Civics

There’s an awful lot going on in Washington. Not to hurt the tourist industry, but I don’t think it’s a good time to vacation there. In addition to a sudden increase in unemployment among furloughed government workers a lot of stuff is closed, due to the government shut down, and Republicans seem angry about that even though they engineered the shut down.

Consider the WW Two veteran who was on an Ohio ‘honor flight” and rather than spending a quiet fall day at the WWII memorial with his buddies, reflecting on their experiences seventy plus years ago, got caught amidst the CNN cameras and the barricades with Steve King and Michelle Bachmann getting into the picture. If I’m a 93 year old in a wheelchair with a catheter bag the last thing I want is to be on TV. I bet he wished he had come on a different day. I think there’s a big lack of good Karma in that place and it’s best to just avoid it if you can.

The United States was almost always the kind of place where defeated politicians gave kind concession speeches. Elections are adversarial, so when someone wins someone else loses. The losers in elections usually say things like “the voters have spoken, my opponent is a good person, I wish him or her well, God Bless America.” The value put forth by those kinds of statements reflects the idea that the US has a system of governing that relies on majority rule. Votes determine those majorities, both in public elections and in the passage of bills in our legislative bodies. It’s how we make policy and decide things. If you are in the minority regarding a particular candidate or policy question you’re not supposed to drop out of the system but rather we’ve been taught to work within it to make things better. Perhaps your time will come and next time you will win. But in the end we continue to participate, voters and politicians alike. We work with the winners for the good of everybody because we live together and need each other. American politicians, rather than requiring complete agreement, have always accepted consensus and gone on with the business of governing, with notable exceptions. The Civil War being one. The Affordable Care Act apparently being another.

If you’ve watched CNN or C Span lately you’ve seen and heard, maybe just now gotten to know, people like Steve King, Republican member of the House of Representatives from rural Northwest Iowa. Sioux City is the big town in his district. In addition to being rabidly opposed, and I do mean rabid, to the Affordable Care Act, Steve King passed a bill as a State legislator making English the official language of Iowa. Does Illinois have an official language? If it does, don’t you assume its English? The Steve King/English/official language thing is an indication of his Anti Immigrant politics. Since Tom Tancredo of Colorado left the House, and until Sherriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona wins election to Congress, you won’t find a more anti-immigrant voice on Capitol Hill. So you can’t call Rep. King a single issue kind of guy. He has a whole list of things he hates in addition to ObamaCare. He was recently shown in footage at the World War Two memorial, where my poor catheterized 93 year old was stuck, saying with a crazed look that the closing of the memorial was “no doubt a direct order from the White House.” I don’t think Steve cares much for our President.

Standing with Steve King among the Tea Party Republicans most proud of shutting down our government was Diane Black, whose House district takes in suburban Nashville in Tennessee. I became acquainted with Diane through the single camera on C Span that records speeches given to seemingly no one. Diane was explaining her evolution to being “completely and utterly” opposed to the Affordable Care Act. Diane was a registered nurse who married a doctor who became rich. She was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1998 and recently promoted to the U.S. House of Representatives. She and her husband’s net worth is reported at almost $29 million because of her husband's stake in Aegis Sciences Corporation, a "...forensic chemical and drug-testing laboratory specializing in The Zero-Tolerance Drug Testing® programs for businesses, professional and amateur sports, pain management physicians, and medical examiners.” She explained her odyssey to Washington as a direct response to ObamaCare. She and her husband realized they had to “do something about” what was happening in medicine in America so she came to Washington with the sole purpose of “defeating this terrible scourge.” Scourge.

There are a lot of Representatives in the House. Four hundred and thirty five actually. Each is supposed to represent more or less the same number of people, and so the maps of their districts vary greatly in size depending on the density of population in that area. California has fifty three of them. Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Vermont have only one for the whole state. Any group of 435 people is going to be pretty diverse, so we shouldn't be surprised at the number of very conservative representatives. They tend to come from districts which are either rural or suburban.

