Let’s ignore every other issue dividing Americans–what to do about the economy, about Syria and Iran, about the various “wars”–on women, on the GLBT community, on drugs…you name it. In a very real sense, arguments over those issues are equivalent to arguments about how to arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. If there is one issue of global life-and-death importance, it’s climate change.
And on that issue, the parties could not be further apart.
The science–and the scientific consensus–is overwhelming; we face a truly unprecedented global threat. The Democrats haven’t exactly covered themselves with glory, but they have acknowledged the threat and the urgency of addressing it. Most Republicans, on the other hand, continue to denythe science and reject the reality of climate change. (I suppose that shouldn’t surprise us; they also reject evolution.) Mitt Romney is now parroting the GOP’s standard climate change denial, and Paul Ryan, his running mate, is a climate-change-denying conspiracy theorist.
I’m not a believer in single-issue voting, but I’m not a big fan of committing slow suicide, either. If there was ever a single issue worth embracing, this is it.
For those of you who do not follow such things, Indiana had passed its own version of Arizona’s mean-spirited and deeply flawed immigration law; a couple of months ago, the Supreme Court found virtually all of the Arizona law unconstitutional. That decision operated to doom most of the Indiana statute as well. And rather than use the Court’s decision as an occasion for grandstanding or ideological posturing, Zoeller did what a good lawyer in that office should do–he agreed that Indiana should follow the law.
The article also quotes an observation by former Marion County GOP Chair Mike Murphy to the effect that much of the current anti-immigration fervor on display is a response to tough economic times; in such times, he points out, people look for someone to blame.
An elected official doing his job properly, and a political operative conceding to the nature of reality might not seem newsworthy, but it is a small, heartening reminder of the GOP to which I used to belong–the party that produced Bill Hudnut , Dick Lugar and John Mutz.
Now we have Mike Delph, Mike Pence and Richard Mourdock. It’s enough to make you cry.
I have been bemused–and occasionally amused–by all the posturing over the provision in the Affordable Care Act requiring people to purchase health insurance.
How dare they!!
If you listen to the right-wing blogs and talking heads, you’ll come away believing that such a mandate is unprecedented. The government has never required us to do something, or penalized us for failing to do something.It’s unAmerican to penalize inaction. That evil Obama is introducing an entirely foreign element into American law. (The fact that Romney did exactly the same thing in Massachusetts is obviously different….)
Of course, this line of attack is entirely fanciful.
As a legal scholar recently noted, the very same week it upheld the ACA, the Supreme Court affirmed a law requiring sex offenders to register their whereabouts, employment and appearance with local authorities. If they fail to do so, the law in question imposes a penalty of ten years in prison–a bit more draconian than the ACA’s fine. The Court made it clear that this mandatory registration was not punishment for a crime –the individuals subject to the requirement have already paid their debt to society for those transgressions (a contrary construction would run afoul of the Ex Post Facto prohibition).
Courts upholding this particular type of mandate–and there have been several–have explicitly said that the only conduct being punished was the “inactivity” of failing to register.
There are many other examples–so many that a Professor at John Marshall Law School has actually written an essay on “The Incredible Ordinariness of Federal Penalties for Inactivity.”
As I have repeatedly noted, there is nothing wrong with faulting provisions of this particular approach to healthcare reform. What I find absolutely astonishing, however, are the logical contortions opponents will go through in order to attack the legitimacy of any attempt to extend access to healthcare. I have been absolutely stunned by opponents’ self-righteous denunciations of such efforts, and by their evident willingness to simply let the uninsured suffer and die.
A recent editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association is worth quoting.
That editorial began “Physicians and hospitals have a moral duty to provide acute care and emergency care to those who need it.” Proceeding from that expressly moral premise, the editorial concluded that individuals “have an enforceable moral duty to buy sufficient health insurance to cover the costs of acute and emergency care…requiring individuals to buy health insurance is consistent with respect for individual liberty because individuals have a duty to mitigate the burdens they impose on others.”
We don’t talk much about the morality of policy. We should.
Yesterday, every single House Republican voted to take away health coverage for young adults staying on their family plans, raise prescription drug prices for seniors, end protections for those with pre-existing conditions, reinstate lifetime insurance caps, scrap tax breaks for small businesses, raise the deficit, and take benefits away from 30 million Americans. Pundits reporting the vote generally noted that it was one of a series of such votes, and that it stood no chance of ultimate passage. They spent a lot of time analyzing the politics of the GOPs message and speculating on its electoral effect.
To the best of my knowledge, none of them pointed out how utterly immoral it was.
