Equal Rights Amendment to Congress in 1923.)

Currently, an overwhelming majority of Americans (81%) support passage of the amendment. The White Christian Nationalist cult that now controls the Republican Party disagrees.( Actually, it disagrees with pretty much anything promising equality for non-whites, non-Christians or non-males…)

Congress will not reflect the desires of the majority of Americans–and women will not have equal rights– until and unless we reform the systems that have turned our country into a failed democracy: gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and the current iteration of the filibuster.

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Shameless Promotion

Okay–I previously warned readers of this blog that yet another book was in process. This time, it’s a co-authored effort with Morton Marcus, who occasionally comments here. The book is titled: From Property to Partner: Women’s Progress and Political Resistance, and it’s available as either an e-book (6.50) or a paperback (15.00).

Bargains, I tell you……

Morton and I have been friends for 30+ years, and–while we don’t always agree–our disagreements tend to be both minor and civil, and both of us think women are people and equal rights are a good thing.

This is the 11th book I’ve written–and only the second with a co-author. Most have been published by academic and trade presses that did absolutely nothing to market them. (Granted, three or four of them were barely interesting to other academics, but there was no effort at marketing even those that I fondly believed merited a broader distribution.) Morton’s experience with publishing houses has been similar, so we’ve published this book on Amazon–keeping the price reasonable and access broadly available. Hint, hint.

This time, we’re marketing!

Our book–with individual chapters by each of us– considers the progress women have made over the last 100 or so years—from a status that essentially made females the “property” of their fathers or husbands, to today’s almost-equal legal parity with men. It outlines the bases upon which that progress rests, and the very real threat posed by the Rightwing culture warriors who see women’s progress as an existential threat to their continued patriarchal dominance.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the “Afterword,” to give you a taste of the contents:

We began this book as an exercise in social history. The decision in Dobbs was handed down a couple of months after we began researching the path women had taken—the path we’ve dubbed “from property to partner”—and it changed our focus for this effort. Dobbs was a frontal assault on human liberty. Yes, it was a “shot over the bow” of women’s right to self-determination, but it was much, much more. It represents a profoundly anti-liberty worldview that poses a danger to fundamental American constitutional values….

In order to look forward and to act with vigor, we need to understand the technologies and cultural changes that have empowered women over the past years. Now, women (and men of good will) must enlist the technological and cultural opportunities of our times to issue a call to arms. This effort, this manifesto if you will, is intended to assist in a marshaling of building blocks for the critically-necessary program to stem the tide of reaction, to regain what we have already lost, and to prevent the further erosion of women’s personal autonomy. It is the time for all of us to ask, “What else we are at risk of losing?”

So–here’s my shameless plea, and my “elevator speech.”

If you are a regular reader of this blog and feel that its contribution to the current national discourse is worthwhile–buy this book!

If–like Morton–you believe that data “tells the tale” and that an analysis of credible and accurate facts and figures confirms and documents both persistent problems and progress to date–buy this book!

If–like yours truly–you are deeply worried about the culture warriors’ efforts to return women to a subservient status, and interested in the religious and historical roots of their paternalistic backlash–buy this book!

If you want to feel better about the prospects for women’s continued emancipation –buy this book!

And if you do buy it, and after reading it decide that you like it–tell your friends!

We’ll really appreciate it!

I will now return this blog to its usual whining and ranting…..

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Think Tanks? Or Propaganda Mills?

For the past couple of years, I’ve had occasional exchanges of emails with a former government official who has gone by the name of Peter the Citizen, in order to protect his identity.I don’t know why he considered that necessary, but since his most recent transmittal–with his name– is available on the internet, I assume I can link to it.

It is worth noting that Peter is a self-described conservative who has worked on welfare issues for the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the White House under both President Reagan and President George H.W. Bush. He’s not a bleeding heart liberal; he is a policy person who takes evidence and honesty seriously.

Peter has shared his frustration with the ideologues who twist evidence in order to justify the punitive policies they favor. Most recently, he has shared inaccurate claims made by think tanks and Kevin McCarthy in support of imposing additional work requirements on the needy American beneficiaries of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid. He especially zeros in on misinformation currently being produced by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

In seventeen pages of text (followed by two pages of footnotes), Peter responds to what  AEI researchers present as summaries of the existing research on work requirements. One example:

AEI: “Higher labor-force participation translates to less poverty, and employment correlates to many other nonfinancial benefits, such as better physical and mental health. Encouraging work among benefit recipients gives them an opportunity to escape poverty and achieve upward mobility without depending on government assistance.”