When C Span puts the identifier bar under the talking head of a house member it lists three towns in their district. I think those are probably the biggest towns. When Eric Cantor of Virginia is speaking they list his three towns as Culpepper, Montpelier, and Glen Allen. Culpepper’s population is 16,379. I saw Eric Cantor on C Span standing with a bunch of furloughed doctors and research guys in white coats at the National Institute of Health (NIH). Eric was touting a house bill that would give some emergency money to the shut down NIH. Not all the money, but rather the money for pediatric cancer research. Good tactical choice.

Later in the day House Republicans were doing the same for Veterans. They were proposing to give them some emergency money for some of the things they do for veterans. This piece of film took place in House chambers where they parcel out the speeches in minutes. A very soft spoken kind appearing African American representative, a Democrat from a Southern state got a minute to speak. During his minute he said that he had two veteran’s groups in his district and he had recently talked to them about this bill. They told him that if Congress truly wanted to honor them as veterans they would not use them as pawns in a partisan political battle, pitting them against family members and others in their community suffering from the government shut down, but instead open government so that all can benefit. Then he sat down. Those bills, if they pass, are sent to the Senate where they are taking no action. I think the air is going out of that “emergency money for appealing issues” tactic. They seem to now be focusing on the debt ceiling.

So out of the four hundred and thirty five representatives in the U.S. House some small and undetermined number of them, less than eighty and more than thirty, hard to tell, who identify themselves as Tea Party Republicans, are driving the bus. And the bus is headed towards a cliff. The Republican Speaker of the House and his fellow Republicans are at this point cooperating with their desire to wrench concessions from the President on the Affordable Health Care, and now the debt ceiling, and the budget-all outside the legislative process. Am I wrong in thinking we used to do this by introducing bills, debating them, amending, them, passing them, making them law, and then following those laws? I think the House may have abandoned that, and I know it’s slow and cumbersome, because the vocal minority didn’t have the votes to do it that way. That way requires majorities and we don’t appear to be big on majorities these days. They’re developing other tactics. I don’t think it’s good.

It does makes for great TV however, and produces really interesting quotes. My favorite so far is this:

“Now that we’ve… lit ourselves on fire, we’ve got to stay together.”
Representative Devin Nunes, R-California

I don’t know Devin, and I don’t know what life has been like for him up to this point. But I think he has a fuzzy idea of the physics of combustion. I personally am not staying together with anyone that is on fire. I’m not standing with them, sitting around them, or staying in the same room with them. I might, and actually I’ve always wanted to, grab one of those red fire extinguishers, pull the pin from the handle, point the black funnel at him, and spray the guy down with foam. We had those fire extinguishers all over YSB, spent a fortune having them inspected and charged up, and in my thirty five years there I never had a chance to use one. Always wanted to. I’ve got one beside me right now in the shack here in case something goes wrong with the wood burner. I’d hose Devin down with the white foamy stuff in a minute, given the opportunity, but I kind of think he wants to flame on. I don’t get it. It’s a bad metaphor for government Devin.

John Boehner says he doesn’t have the votes to pass a clean continuing resolution, one with no conditions and demands, to keep our country running. That would mean all the Democrats vote for it and enough moderate Republicans to pass the bill. So he’s not calling it. Some think that’s not true. A Democrat on C Span (it was late, I couldn’t keep up with all the names) held up a list that she claimed had seventeen Republicans listed who would vote for a clean continuing resolution. That’s a start.

My representative, Adam Kinzinger, has been quiet. I’m glad he’s not on C Span spouting off but I wonder, what towns they would put under his talking head? Belvedere, Ottawa, Pontiac? Do you think he might join other Republicans in getting the government funded and working again? I’d like to think he would. He represents me. I’d like him to do that. I bet others that live in his district would also. Let’s call him. His number in Washington is 202 225 3635. If Adam is not your representative, and your voice in the House is another Republican who could help us do the right thing, why not call him or her? I’m thinking of Peter Roskam. Where is he on this question? His number is 202 225 4561. Let’s do something to help this along, other than watching TV and enjoying the dangerous circus act that pretends to be our United States Congress.