Local Control

One of the defining policies of conservatism is the principle of local control. At least until recently. The principle of local control is that whenever possible state, city and county governments, as well as school boards, should be making the decisions that effect them. States rights, a version of local control, was one of the arguments that southern states used to fight against the national push to eliminate slavery throughout the United States. Cities and states that object to civil rights legislation or voting rights laws cite the preference for local control. Local control has been one of those lines that differentiate American  conservatism from liberalism, with liberals generally supporting national solutions while conservatives favoring the rights of states and cities to set their own rules. 

This is not a black and white issue. There are some things that are best handled locally, while others need consistent treatment across state lines. There are a lot of grey areas and differences of opinion on where the line should be drawn. But the Republican Party has lost its interest in and support of, local control. Today's example is an executive order by the governor of Florida to prohibit school districts from imposing mask mandates. I don't believe that it's arguable that a school district is in the best position to make appropriate decisions for their students and teachers. Sure, there likely isn't unanimity on a school board's decisions, but they are elected by the people in their school district and are answerable to them, not to the governor. Districts in different regions would make decisions that might vary from each other - dictates from the central state government are simply inappropriate.

This latest example is part of a national trend for state governments that are dominated by Republicans to nullify actions taken by predominantly Democratic cities within those states. We see, especially in places like Texas and Florida, governor and legislatures preempting local decisions regarding homelessness, firearms regulation, sanctuary cities, rights of transsexual individuals, workplace unionization, menu labelling, removing Confederate statues, affordable housing, implementation of sales taxes, cutting police budgets, and voting accessibility. 

Like the interest in deficits, national debt and fiscal responsibility that Republicans only care about when the Democrats are in power, this about face on local control is just another example of hypocrisy in the modern Republican Party.

Social Security Misunderstanding

It's time for another lesson on Social Security, what it is and what it isn't. Periodically you'll see social media posts or memes claiming that your social security has somehow been stolen, or wondering "where all that money went", or complaining about all the money that "you paid in". 

The biggest misconception about social security is that it's some kind of savings account where you put money in and you get it back when you retire. It's not even much like a retirement account, an IRA or a 401(k), where you do exactly that. The money that is deducted from your paycheck isn't in a vault somewhere with your name on it, waiting patiently for you to retire. It is helpful to think of Social Security, not as a retirement account, but as an insurance policy, with your payroll contributions similar to an insurance premium. Furthermore, the insurance that it is similar to isn't life insurance, but more like auto or medical insurance. It's plausible that you may never make a claim on your auto insurance policy. You may go your whole life and never have an accident. Where does all that money go? You don't get it back at some point if you decide to sell your car. No, your premiums go toward paying out the claims of people who do have accidents. (And paying the salaries of insurance company employees of course) Social Security is very much like that. While you, as a non-retired worker, are paying payroll taxes with every paycheck, there are people who are collecting Social Security retirement benefits. Their benefits aren't being paid out from an account with their names on it, but from the money that you are contributing now. 

What about the people who die before they can start collecting benefits? Where does that money go? It doesn't go anywhere, because it wasn't there to begin with. All the payments that the unlucky person who died young made had already been paid out to retirees when he was alive and still working. He can't put all the payroll taxes he paid over his lifetime into his will for his family to inherit. (Spouses and sometimes children of deceased persons who would have been eligible for benefits can claim benefits based on the deceased's earnings record, this is different than treating the payroll contributions themselves as an asset which can be passed on in a will or otherwise transferred)

