Pushed Too Far

Remember the old comic book ad in which a bully kicks sand in the face of a skinny guy, and the skinny kid takes a Charles Atlas course, muscles up, and comes back to flatten his tormenter?

I think Harry Reid took that course!

Yesterday, Reid invoked the “nuclear option,” changing the Senate’s rules in order to permit most Presidential nominees to be approved by a simple majority.

If you are old enough, you may remember when such majority rule was the rule. The filibuster–a procedural mechanism devised by the Senate itself and found nowhere in the Constitution–was until recently employed only rarely, and usually by a Senator who actually filibustered, a Senator who talked until he could no longer hold out. During the George W. Bush administration, Democrats used it more frequently, but it was only with the election of Barack Obama that things got seriously out of hand.

As media reports have confirmed, early in the Obama Administration, Congressional Republicans decided to block any and all measures coming from the White House. The merits of the proposals, the bona fides of nominees, the desires of the electorate–none of those things would matter. And they would no longer bother to actually filibuster–they’d just say “we’re filibustering, so you need sixty votes” to pass this bill or confirm this nominee.

There’s a Yiddish word for that: chutzpah. 

The GOP’s goal was simple: deny this President any victory, no matter how small, no matter how good for the country, no matter if the proposal had originally been their own.

Case in point: Lawyers and judges have pleaded with lawmakers to fill the mounting  and unprecedented vacancies that have slowed justice to a crawl and brought business to a halt in many of the nation’s federal courts. Legal organizations and the ABA have sounded the alarm. No matter. Senate Republicans have kept focused on their primary mission: say No to this President.

They finally pushed the Democrats too far.

Reid’s reluctance to “go nuclear” has been clear for some time. But it  finally became obvious even to him that the alternative was another three years of stalemate, another three years of national drift, of getting virtually nothing done.

The Constitution requires a simple majority vote to pass bills and confirm most nominees. Except in a few specific instances, it does not require a super-majority. And yet, for the past five years, the GOP’s constant abuse of the filibuster has effectively required a super-majority for even the most mundane and previously uncontroversial actions.

The Party of No has used the filibuster to throw sand in the gears of the Senate–as a way to refuse to do the people’s business so long as Obama occupies the White House. Senate Republican leadership made a calculation: they would stand united to ensure the failure of the hated (black/Kenyan/Muslim) Obama, and the Democrats wouldn’t have the balls to go nuclear.

It was a reasonable bet, but it turned out to be wrong.

The skinny weakling grew a pair.

 

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We’re Exceptional, All Right

Nicholas Kristof recently reported on the consequences of a Texas drug sweep. He began by asking readers to pretend that they’re the judge:

She’s a 32-year-old mom with a 9-year-old daughter and no prior arrests, but she has been caught up in a drug sweep that has led to 105 arrests in her Texas town. Everyone arrested is black.

There are no drugs found on Jones, but her supposed co-conspirators testify against her in exchange for reduced sentences. The whole case is dubious, but she has been convicted. What’s your sentence?

You have little choice. Given the presumptions of the case, she gets a mandatory minimum sentence of life without the possibility of parole. Jump to today and already Jones has spent 14 years in prison and is expected to die behind bars — for a first offense.

This isn’t, unfortunately, an anomaly. America currently has 3,278 people serving life sentences for nonviolent drug and property crimes. In twenty percent of those cases, it was the person’s first offense.

Welcome to mandatory minimum sentencing.

Welcome to laws that don’t allow judges to judge, to calibrate sentences to the specifics of the case before them. Laws that give frustrated jurists no choice but to impose draconian penalties no matter how outrageously disproportionate or unjust they believe those penalties to be.

Welcome to “getting tough on crime” — and of course, welcome to the War on Drugs.

We’re talking about crimes like possession of a crack pipe. Or acting as a go-between in a drug sale. Or trying to cash a stolen check, or shoplifting. Or sharing LSD at a Grateful Dead concert. The estimated cost of imprisoning these 3,278 people for life–rather than for a more reasonable period, one more proportionate to the crime–is calculated to be 1.78 billion dollars.

Sequester that, Boehner!

As the warden of the Louisiana State Penitentiary said, “I need to keep predators in these big old prisons, not dying old men.”

This is flat-out insane. It is wasteful of lives and money, and appallingly inhumane. If we read about similar practices in another country, we’d condemn that system (and smugly congratulate ourselves for our own moral superiority).

We’re exceptional, all right. And evidently incapable of shame.

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Public Duties, Private Rights

It’s a bitch having to share the country with other people. Especially when so many of them are so wrong about everything.

A friend of mine just sent me the most recent tantrum (excuse me, newsletter) from the Indiana Family Institute’s Micah Clark, and that’s pretty much the message. According to Micah, those of us who don’t share his belief that “kids do best with a mom and dad”–that is, those of us who oppose a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and civil unions –are thereby labeling people like him “bigots.”

I realize that needs a bit of deconstructing. Or, perhaps, psychiatry.

Here’s what Micah and his fellow “victims” don’t get: we live in a society with a lot of other people, many of whom have political opinions, backgrounds, holy books, and perspectives that differ significantly from our own. The only way to govern such a society–the only “social contract” that allows us to coexist in reasonable harmony–is by respecting those differences to the greatest extent possible. That requires treating everyone equally within the public/civic sphere, while respecting the right of individuals to embrace different values and pursue different ends in their private lives.

I know this is hard for you to understand, Micah, but a refusal to make everyone live by your particular interpretation of your particular holy book is not an attack on you; it is recognition that we live in a diverse society where other people have the same rights to respect and moral autonomy that you claim for yourself.  Ironically, a legal system that refuses to take sides in your religious war is also the only system that can safeguard your own religious liberty. I know you don’t want to believe it, but most Americans really don’t share your religious certainty and belief in your own moral superiority. If your right to live in accordance with that certainty had to be put to majority vote, you might find your own “lifestyle” legally marginalized.