In 1980, I won the Republican primary for what was then Indiana’s Eleventh Congressional District, defeating three opponents. I was pro-choice and on record supporting equal rights for gays and lesbians (same-sex marriage was not yet an issue), positions that were consistent with the generally libertarian Republicanism of the day. Indeed, my loss to Andy Jacobs, Jr. in the general election was widely attributed to the belief that as a “Goldwater Republican,” I was simply too conservative.
My political philosophy has not changed in the intervening 32 years, but now I’m routinely accused of being a leftist or socialist.
How far the political pendulum has swung! A pro-choice, pro-gay rights candidate winning a Republican primary almost anywhere in the country would be inconceivable today.
In Indiana, even Richard Lugar—who had become steadily more conservative as the party’s center shifted more and more to the right—was deemed insufficiently pure by the rigid party base that now controls the GOP. Governor Daniels’ argument that Richard Mourdock is in the mainstream of the party is actually true, because the party today is more radical than at any point in my lifetime. The people I worked with on past Lugar campaigns and in the Hudnut Administration are dispirited and dismayed; more and more often, they’re voting Democrat or simply staying home.
That brings me to the new slogan unveiled by the Obama campaign a few weeks ago: Forward. That slogan has generated a lot of derision from Republicans, but they may find their scorn is misplaced. In a very real sense, the 2012 general election will be a choice between going forward and going backward.
The President’s recent statement supporting same-sex marriage is just one example. The principle (which used to be a Republican principle) is that government should treat all citizens equally. Acceptance of the application of that principle to gays and lesbians is clearly the way forward.
The Administration’s support for equal marriage rights is only one example. Yes, my students overwhelmingly endorse equal civil recognition for same-sex couples. But they also support Administration proposals–vehemently opposed by Republicans–to ameliorate climate change, including government support for renewable energy and conservation. While the subject of abortion remains a thorny moral issue for many of them, they are repelled by efforts to humiliate women by mandating vaginal ultrasounds and similarly invasive procedures. And they are appalled by efforts to go backward by denying women access to contraception.
Whatever their opinions of much-maligned and poorly understood “Obamacare,” surveys confirm that most Americans agree with the proposition that our healthcare system is both economically and morally deficient, and that those deficiencies must be addressed.
Surveys also show huge majorities of Americans favor cutting the deficit by raising tax rates on the wealthy, and favor reducing expenditures on defense. (In defiance, the House GOP recently voted to restore proposed defense cuts and to pay for that restoration not with taxes but by cutting services to poor women and children.)
In November, voters will have a choice between an administration that—while often clumsy and ham-handed—is on the right side on most of these issues, and a party that stubbornly rejects dealing with any of them.
At a time when America desperately needs two substantive political parties offering competing solutions to the problems we face, one of them—the one I supported for 35 years—has simply gone off the rails. I miss that party. America misses that party.
Today’s GOP has come to be known as the “Party of No,” and it isn’t just Obama the party is rejecting. It’s rejecting modernity.
The Chair of the National Republican Party pooh-poohs the notion that his party is waging a war on women–next, he says, the Democrats will accuse the GOP of a war on caterpillars. How silly, how over-the-top! Just another one of those politically-motivated charges that are thrown around during a campaign season.
At virtually the same time Priebus (or whatever his name is) was comparing women to caterpillars (okay–maybe that wasn’t his intent), Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (yes, that Scott Walker) was signing a new law –passed on a straight party-line vote–repealing his state’s 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act.
The Equal Pay Enforcement Act made it easier for victims of wage discrimination to have their day in court, by allowing plaintiffs to bring suit in state courts. Without it, federal courts are the only proper venue for such complaints. State courts, as lawyers all know, are less costly and more accessible, and typically resolve cases more quickly.
This little skirmish is typical of the tactics being used to circumscribe women’s rights. There was no outright reversal of a right–just a measure making it much more difficult to assert that right. This is the same approach being used by most of the anti-abortion measures that have sprouted like dandelions since the 2010 elections swept Republicans into office: the Supreme Court may say they can’t impose an outright ban, but they can bury clinics in a blizzard of medically unnecessary regulations that make it impossible to operate. They can “protect” poor women who clearly don’t know what they want by enacting “informed consent” provisions more burdensome than those required for major, life-threatening surgeries.
Contraception? Well, God’s Own Party has tried to permit your employer to decide whether your insurance should cover birth control, and the party has made it very clear that given the power, it would get rid of Planned Parenthood.
No war?
The troops are marching down the Trans-vaginal Highway as we speak…..