Another popular misconception is that the looming insolvency of the Social Security Trust Fund is due to the fund being "stolen from" by Congress, presidents, or both. The Social Security Trust Fund is not a bank account, or a Scrooge McDuck-like vault full of cash. What it is is a way of accounting for the annual surpluses. The Trust Fund is not the money that you and every other wage earner contributes. What it is, is the difference between what is collected by way of payroll taxes and what is paid out as benefits. Until very recently there was always more collected than what was paid out. So, what do you do with that money? You could put it in a savings account. But when money goes into a bank account it isn't physically in the bank, the bank uses that cash to loan money to businesses and individuals. The money that an individual or business has in the bank is only there on paper, you can get it out when you need it, but it's actually being used by the bank and they're profiting off its use. What the US government does, rather than putting the Social Security Trust Fund in a bank, or investing it, is lend the money to itself. By law, the annual surplus is invested in US Treasury bills that earn interest. This way, rather than leaving the collected cash in the hands of a third party, who can profit off that cash, the Social Security Administration holds Treasury bills, while the government can utilize the cash it receives from the purchase of the Treasury bills. Neither Congress nor any president has "stolen" from the Social Security Trust Fund. The money is there in the same way that your money in a bank is there, even though it may have been loaned out to a local business or homeowner. So, why do we hear about the Trust Fund becoming insolvent?

Very recently (in may have been this very year) the payouts for benefits exceeded the funds collected by way of payroll taxes. Therefore the surplus will not increase as it did in the past. The Trust Fund balance still is not decreasing (yet) because of interest payments on the Treasury bills from the general fund to the Trust Fund. Going forward, the difference between collections and benefits will need to be paid for by cashing in the Treasury bills that the Trust Fund holds. Eventually, possibly as soon as 2034, the balance in the Trust Fund will be depleted to the extent that there will only be enough income from payroll taxes to fund around 75% of benefit payouts. What will happen? No one really knows. Possible solutions include increasing the retirement age, or raising the payroll tax percentage; possibly taxing a greater proportion of benefits. 

Yes, there are problems on the horizon for Social Security, but the reasons are somewhat more complex than Facebook memes suggest.

Voter Supression

Aside from the way the Electoral College skews the "will of the people", most of us, until recently, had a reasonable expectation that our votes would be counted. This reasonable expectation fed the assumption that the way to get things done the way you wanted them done was to elect people who held the same views as you did. 

Ha! How naïve.  

Unless you've been living under the metaphorical rock you know that there has been an upsurge in efforts to ensure that your vote doesn't count, or to ensure that you just don't get to vote at all. One of the more insidious, yet perfectly legal, vote rigging strategies is gerrymandering. This is a method of drawing Congressional and other political boundaries so that one party remains in power, even when they receive a minority of votes. There are many examples of this, one local example is how the County Board district lines were redrawn after the 2010 census. At one time the districts resembled jagged pie slices. Each district included a portion of Lincoln, which is in the center of Lancaster County, as well as a slice of small town and farming parts of the county. When the district boundaries were changed, most of Lincoln, which voted primarily for Democrats, was contained within one district while the other six were made up of primarily small town and rural areas, where the people tended to vote for Republicans. The result was a 6-1 Republican-Democrat split, where previously it might be 4-3 or 5-2. You can see the results of this most clearly in Midwest states with populous urban areas. The majority vote in Democrats to statewide offices while the gerrymandered legislature remains majority Republican. 

In several of these states the Republican legislature, immediately after a Democrat was elected as Governor or other statewide office voted to restrict or limit the Democrat's powers. In one state, the limitation in the Secretary of State's authority would  expire at the end of her term, presumably so that a Republican successor would have all of the former power. 

Republican-dominated states, in the wake of the Big Lie of a stolen election, have, in the dubious name of election integrity, imposed restrictions, roadblocks and hurdles to make it more difficult to register to vote, or even to get to the polls. They have set up a multitude of new rules expanding the ways that ballots can be thrown out, with most of the restrictions unsurprisingly affecting areas that historically vote for Democrats. Non-partisan local election officials in some states can be overruled by the legislature, which in some cases has the authority to declare an election invalid. And to rub salt in the wound, the Supreme Court just ruled that there is nothing unconstitutional about these laws. Of course it was a 6-3 decision - along ideological lines. Surprise! (It didn't have to be that way, but no, we couldn't bring ourselves to elect the email lady). And the Voting Rights Act 2.0 has been smothered in its crib by the Republicans and the moderate Democrats in the Senate. Surprise! 