As I’ve noted previously, poison gas is a great weapon until the wind shifts.

As to your accusation that those of us who support marriage equality are calling you a bigot–well, here’s the dictionary definition of the term: “a person who hates or refuses to accept the members of a particular group.”

If the shoe fits…..

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Our Own Desert Island

Later today–between I:00 and 2:00 pm– there will be a rally at the Indiana Statehouse on behalf of the nearly 400,000 Hoosiers who find themselves marooned on Indiana–the island of the uninsured.

States surrounding us, Republican and Democrat, have opted to take advantage of the new federal incentives and expand Medicaid. Not Indiana. Our Governor has decided that political posturing trumps the health needs of Indiana citizens who work in retail, education, home health, child care and other low-wage jobs without benefits. These are the people who are caught in the middle, who are too poor to use the new exchanges but  too “rich” to qualify for Indiana’s existing medical programs.

It’s pretty obvious that refusing to expand Medicaid effectively screws over these  400,000 Hoosiers. What is less obvious–and even more maddening–is how that refusal screws over the rest of us.

  • If a state expands its Medicaid coverage, the federal government will pay 100% of the costs for the first three years and 90% thereafter. Indiana is forgoing approximately twenty-six billion dollars between now and 2020–dollars that would create an estimated 30,000 sorely needed new jobs in our state.
  • The American Academy of Actuaries says that private insurance costs will rise in non-expansion states like Indiana. Local media has reported that Hoosiers are already seeing rates higher than the rates in states that surround our “island.”
  • The federal money we are turning down would offset expenses for indigent care and prison health care that are currently being covered by Indiana taxpayers.

Medicaid expansion would save money while saving lives and improving the health of our citizens. It would provide access to preventative care to those who are currently uninsured, reducing the tab for healthcare costs overall, including those that we taxpayers are now paying.

I know you’ll all be shocked to discover that Indiana currently ranks near the bottom of all states for most health indicators. In a sane world, we would jump at the opportunity to improve Indiana’s health and its economy.

Governor Pence’s refusal to expand Medicaid has already forced significant layoffs by Indiana hospitals, which have argued forcefully–but thus far unsuccessfully–for expansion. Other states with Republican governors have done the math and decided that the good of their citizens should trump their hatred of the President.

This should be a no-brainer.

I’ll forego the obvious pun.

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Good Stuff!

I frequently think of that old Tom Lehrer lyric: “Remember why the good Lord made your eyes. So don’t shade your eyes–plagiarize! But always call it research.”

In that spirit…Don Knebel is a local attorney who blogs for the Center for Civic Literacy, and his most recent submission is so good, I have to call it “research,” and share it. (By the way, those of you who read this blog should check out CCL’s….we have a number of thought-provoking bloggers contributing to the conversation there.)

Don takes a look at the most recent in a long line of public prayer cases, and hazards a prediction or two:

On November 6, 2013, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments on one of the most vexing issues under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution —  When does the Constitutionally required governmental allowance of religious practices cross the line into Constitutionally prohibited governmental endorsement of religion?  The specific issue in the case is whether the town council of Greece, New York, should be allowed to continue opening its sessions with prayers having a distinctly Christian point of view.  The decision in the case won’t come for months, but I am going to predict the outcome of that case, something I have never done before.  When the decision is released, I will review how close I came to predicting the actual result.

During the arguments, the attorney for the two citizens of Greece who complained about the Christian prayers asked the Court to declare that Greece can only offer prayers that are acceptable to everyone but atheists and polytheists.  I predict the Court will not determine what should be in a public prayer.  First, parsing prayers to see whether they pass muster with persons of disparate faiths would put the government directly into the business of regulating both speech and a person’s practice of his or her religion, both of which the First Amendment says its cannot do.  More important, no conceivable prayer is acceptable to all the world’s believers, even if for some reason we were to leave out atheists and polytheists.  Even a prayer to a generic “creator” is contrary to the beliefs of many Buddhists that the universe was never created and that there is no God.  A prayer to a “Heavenly Father” won’t cut it for someone who believes in the Mother Goddess or denies the existence of heaven.   So we aren’t going to have prayer guidelines as a result of this case.

I also predict that the Supreme Court will not bar town councils from opening their sessions with prayer.  Such a result would be contrary to a long tradition in this country, predating the Constitution, of seeking divine guidance when doing the people’s business.  In prior cases, the Court has recognized that history.  The current Court, which opens its own sessions with a prayer that “God save the United States and this honorable court,” is not about to reverse itself on that issue.

So if the Supreme Court will not outlaw prayers and will not mandate acceptable prayers, how will it resolve the claim that sectarian governmental prayers are effectively endorsing a particular religion, in violation of the First Amendment?  I predict that Court will say that governmental bodies can open (or close) their sessions with prayer so long as they provide realistic opportunities to pray for citizens holding a variety of religious beliefs, including none at all.  So, if a citizen believing in the redemptive power of mushrooms wants to invoke the spirit of the Great Mushroom at a meeting of the town council, that person will have to be given a reasonable opportunity to do just that.  That is what it means to live in a pluralistic country, founded on religious tolerance and personal freedom.

Perhaps when members of the Church of Satan, professed atheists and others with non-traditional beliefs begin opening governmental meetings we will all start to recognize how truly diverse we have become and begin to curb our urge to pray aloud in public, something Jesus recommended a long time ago.  Matthew 6:5-6.  Eventually we may come to see that for governmental meetings and other public occasions, a respectful moment of silence, during which we can call upon whatever power is most meaningful to each of us, will do just fine.  Stay tuned.

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