Peter: To support the claim that “more work leads to less poverty,” Weidinger and Rachidi cite a recent study by Child Trends. This is hardly a surprising conclusion. The real question is, do work requirements lead to more work? Notably, Weidinger and Rachidi leave out the following statement from that same report:

We did see an increase in single mothers’ labor force participation in the 1990s. Yet, evidence from early-1990s welfare-to-work experiments and more recent research consistently indicate that, while work requirements can boost short-term employment and earnings, they do not have their intended effect of getting people into stable jobs that sustainably lift them out of poverty with their incomes. For example, previous research found that welfare reform accounted for only a small amount of the increase in single mothers’ employment rates in the mid-1990s….

In short, Weidinger and Rachidi celebrate a relatively small increase in employment (relative to the caseload decline), but ignore the fact that far more families are made worse off with detrimental consequences for children.

I chose the above example because it is one of the least technical (the paper’s language is nothing if not densely academic.)  Suffice it to say that all seventeen pages follow the same trajectory: the argument put forward by the AEI researchers is followed by analysis and data showing that AEI has cited to studies which have been refuted, or has omitted language limiting the applicability of  the portion they quote. In a couple of cases, AEI presents “facts” that aren’t: for example, the paper claims that the “pro-work TANF provisions in this proposal” are the same as those in the 2018 House Ways and Means legislation– the JOBS for Success Act.” Peter offers evidence showing that this assertion is factually inaccurate.

I am sharing this “in the weeds” effort by a Rightwing think-tank to justify reintroducing a policy that has proven to have substantial negative unintended consequences because –thanks to Kevin McCarthy and the mis-named “Freedom Caucus”– these proposals are part of the GOP’s debt ceiling legislation. Proponents argue that work requirements will grow the economy by helping more low-income adults enter the workforce and obtain higher earnings–addressing current labor shortages along the way.

There are two major problems with that argument for “reviving these proposals.”

One is that–as Peter points out– policymakers are not knowledgeable about work requirements or the evidence about their effectiveness. “Instead, they are swayed by the misinformation provided by conservative think tanks and other politicians who simply repeat uninformed talking points.”

The other, of course, is both more obvious and more infuriating: the debt ceiling fight is not an appropriate venue for any policy argument. Raising the debt ceiling allows the government to pay bills it has already incurred. Using a refusal to raise it as a weapon is despicable and deeply disturbing–a threat by blackmailers to upend the global economy if they don’t get their way.

One thing does come through loud and clear from reading that 17-page analysis; if sane Americans ever get control of our government, we really do need to strengthen and simplify our complicated and unwieldy social safety net.

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Intellectual Honesty

Today is primary Election Day in Indianapolis, so at some point this evening we will know the identities of the major party candidates for mayor of the city, and for City-County Council.

I’ve previously noted my concerns about the Republican campaign commercials urging more policing and less oversight as the remedy for (massively-exaggerated) urban crime, and as I was reviewing some files I’d kept, I came across an opinion piece from the New York Times that is particularly relevant to that approach.

The essay was by David French, who describes himself as a “conservative independent.” French left the Republican Party in 2016, “not because I abandoned my conservatism but rather because I applied it. A party helmed by Donald Trump no longer reflected either the character or the ideology of the conservatism I believed in, and when push came to shove, I was more conservative than I was Republican.”

The essay grappled with a question that has become much more salient in our highly partisan debates: Are instances of police misbehavior attributable to “bad apples”? Or do they signal deep and systemic problems with American policing?

French notes that our answers to that question reflect a massive partisan divide.

Every year Gallup releases a survey that measures public confidence in a variety of American institutions, including the police. In 2022, no institution (aside from the presidency) reflected a greater partisan trust gap than the police. A full 67 percent of Republicans expressed confidence in the police, versus only 28 percent of Democrats.

Why do Republicans and Democrats see the issue so differently?

The instant that a person or an institution becomes closely identified with one political “tribe,” members of that tribe become reflexively protective and are inclined to write off scandals as “isolated” or the work of “a few bad apples.”

Conversely, the instant an institution is perceived as part of an opposing political tribe, the opposite instinct kicks in: We’re far more likely to see each individual scandal as evidence of systemic malice or corruption, further proof that the other side is just as bad as we already believed….

There are good reasons for respecting and admiring police officers. A functioning police force is an indispensable element of civil society. Crime can deprive citizens of property, hope and even life. It is necessary to protect people from predation, and a lack of policing creates its own forms of injustice.

But our admiration has darker elements. It causes too many of us — again, particularly in my tribe — to reflexively question, for example, the testimony of our Black friends and neighbors who can tell very different stories about their encounters with police officers. Sometimes citizens don’t really care if other communities routinely experience no-knock raids and other manifestations of aggression as long as they consider their own communities to be safe.

French points out that whenever authority is combined with impunity, corruption and injustice will result. That’s as true of institutions on the Left as on the Right.