Our Democracy is in jeopardy (you reply that "we're a republic, not a democracy and I will slap you through the screen!) - and it's getting more and more difficult to overcome this undemocratic takeover by the minority. You may not like the Democratic Party platform - you may think it's socialistic, or any other Fox News generated bogeyman, but they at least are trying to implement their programs by getting the most votes! They are trying to enact change by the will of the majority, not in spite of it. 
 

Help Wanted

Wherever you go there seems to be "help wanted" signs. Restaurants especially seem to be struggling to fill all necessary positions. A popular explanation for this is that people "just don't want to work", mainly due to the belief that unemployment benefits are so lucrative that people would rather stay home than get a job. But what's really happening? 

Unemployment rates had been steadily decreasing since around 2010 when we hit a peak rate of around 10%, getting as low as 3%. As someone who was a retail manager during those years, I saw how it became increasingly difficult to fill entry-level positions as the unemployment rate fell. It wasn't that people didn't want to work, it was that there were more choices. When there is high, or even moderate, unemployment, most people will stick with a job that they don't like. Part of the reason for this is fear. "What if I quit and can't find another job?" is an understandable question that unhappy employees might ask themselves. Among employees who aren't making entry-level wages, there is the uncertainty about whether a different job would pay the same as the one they are leaving. For a lot of people, it takes something almost catastrophic to get them to leave their job and look for something else. For me, I had been unhappy for several years, but it took getting fired to get me to look for something else. In 2020 that catastrophic event was the pandemic. 

In Spring 2020 many restaurant workers, unable to work remotely, found themselves out of a job. While it's possible, even likely, that some of these folks attempted to ride it out by living on unemployment benefits, many more simply found other jobs. Once restaurants started opening back up and managers realized they couldn't fully staff their business, former restaurant workers fell into several categories:

• People who, before the pandemic, hated their jobs, but were afraid to leave. They found other work and never looked back
• People who, before the pandemic, had no issue with their job, but found other work, and didn't want to change jobs again
• People who, after working in a different industry for a year, realized how hard restaurant work is and realized they could make a living without working so hard and that other businesses were offering competitive wages

And it's not just the restaurant business that's scrambling. A local grocery store director told me recently that last year he had no problem filling positions, but that this year it has been very difficult. It doesn't take an economic genius to figure out that when most people are already working, few people are going to be desperate for jobs. It's a worker's market, business owners aren't calling the shots. 

The Founders

What was the position of the nation's founders? We often hear this question in relation to an issue of how to interpret some aspect of the Constitution. Strict constructionists, those who believe that we should adhere to the actual text of the Constitution (and by extension, all laws), often are also originalists, which means that when it comes to interpreting ambiguous passages they look to documentation for what people originally thought the words meant. I understand the appeal of this thinking. We are, or at least we aspire to be, a nation of laws. Even when we try to accomplish horrendous things (e.g. the post Reconstruction disenfranchisement of Black Americans, the current voter suppression laws) we try to do it legally, i.e. by passing laws as the means to attain our nefarious ends. The weak point in any law, good or bad, is that there is absolutely no way for any law to cover all eventualities. For example, several years ago, the Nebraska State legislature passed a law exempting the sale of manufacturing machinery and equipment (MME) to companies engaged in manufacturing, from sales tax. It was left to state regulatory agencies to define manufacturing, "company engaged in manufacturing", and equipment. Would a company claiming this exemption have to be engaged primarily in manufacturing? Would parts of manufacturing equipment be exempt? It goes on and on. Pages of regulations were written, with some challenged in court. This is true for virtually any law that is passed and is exponentially greater on the federal level. For some laws, an enforcement mechanism must be written into the regulations, including penalties. 

What strict constructionalists and originalists do not take into account is how laws are not self-interpreting and that their application and administration is going to change as circumstances change. To cite another example from Nebraska tax law, outside of certain exceptions, the sale of all goods are taxable, while the sale of services is not. These laws were written before anyone had ever heard of computer software. So what is computer software? Is it a good or a service? If it's a "good", is it subject to Nebraska sales tax if it's installed out of state? What about cloud software? Currently there is a spider's web of rules and regulations that determine whether any particular software is taxable or not. How should an originalist view the taxability of software? It can't be determined with any surety, because the founders couldn't have conceived of something like software and therefore would not have had an opinion about it. Of course one can take the position that Modern "X" is just like Founders' "Y" and therefore "X" should be interpreted exactly like "Y", but it would be naught but speculation. 

