Tag Archives: GOP

Charlie White, the GOP, and the Rule of Law

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.

This over-reach by the Indiana GOP has generated a petition drive, asking Governor Daniels to veto the measure. I don’t hold out much hope, but I signed the petition, and I hope many others will as well.

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.

It is unAmerican.

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Where is Divided Government When You Need It?

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.

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Tea and No Sympathy

There is an old joke that begins “Why tax the rich?” Answer: because that’s where the money is.

For some reason, the current crop of Tea Party Republicans in Congress continue to look for money in all the wrong places. Their insistence on spending cuts not only ignores basic economics–the sorts of cuts they are promoting would reduce consumer spending dramatically, and throw us back into recession–the cuts they are proposing are mean-spirited and inequitable.

Paul Ryan, the current poster-boy for “fiscal conservatism” unveiled a budget that would eliminate Medicare in favor of “subsidies” allowing the disabled and elderly to purchase private (far more costly) insurance. My husband and I were watching his press conference, as he explained this; as my husband pointed out, in reality this would be a “subsidy” all right–to private insurance companies.

The GOP budget was all like this: lots of pain for the have-nots, lots of gain for the already-haves.

Now, my well-meaning libertarian friends will argue that it isn’t government’s place to help people. Private charity, they believe, will take up the slack. However naive I may consider that belief, it does not answer a more basic question: if government is supposed to simply “get out of the way,” if the state is to be properly trimmed back to function only as a “night watchman,” where are the proposals to strip away all of the benefits government is lavishing on the well-to-do?

I’ll consider those proposals to strip the needy of the last shreds of the social safety net when those “limited government” advocates also propose removing the cushy tax breaks enjoyed by businesses, the subsidies to obscenely profitable oil companies, and the mortgage deductions for second and third homes.

Until I see those proposed “cuts,” and efforts to make the effective tax rate on millionaires approach the truly confiscatory policies being proposed for the poor, I’m calling this what it is: despicable.

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Interesting Observation

My granddaughter Sarah currently lives in Wales; she is attending the University of Wales and will graduate this summer. She reads the Guardian, and this morning sent me the following text message.

“Taken from the comment and debate section of the Guardian this morning: ‘what you need to say and do to be credible in the Republican Party essentially deprives you of credibility outside it. The Republicans recognize this, but like an obese glutton at an all-you-can-eat buffet, they just can’t seem to help themselves.'”

The comment was in response to an article on “The American Right, Stuck in a Hyperbolic World,” and I think it captured the current dynamic perfectly. Right now, for example, it looks quite likely that the House GOP will shut down government, despite Democrats’ willingness to meet their demands halfway. (The Republicans want 60 billion in cuts; Democrats are offering 30 billion.) They seem absolutely oblivious to the damage indiscriminate cuts will do to the still-fragile recovery–and equally oblivious to the political damage their posturing is inflicting.

As the commenter noted, they just can’t help themselves.

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Welcome to Never-Neverland

I know my posts sound increasingly frustrated these days. Here is just one example of why that is.

According to Talking Points Memo,

“Thirty-one Republicans on the House Energy And Commerce Committee — the entire Republican contingent on the panel — declined on Tuesday to vote in support of the very idea that climate change exists.

Democrats on the panel had suggested three amendments that said climate change is a real thing, is caused by humans and has potentially dire consequences for the future. The amendments came on a Republican bill to block the EPA from offering regulations to mitigate the results of global climate shifts. The global scientific community is in near unanimous agreement that climate change is real, and that humans contribute to it.

None of the 31 Republicans on the committee would vote yes on any of the amendments..”

I know that every legislative body and every political party has its nuts and ideologues. But thirty-one members of the GOP and U.S. Congress voting against reality really boggles the imagination. There are plenty of aspects of reality that I don’t like–beginning with the fact that science denial is making the world more dangerous for my children and grandchildren–but that doesn’t mean I can blithely pretend they don’t exist. Refusing to acknowledge facts in evidence is suicidal for individuals and societies alike.

The fact that these people were elected in what I can only assume were fair and free elections is infinitely depressing. But it really happened and their decisions have real consequences.

And whether they choose to ignore it or not, climate change is accelerating, and the consequences of their refusal to acknowledge that reality and deal with it will affect believers and nonbelievers alike.

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