The police, after all, possess immense power in American streets, often wielded at the point of a gun. Yet the law systematically shields them from accountability. Collective bargaining agreements and state statutes provide police officers with greater protections from discipline than almost any other class of civil servant — despite the fact that the consequences of misconduct can be unimaginably worse. A judge-made doctrine called qualified immunity provides powerful protections against liability, even when officers violate citizens’ civil rights. Systemic police corruption and systemic abuse should not have been a surprise.

As French admits, he was surprised. He came late to the recognition that his reflexive defense of the “rotten apple” theory was wrong.

The lesson I’ve taken has been clear: Any time my tribe or my allies are under fire, before I yield to the temptation of a reflexive defense, I should apply my principles and carefully consider the most uncomfortable of thoughts: My opponents might be right, my allies might be wrong and justice may require that I change my mind. And it may, in all likelihood, require that I do this again and again.

This admirable example of intellectual honesty–the willingness to question one’s own assumptions and be guided by evidence rather than tribalism–is all too rare on both sides of the political divide. Good public policy–and good public officials–result from dispassionate analysis of evidence, not from a reflexive defense of our political “team.”

Here in Indianapolis, I guess we’ll see after the polls close whether pandering to what French calls the  “darker elements” of the Republican admiration for police pays off….

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How To Save A Country

“How to save a country” is a podcast hosted by Felicia Wong, President of the Roosevelt Institute and Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic. I highly recommend it.

A recent episode featured a talk with Dr. Lilliana Mason, an expert in political psychology and group psychology. The podcast was lengthy–and meaty–and revolved around Mason’s contention that Americans’ political “tribes” have become “mega-identities”  that now “encompass where we go to church, where we went to school, our values, and our prejudices.”

“Before the social sorting occurred, the status of our party was the only thing at risk in every election,” Dr. Mason says. “But now that we have all of these other important identities linked to the status of our party, every election feels like it’s also about the status of our religious group and our racial group, and our culture and where we live, and who we grew up with.”

The phenomenon Mason identifies rebuts an often-voiced progressive complaint that poorer Republicans “don’t vote their interests” “Interests,”—a complaint that assumes that interests are economic. That isn’t the case.  As Wong says, “We know that we don’t make decisions only based on our material interests or our material conditions.”

Mason agrees.

The classic understanding of what politics should be and how voters should participate in politics is that we assume that we are all rational actors, and by rational, we tend to mean we are economically rational. We are trying to maximize our own economic well-being or the economic well-being of the people around us or the people that matter to us. This is something that political scientists Chris Achen and Larry Bartels called the folk theory of democracy: this idealized version, mythological version of what we think Americans and citizens of any democracy should be. The reality is more complicated…

A “status defense” seems to be hardwired into most of us. Mason shared a fascinating experiment about our tribal/status instincts.

In the 1950s, researchers recruited a group of fifth grade boys in the Oklahoma City area and invited them to a summer camp. They were chosen to be as similar to each other as possible, not just in terms of race and religion, but also academic progress, social well-being and family situations.

They were separated into two camps: Rattlers and Eagles. When the groups were told about each other,

the boys immediately wanted to engage in competition with the other camp. They started calling the boys from the other camp bad names. Once they met them and started having competitions with them—not serious competitions, but baseball games or board games or whatever low-stakes games—they began to accuse people on the other team of sabotaging them, of cheating. They were consistently privileging their own team. Ultimately, these competitions became so intense that they had to stop the experiment early because they had started throwing rocks and engaging in fist fights and getting violent.

The main takeaway was that this type of animosity between these two very similar groups of kids was easily engineered. All that it took was for them to be separate from each other to form a bond with their own teammates and to form an identity with those teammates. In psychology, we call that their ‘in-group’. Just learning that there was an ‘out-group’ made them want to have conflict. They actually craved it.

Efforts to bridge our political differences must contend with this very basic human trait. And identity-based polarization is worse now than in the past.

We all have countless identities. We identify as different things depending on the situation or who we’re talking to or what is salient for us in that one moment… We always have these limitless numbers of identities. Some of them are more powerful than others. Our party identity can be quite powerful, especially during elections. Our racial identities are almost always quite powerful. Our religious identities are powerful. One of the things that we saw change over the last few decades is that the Democratic and Republican parties were basically racially and religiously relatively similar to each before the ’60s.

Over the last few decades, Americans have lost what political scientists call “cross-cutting cleavages.” People might  vote for different parties, but go to the same church, volunteer for the same nonprofit, have kids in the same school or  shop at the same grocery store. They would see each other not just as partisans but as basically similar humans. Now, we’ve sorted, and the Republican Party has become the party of white Christian rural people. Now, every election feels like (and arguably is) a contest about the status of our  identities–religious, racial, cultural, educational…

And we wonder why bipartisanship has become so hard…..

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