Adherents to the originalist/strict textual interpretation tend to ascribe an almost godlike status to the founders that you don't often see outside of religion. They attempt to quash all argument by appeal to the wisdom of the founders, as if they weren't flesh and blood humans with human frailties. Let's not forget that aside from arguable mistakes like the Electoral College, they countenanced slavery. Is there anyone with an ounce of ethics who believes slavery is morally acceptable? So the question to ask in scenarios like DC statehood, or eliminating the Electoral College, isn't whether this was something the founders supported, or even envisioned, but whether it is a demonstrably good thing, something that is beneficial to our country. Viewing the Constitution or any of its amendments as a suicide pact that should be adhered to despite any harmful consequences is counterproductive. This is one of the reasons why the type of judges appointed to federal courts is important. Republicans tend to appoint "conservative" judges, defined as textualists, strict constructionalists or originalists, while Democrats lean toward "liberals" who are more apt to interpret the Constitution in a way that takes 200+ years of changes into account. As a practical matter, conservative judges are more likely to prop up the status quo, since the status quo is naturally a result of two centuries of originalism. With the new 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court we're already seeing a continuation of solidifying of power centers. One example is the way the rights of organizations to enforce religious beliefs has been given priority over public health and individual rights. 

The Founders were men (yes, all males, not a woman in the bunch), many of whom owned other human beings and were shaped by the culture of their times. Times have changed. 

Qualified Immunity

My father was a New York City police officer for 21 years. My brother was a New York City police sergeant, ending his 25+ year career as a homicide detective. Guys that I grew up with were police officers as well.  I officiated a wedding a few years ago for a Lincoln police office who had been shot in the line of duty and had to retire because his injury prevented him from doing the job. I respect the officers who do their jobs oftentimes in very difficult circumstances and  put their lives on the line sometimes losing their lives in the process. It's a tough job. I'd like to see every police officer make it safely home to their family at the end of their shift.

Unfortunately that has often become the overriding goal: protecting the safety of the police. Don't misunderstand, the safety of each individual officer is important. Police departments must have policies in place so as not to place officers in unnecessary danger. There are going to be times when the absolute only way for a police officer to protect their life, or the life of innocent bystanders, is to use lethal force, i.e. to kill someone. It's fair to point out that it's easy for me, who has never been in a situation where a decision whether or not to shoot another human being is necessary, to pass judgement. To be clear, I'm not referring to situation where someone is threatening the police or civilians with a gun (or even another weapon), but how many times have we heard about scenarios where a cop shot someone who was reaching for their drivers license, or made a move that the officer thought was aggressive? Times where the subject was unarmed? And the justification was that the officer "feared for their life"? And this action was completely within acceptable department policy? One can only conclude that the preferred tactic is to take preemptive action just in case the person that was stopped for a broken tail light, or an illegal air freshener was going to shoot the cop with that gun he didn't have. It's a weird twist on the plot of Minority Report, but instead of legal action being taken for a crime that the perpetrator was thinking about committing, lethal action is taken based on what the police officer was thinking about might happen. People who have done nothing worse than appearing threatening are shot without a second thought. 

Qualified immunity, the principle where these kind of killings are deemed justified if the officer followed department procedure, or subjectively feared for their life, has to end. We're finally starting to see police who kill people being held to account by the courts, but verdicts still depend upon whether the officer's action conformed to policy or whether the jury believed that there was a genuine fear on the part of the cop. The system needs to change so that the default position isn't to shoot someone "just in case". 

Both Sides

You hear it all the time, some bad behavior is identified and immediately "the other guys do it too" is offered up as a defense. In the world of politics, sometimes that's true, there are some things that both sides are guilty of. Politicians of all stripes seem to see getting re-elected and holding on to power as an end in itself. They all tend to reward their allies, often at the expense of those who do not vote for them. You can find inept politicians, you can find corrupt politicians, you can find just plain stupid politicians on both sides of the aisle. 

But...

In my view the modern Republican Party has gone beyond the pale. It is not arguable that nationwide, and even in many states, aggressive gerrymandering has resulted in Republicans being in a position of power that is not supported by their numbers. In many states the Congressional delegation and the state legislature is controlled by Republicans even when a majority of the votes went to Democrats. The situation is exacerbated by the way Senators are allocated, which in turn determines in part the makeup of the Electoral College. The Senate is split 50-50, even though the Democratic Senators represent 56.3% of the population. Two out of the last six presidential elections were won by a candidate who received fewer votes. Even President Biden's 2020 victory could have gone the other way if a few thousand votes in a handful of key states had gone the other way. 

Republican leadership is not stupid. They understand the population trends and see that the percentage of the electorate who can be counted on to vote for Republicans is steadily decreasing. So what do these non-stupid Republicans do? While they still retain legislative majorities they take action to reduce the influence of the Democratic Party. Since governors are elected by popular vote, gerrymandering does not affect them. In several states that elected Democratic governors in Republican-gerrymandered states, the Republican-majority legislature acted to limit the governor's powers before he took office. Despite there being every indication that the 2020 elections were conducted fairly and without any measurable fraud, dozens of Republican-dominated states changed election laws to make it more difficult for people to vote. In some cases, such as in Georgia, voting access was expanded in rural areas where a majority voted for Republicans while being restricted in urban areas that tended to vote Democratic. Not to mention the various actions by Republicans to overrule or delay petition drives approved by a majority of the people in the case of Medicaid expansion or cannabis legalization. 

Republican politicians in 2021 fall into two broad categories. There are the Machiavellian strategists, represented by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell has always played the long game, understanding that elections come and go, but if you can appoint enough federal judges, especially Supreme Court Justices, to the bench, you have built an effective firewall against progressive reforms. And by making effective use of Senate rules a smart leader can push through his own priorities when in the majority and obstruct by filibuster when in the minority. McConnell's strategy became apparent during President Obama's terms as president. His stated goal was to make Obama a one-term president. As we know, that failed, but he was able to put the brakes on virtually everything Obama tried to accomplish. The only reason the PPACA passed was that the Democrats had a 60 seat majority in the Senate. McConnell's main accomplishment was to prevent Obama from appointing federal judges, culminating in his refusal to consider Merrick Garland nomination to the Supreme Court. McConnell feigns a respect for Senate tradition and excoriates the Democrats for even talking about eliminating the filibuster, but he has been very clear that he will use the rules when it suits him, and change them when they don't. 

The second broad category includes the Trumpists like Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Green, Lauren Boebert, Gym Jordon, and Josh Hawley. This wing of the Republican Party makes no pretense of trying to legislate or govern, but are primarily performative. They're more short-term thinkers and have no concept of the long political game. When in the minority they mindlessly obstruct and when in the majority they mindless support whatever the leader wants. They spend more time making outrageous statements on social media, attacking their opponents and pandering to the worst instincts of the Republican base than doing the hard work of legislating. Included within this second group are politicians such as Ted Cruz or our own Pete Ricketts. This crowd may have been serious about their jobs at one time and been mainstream conservative Republicans but were seduced by the unquestioning, unwavering support and adulation that Trump received that they decided that their future as politicians depended on replicating that model. These were elected officials who at one time were concerned about roads, and property taxes and budgets, but now make daily pronouncements about "defending the second amendment", protecting the boarder and "stopping the steal". 

So, yes, you're going to see problems with the Democrats as well as with the Republicans. You're going to be able to point to things that the Democrats do and be horrified. Democrats may be the party that takes your vote for granted, but the Republicans are the party that effective wants to take your vote away. All the while blaming every problem on immigrants and Black Lives Matter (and Antifa, don't forget Antifa). 

Both sides are not the same.